Podcasts about build recurring revenue

Why it was selected for “CBNation Architects”: In this episode, the guest is Pablo Gonzalez - an entrepreneur with a successful track record in Fortune 500 companies, multinational corporations, and his entrepreneurial ventures. Key Points: Pablo's Journey and Skills: Pablo has experience across various sectors such as construction, tech, and non-profit. His people skills are the backbone of his success. He emphasizes human connection as pivotal in all aspects of life, particularly in business growth. Connect with Pablo: His latest venture is called "Connect with Pablo", where he leverages his prowess in building connections to help businesses create communities. CEO Hack: Pablo uses a specific formula for reaching out to people. It helps him establish meaningful connections and build relationships. CEO Nugget: He believes in stepping into conversations that are already in someone's head rather than starting one anew. CEO Defined: According to Pablo, true success involves a four-step process, though specifics were not provided in the scrape.   Check out our CEO Hack Buzz Newsletter–our premium newsletter with hacks and nuggets to level up your organization. Sign up HERE.  I AM CEO Handbook Volume 3 is HERE and it's FREE. Get your copy here: http://cbnation.co/iamceo3. Get the 100+ things that you can learn from 1600 business podcasts we recorded. Hear Gresh's story, learn the 16 business pillars from the podcast, find out about CBNation Architects and why you might be one and so much more. Did we mention it was FREE? Download it today!   Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/2019/09/08/iam391-entrepreneur-helps-businesses-build-a-recurring-revenue-streams/

This week we're talking the membership economy with the knowledgable expert, Robbie Kellman Baxter. In this explained episode, Erica and Robbie chat through what exactly the membership economy is, why Robbie thinks those companies are best set up for success in the coming decade, and how Robbie coins terminology that the industry adopts. She has a fascinating path starting off in consulting and carving her niche as the world's expert on the membership economy.Robbie Kellman Baxter helps companies leverage subscription pricing, digital communities, and freemium models to build deeper relationships with customers. Over the past 21 years, she has worked with over 100 organizations in over 20 industries like the National Basketball Association, Hagerty, The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft, and Ingram Micro.  As a keynote speaker, she has presented globally at major conferences, association meetings, trade shows and elite universities as well as to private audiences at many of the world's most well-known companies. She hosts the podcast, “Subscription Stories,” where she sits down with business leaders to discuss how they're using subscription pricing and membership models to redefine the biggest industries and generate predictable recurring revenue. Robbie has also developed and taught nine video courses for LinkedIn Learning on business topics ranging from innovation to customer success and membership.Her first book, “The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue,” anticipated and defined the massive transformation from ownership to membership and the rise of subscription pricing. It was named a top 10 marketing book of all time by BookAuthority. Her second book, “The Forever Transaction,” takes readers through every step of the subscription business process – from initial start-up or testing of a new model to scaling the operation for long-term growth and sustainability. Prior to launching Peninsula Strategies, Robbie was a strategy consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a New York City Urban Fellow, and a Silicon Valley product marketer. She received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and graduated with honors from Harvard College. Twentysomethings, tune in now for a jam-packed chat on all things membership economy.Follow Us!Robbie Kellman Baxter: @robbiebaxBuy The Membership Economy hereBuy The Forever Transaction hereErica Wenger: @erica_wengerDear Twentysomething: @deartwentysomething

Brad Sugars is internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs. Brad is a best-selling author, keynote speaker and the number one business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30 year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9 plus companies and is the owner of the multimillion dollar franchise Action Coach. As a husband and father of 5, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business, that's why Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road but if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone. That's why Brad has created 90 days to revolutionize your life, it's 30 minutes a day for 90 days teaching you his 30 years experience on investing, business and life.   Questions Could you share a little bit about how you got to where you are today? In your bio, it mentioned that at the end of the day, you want to be working in a business that can work without you. Like so many people don't understand that concept. Could you explain what that means? And so, maybe could you share with us, let's say 3 to 4 success principles, or just things that will help to make you be more successful as a business owner or an entrepreneur. Could you share with us I would say maybe, let's move it up to five traits that a leader needs to really grow and develop their people. Where do you get to that point where you're starting to attract really quality people? Is it because of the energy that you're giving out, your leadership style, what makes the right people or attracts the right people to come to you? What's your views on marketing? Is it something that still needs to be occurring to keep present in the customers mind? And if so, based on the fact that marketing has changed so much I would say in the last 10 to 20 years as you've mentioned, which platforms do you focus your marketing on? Could you share with us what's the one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in your business? Could you maybe pick one or two that have had a great impact on you over your lifetime? It could be a book you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago. What has been your experience, I would say, let's narrow it down to the last one to two years of customer experience. And I know it's a very general and a wide question, but we just want to get an idea of how your experiences has been across different industries, like travelling to a hotel, or airline or restaurant, or even just local stores that you may visit in your community where you live. Could you share with us what's one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about? Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people. Where can listeners find you online? Before we wrap our interviews up, we always like to ask our guest, do you have a quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to revert to this quote, it kind of helps get you back on track if for any reason you get derailed.   Highlights   Brad's Journey   Me: Now, even though we read our guest bio, we always like to give the guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about how they got to where they are today. So, could you share a little bit about that with us?   Brad shared that he was born and raised in Australia and moved to the United States, married an American girl. So, they have 5 kids. So, he guesses he's stuck in America now, he's an “Aus” American. Being in every type of business, you name it, he's had it, whether it's service or retail or actually manufacturing. He did manufacture in the food space, he's been across the board, he's an entrepreneur, he buys and builds and sells companies, that's what he does. And teaching became a passion and as mentioned his 90x programme.   When he hit 50, he thought what is he going to do and he built himself a TV studio and he went in and recorded 30 minutes a day, every day of business and then 30 minutes a day every day for life and success principles. And then the same for wealth and thought, “I'm going to give back” and their main company Action Coach, obviously, they're in 83 countries, he knows that coach Marcia in Jamaica there. And across Africa, they have their coaches all across the Caribbean in fact, in the US, they have about 1100 offices around the world doing that. So, 17 books on the subject of business and wealth. So, he guesses he's a prolific at creating books, kids and businesses.   Me: Amazing and for those of our listeners that clearly will not have heard our pre podcast conversation. I met Brad when he came to Jamaica in 2016 and his presentation was amazing. And Coach Marcia, who represents Action Coach in Jamaica, she's also supremely amazing, like everything Brad talks about, she continuously preaches, be, do and have and it's just amazing.   The Concept of Working in a Business That Can Work Without You   So, Brad, could you share with us, I know that your whole life has been surrounded around building businesses and in your bio, it mentioned that at the end of the day, you want to be working in a business that can work without you. Like so many people don't understand that concept. Could you explain what that means?   Brad shared that well, in essence, what they're trying to do is the difference between working for yourself and building a business is two very vastly different things. Working for yourself is building a job for yourself.   Building a business is building something that is an investment that makes money whether you show up or not. So, his definition of a business is a commercial profitable enterprise that works without you.   He learned this early in his career that he was the hardest working person in his business. In some cases, he even took home less money than a lot of the staff in his business and it just didn't seem right to him to work that way. So, he had to learn how to turn his business into something that worked so he didn't have to. See when the business works, the owner doesn't have to. If the business doesn't work, then the owner is generally the hardest working person in the business.   Principles That Will Make You More Successful as a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur   Brad stated that if we're going to go with just 3, it's hard when you've written this many books and taught for this long to pick just 3. So, first he would go, you don't build your business, your people do.   Your job as the owner or the CEO is to build your people, they build your business for you. So, as you educate them, coach them, mentor them, train them. He still remembers 20 or 21, he forgot how old he was, he went to his dad and he said, “You know what, Dad, I just can't get good people.” And he said to him, “Brad, you get the people you deserve. You're an average manager running an average business, the highest caliber person that wants to work for you is average.”   And it's like a big slap in the face. Thanks, dad. But he was right. If I became a great leader, then great people wanted to work for his company. So yeah, he would say that's the first one, build your people, they build your business.   The second he would say, you've got to be great at sales and marketing to be great at business, being the rainmaker, bringing in new business is one of the most important aspects and that's why out of his 17 books, actually his newest, his 18th book is all about marketing as well.   So, it really is about getting the customer in and keeping them for a lifetime, his definition of marketing is profitably buying lifetime customers. So, if he spends 1000 on an ad, and he gets 10 new customers, will it cost him 100 to buy each new customer. So, marketing is about the profitable buying of customers and when people learn it, every dollar out should bring $2 back in type thing. So, we really have to focus on that.   If he could only stick to 3. We will go through a lot more as we get through the day or through the session.   But he would say the third is, be really clear on where you're going with the business. He likes to think of business as something that you finish, you build it so that it eventually runs without you.   So, by what date will you finish the business? By what date will it run without you and then go to work on the business more than in the business type thing. Gerber said that based on his book.   Me: Indeed. So, we have to work on the business and so many business owners, myself included, work in our business and not necessarily on our business. And it kind of goes up and down, sometimes you get it to a point where you are working on the business and then for some reason you get back sucked into the operational activities and you're back in it again. So, it's up and down. But as you mentioned, if you really want to generate wealth, it's to have the business run on its own.   Traits a Leader Needs to Grow and Develop Their People   Me: Now, you mentioned at the beginning, I loved your first point stating that you need to develop and work on your people. And of course, that's all this podcast is about, navigating the customer experience and I preach constantly about the fact that internal customers are so important in a business. Many times, companies focus on the external, but if you don't get it right internally, it's highly unlikely you're going to be able to master it externally. So could you share with us I would say maybe, let's move it up to five traits that a leader needs to really grow and develop their people.   Brad shared that we'll break that into two separate segments. First of all, we'll break it into the difference between management and leadership. Because in a business, you need both management and leadership.   Now management is a system and leadership is an art form, the system of management is designed to do two things. Management should build competency and productivity in the people in your organization. So, build better people like build their competency, build so they can do a good job by training, coaching, mentoring, educating, make sure your people are competent at their job. If there's a lack of competency, there's a lack of management or there's bad management going on.   Productivity is also management. So, it's really about how do you manage people to get a high level of productivity because if you want to double a business, if you want to double your profits, you either have to double the number of people or double the productivity of the existing people, productivity is always faster and easier. And then the flip side then if you look at leadership.   Leadership is also in his opinion about two things. But this is where it's about, if management is sort of the short-term day to day, week to week. Leadership is more than monthly, quarterly, annual and 3 to 5 year type thing where in a leadership scenario, he's looking to create passion and focus. So, the leader's job is really building passion amongst the people and building focus. To be focused, they need to know what they're doing, what are their goals sort of thing. Where are we headed? To be passionate, there has to be more meaning to work than just the paycheck and more meaning to work than just the profitability of the company.   As a Leader, What Attracts the Right People to Come to You   Me: Indeed, indeed. So, we spoke about management and leadership so important. Now, Brad, let's say for example, you had mentioned that you said, your dad said to you, “You attract the people that you deserve.” Where do you get to that point where you're starting to attract really quality people? Is it because of the energy that you're giving out, your leadership style, what makes the right people or attracts the right people to come to you?   Brad stated that all of the above. Plus, recruiting today has to be seen as exactly that recruiting, it's not hiring anymore. Most people don't think of it this way, but what you want to do is you want to be more like a sporting team, they don't go and place an ad and say, “Hey, if you're out of work, apply to come work for us, we really want all of the people that are out of work to apply for us.” No, a sporting team goes and looks for the best player in that position.   Now, most of the best people already have a job, the vast majority of the best people are already working. So, how do you get your job advertisement? How do you get the fact that you are recruiting in front of the right people? And that's where marketing has to kick in. How do you actually invest money in marketing for a job?   Twenty/thirty years ago, people were like, “I just placed the ad and 100 people apply, and I picked the best one.” Not anymore. The way that we have to look at it these days is we have to go searching for the best of the best people, we have to search for them on LinkedIn, we have to search for them through Google, we have to search for them through Facebook, we have to search for them by going through people who know us like.   We often find that the best employees are people that already knew us, they already know our company. So, they might be on our newsletter, or they might be a friend of someone that already works for us. Or they might follow us on social media. So, how are you marketing that position to find the best of the best, and have them at least see that you are recruiting? That's the vital one.   Me: Brilliant, I've never heard someone, I would say reposition it the way how you just repositioned it for us. And you are right. If you take that approach that you've just indicated to us, your father is absolutely right, like on target in terms of attracting the people that you deserve. Because you really want to ensure that you're getting the right people, as you mentioned, using the analogy of a sporting team and getting the best player, because then you will really have a totally impactful and efficient and effective team, which is critical if you really want the business to grow. And as you as you mentioned at the beginning, function without you. I love that.   Views on Marketing   Me: Now, we spoke a little bit about leadership, we spoke a little bit about internal customers. Could you share with us a little bit about marketing? I get a lot of questions sometimes, should we spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising of our business? Shouldn't it be a case where our customers, especially if we're a brand that's already known, we're like a household name. What's your views on marketing? Is it something that still needs to be occurring to keep present in the customers mind? And if so, based on the fact that marketing has changed so much I would say in the last 10 to 20 years as you've mentioned, which platforms do you focus your marketing on?   Brad shared that is a lot of questions in one way, let's see what we can get to. First of all, marketing should be something that never stops. Marketing is the lifeblood of a business. Marketing has two jobs, getting new business and keeping business. So, you got to get them in and you got to keep them in. What's the use of building a database of existing customers and that even assumes that businesses are, you must collect the names, emails, phone numbers, etc. of every single prospect, every single customer in your business, that is the most valuable asset of business has its database of existing customers, its database of prospective customers.   Now, what you need to understand if he goes back to what he said earlier about marketing is it's the job of marketing is to buy customers, to buy new business, to buy new customers is a consistent thing. So, we're getting them in and we're keeping them in, we're looking at lifetime value of a customer, meaning how much are they worth to us over years of buying from us and that's where most businesses don't invest the time and energy because they don't even think about that. When he was in the dog food business, their average customer stayed with them for 3 years, which meant they spent over $3,000 with them and they made over $800 in profit from them. You think about that. If you just thought of your customer as a one off sale, you don't actually make a lot of money from that person, you don't think of it that way. But if you keep them for their lifetime, you'll make a fortune out of that customer.   Now, in order for marketing to really work in this day and age, he thinks the biggest thing we have to understand is that historically, marketing was almost like asking to get married on a first date, we ran an ad, and we asked you to buy straight from the advertisement. In this day and age, it seems stupid to go up to like, “Yanique, if you and I met in a bar, and I walked up and said, You look like a very smart, attentive, wonderful woman, I think you'd be a great mother, why don't we get married?”   That is the dumbest thing you could ever think of, but that's what most marketing is. You've got to actually ask people, “Why don't we have a coffee first? Why don't we get to know each other type thing.” And so, what we call that as you've got to ask prospects to raise their hand, you got to say, “Hey, if you're interested in this, then raise your hand.” And he'll give you a simple example of that.   So, at Action Coach, one of the things they do is a lot of sales training. So, they have a sales training programme for companies. He just did a webinar yesterday on sales training for companies with 20 or more salespeople, so the whole thing was, how do you manage your salespeople? How do you get great results from your salespeople?   So, 84 people showed up to their webinar saying, “I have 20, or more salespeople, I'd like to learn how to manage my salespeople.” By the end of that webinar, out of the 84, 60 of them said, “I would be interested in finding out about the sales training programme.” So not only does he then do the webinar and get 60 people that are interested, but now today on all of his social media will run a post that says, “Just finished my webinar on how you manage a great sales team, how you get your sales team to perform. If you're interested in the recording of the webinar, please type the word webinar below.”   So, he'll probably over the next month or two, get another 200, 300, 400, 1000 people that will type the word webinar. And then you'll have another 1000 people that are interested in their sales training, does that make sense? So, his goal is to start conversations. He teaches conversion rate, because that's important, out of every 10 people that call, how many did you convert?   But marketing really needs to look at conversation rate, what is the rate of conversation, so he doesn't care how many likes, how many comments you get, what he cares about on your social media, on your emails, on everything you do is how many conversations were started by that post.   Me: Indeed, indeed, that makes a great amount of sense. And I guess it doesn't matter the platform, whether it's LinkedIn, or Instagram, or Tik Tok, as long as the conversation is happening, and it's being generated, and there's some buzz and word of mouth around it and there's interest. Yeah.   Brad agreed, 100%.   App, Website or Tool that Brad Absolutely Can't Live Without in His Business   When asked about online resource that he cannot live without in his business, Brad stated that he's was going to say his phone, or Zoom. He's a believer in better levels of communication. He's a believer in high quality conversations more over low quality conversations. People like email, they like their texting, he personally thinks that a phone call or a Zoom call, obviously the highest form of communication is face to face. But he would rather have a phone call than a text message or an email, he would rather do that. And he knows that his kids, having 5 kids, he always end up in this debate. His kids text him and he's like, “Stop texting me. I don't answer your texts. You call me I'm your dad.” But if he wants a great relationship with a customer, it's not going to happen via email, it's not going to happen via texting, it's going to happen by communication at a high level, which is face to face or at least voice to voice.   Books that Have Had the Biggest Impact on Brad   Me: So, you mentioned that you are on your 18th book, but outside of the books that you've written, I'm sure you have read 1000s of books. So, could you maybe pick one or two that have had a great impact on you over your lifetime? It could be a book you read recently, or even one that you read a very long time ago.   When asked about books that have a great impact on him, Brad shared that he could list off the last set that he just finished reading. The last seven that he just finished reading Marcus Sheridan, They Ask, You Answer, amazing marketing book. Marcus is phenomenal around it. They asked, You Answer. Subscribed, Subscribed is a phenomenal book, his name is Tien Tzuo, a phenomenal book about marketing and the future of it. And then Oversubscribed. So, there's two books, they're both on the words on subscription. So, you can imagine what he's learning about. Daniel wrote a great book on that one.   Blitzscaling, another phenomenal one by Reid Hoffman, he really enjoyed that. The Membership Economy by Robbie Baxter, she's phenomenal. Just loved the work she does. The Business of Belonging, David Spinks, really cool book, really, really cool. And Building Brand Communities, that one there, Charles Vogel with Carrie Jones. So yeah, that's the last 7 books he read. Out of those, he would probably say Marcus's book They Asked, You Answer would be the top of the 7 that he just read. He reads a books a week, so he raced through a lot of books.   How Has Your Experiences Been Across Different Industries   Me: Now, you do travel, I imagine quite a bit, Brad, and you interface with many different organizations across different industries, across different cultures. What has been your experience, I would say, let's narrow it down to the last one to two years of customer experience. And I know it's a very general and a wide question, but we just want to get an idea of how your experiences has been across different industries, like travelling to a hotel, or airline or restaurant, or even just local stores that you may visit in your community where you live.   Brad shared that what's happened is, obviously, COVID changed a lot of the way we perceive the world, it virtualized the world in a way that we would never have thought possible. And that to him, has been a phenomenal thing, the level of virtual nature of the world. He thinks that we have seen a lot of the customer service experience move to more virtualized and that doesn't make it more positive by the way, that just means it's more virtualized.   The average consumer, he thinks has a little more patience at this point, not a lot more but a little more patience at this point. He lives in Las Vegas, he's in the epicentre of sort of customer service mentality, because it's a city based around tourism and Yanique's in Jamaica, in a country where tourism is very high on the agenda sort of thing.   And so, in these markets, we must be customer related. And he'll give you an example of how Vegas is different. People come here to watch a sporting event, or come to a football game or a hockey game, or whatever it might be. And normally, they're used to going to other cities where the local fans hate on the new fans coming to town type thing. Well, in Vegas, they love it when other people come to town, like, “Oh, you're visiting our city. Thanks for doing that. We appreciate you paying our taxes.” They are a hospitality-based city. So, he thinks the customer service experience in Vegas. Now that being said, where he sees the customer service experience moving to is a lot of the removal of humans, if you want to scale a business, you need to remove humans from a lot of the things now, that's because in two ways.   You need to remove humans where they didn't add value. So, for instance, Uber, all Uber really did was remove humans from the hiring a taxi, you remember the days when to get a taxi, you actually had to call a number, that person then gave the address to the dispatcher, the dispatcher then called all the taxis and said, who's in this area. And it took three people to get a taxi to your house, so they just removed the humans. There's a lot of areas where having a human actually detracts from the experience, it doesn't add to the experience, if that makes sense. And so, we're seeing a lot of the customer service experience removing humans where they don't add value.   Me: That does make sense. And I'm so happy that when you started talking about removing humans, I was actually going to ask if you actually think there's no use for humans in customer interactions anymore, but I'm glad you gave the example of Uber and you specifically stated if the human experience or the human being there is not adding value because I do believe that people genuinely still want human to human interaction, but it depends on what service or what value as you had mentioned that human is providing. So, if you think about it, technology should be there to assist us in delivering the service. But I don't think as a society even globally, we're ever going to get to the point where humans are going to be completely eliminated from all interactions.   Brad shared that no, people need people, we saw that through COVID. People at the end of COVID thought, “Oh, I'll never want to go back to an office, I want to stay working from home." And then the immediacy, immediately when we could go back to an office people like, “Oh, thank God, I could get out of my house.” It's like, “Oh, I love my spouse, but not that much. Two years locked up together was enough.” He remembers during the middle of COVID, they came down and actually spent two weeks in Jamaica, Discovery Bay and sat on the beach there and they rented a big house and just sat on the beach and had a great time.   And some of his friends, he was like, “Well, if you want to come and visit us, you can, but if you feel uncomfortable, that's okay.” Everyone's like, “We're coming. We're coming.” Like, humans need human interaction. And it's interesting to see though, people going back to the workforce now the number of them who have requested cubicles as raised dramatically, because whilst they're happy to go back and be with people, they do want more privacy, because they liked the privacy of working from home too. So that's been an interesting change.   What Brad is Really Excited About Now!   When asked about something that he's really excited about, Brad shared that he'll give you two things. Actually. One, their charities, he has the Action Coach Foundation, they take a lot of young people through YES programme (Young Entrepreneurs Smart Start). So, they actually teach 12 to 22 year olds how to not leave school and get a job, but how to leave school and give people a job. So, rather than being an employee, being an employer. The world doesn't need more employees, it needs more entrepreneurs who give people jobs. And so, they're taking a lot of young people and helping them through that process. So that's super exciting for him.   From a business side, probably because he buys into companies all the time, he's very excited, their commercial cleaning business and people like, “You're excited about a cleaning business.” Yes, he loves their cleaning business. When he originally purchased to share, it's based in Australia. And now they're opening in the US and the UK. And so, he loves watching his companies go global, he loves his businesses, geography shouldn't limit your business, especially now, especially after we've gone through this whole phase of people can do business virtually, well, they can buy from anywhere in the world right now. And so, watching that business expand into a global phenomenon is going to be a lot of fun for him.   Me: Amazing. Now, you mentioned that you have a programme for young people between the ages of 12 and 22. If we do have listeners that are interested in that programme, how can they connect? And maybe sign up or be part of that process?   Brad shared their Action Coach Foundation website:   Website – actioncoachfoundation.org   Where Can We Find Brad Online   LinkedIn – Brad Sugars Facebook – Brad Sugars Website – www.bradsugars.com Website – www.actioncoach.com   Me: Amazing. You mean you're really easy to find.   Brad shared, could you imagine being a marketer and not having someone being able to find you on every single platform there is, jump on Amazon. Amazon has all 17 of his books available. So, Audible has his books on Audible. So, you can find him pretty much everywhere.   When asked if he was on Tik Tok, Brad shared that he is, but he doesn't dance. His team asked him to do that. And he told them the story. If you think about marketing, and being true to your brand, because it's really important to be true to your brand. He had an advisor who was taking them through Pinterest, and she said, “You need to appeal to a more female audience because that's who's on Pinterest” and she kept telling him how he needed to wear certain things. And he said, “That's not who I am. That's not the way I want to be. And I'm not going to do that.”   So, he told his team the story of Adele, Adele was in a marketing meeting and a young person came in and said, “Well, we need to write a song that's going to go viral on Tik Tok that people can do a dance to.” Adele left the meeting and said, “If that young person is at another meeting ever, I will fire this company as my representation.” Being truly your brand is important. So yes, he uses Tik Tok, but he doesn't do things that are not him.   Quote or Saying that During Times of Adversity Brad Uses   When asked about a quote or saying that he tends to revert to, Brad shared that he'll give 2, both are from the same gentleman, his name was James Rohn. Mr. Rohn said to him, he was 16 years of age, sitting in Rizman City Town Hall listening to him speak, him and about 1500 other people. And he said he things that he wrote down that he believes changed the course of his life. The first thing he said was, “Never wish your life were easier, or wish that you were better.”   And it struck him because a 16 year old, you're sort of sitting there saying “Oh, I want this, I want that.” And it all about what you want. Mr. Rohn made him recognize the fact that his goal is not to want things, his goal is to get better.   And he backed it up with the second statement that was, “Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”   And he remembers running down to him at the end of the event asking him to sign his notes, which unfortunately he lost in a move one time, because he had him signed them, he signed his notes and he said, “Mr. Rohn, what's one thing I can do as a 16 year old boy to make certain I'm successful in life?” and he said, “Son, it's really simple, read a book a week for the rest of your life. Not a month, not every 2 weeks, read a book a week for the rest of your life.” Today Audible reads to him, so he's very lucky.   Please connect with us on Twitter @navigatingcx and also join our Private Facebook Community – Navigating the Customer Experience and listen to our FB Lives weekly with a new guest   Grab the Freebie on Our Website – TOP 10 Online Business Resources for Small Business Owners   Links They Ask You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer by Marcus Sheridan Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future – and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Baxter The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community Your Competitive Advantage by David Spinks Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging by Carrie Jones and Charles Vogl   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience   Do you want to pivot your online customer experience and build loyalty - get a copy of “The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience.”   The ABC's of a Fantastic Customer Experience provides 26 easy to follow steps and techniques that helps your business to achieve success and build brand loyalty. This Guide to Limitless, Happy and Loyal Customers will help you to strengthen your service delivery, enhance your knowledge and appreciation of the customer experience and provide tips and practical strategies that you can start implementing immediately! This book will develop your customer service skills and sharpen your attention to detail when serving others. Master your customer experience and develop those knock your socks off techniques that will lead to lifetime customers. Your customers will only want to work with your business and it will be your brand differentiator. It will lead to recruiters to seek you out by providing practical examples on how to deliver a winning customer service experience!

Why a subscription for teachers is great for your business  When we at The CEO Teacher® first started helping teachers, we weren't so focused on a subscription for teachers' business model. Instead, we were very focused on Teachers Pay Teachers. However, as we've grown and kept pace with the online times, we've realized that a teacher subscription or teacher membership is a wonderful way to help teachers – just like you – make extra income doing what they're both good at and what they love through a subscription for teachers program. The best teacher subscriptions are great for you and great for business. So today let's talk all about creating digital subscriptions for teachers. The top 5 subscription for teachers models and 10 ways to implement them Most of all, a subscription for teachers or a membership for teachers business creates monthly recurring revenue so that you can continue teaching in the classroom while also creating a sustainable and reliable income stream. No more worrying about great sales months or the dreaded summer slumps because digital subscriptions offer stability in a way that many of the other pathways we teach can't. Are you starting to see why teacher subscription websites are so powerful? If so, prepare to learn 5 different model types and 10 ways that you can use them right now to create digital subscriptions for students, teachers and parents that take the scaries out of this whole online business idea and help you build a snowball of income that will just increase over time. Go ahead and press play to get started… In this episode, you will learn: What a subscription for teachers is and why it's so valuable The five best teacher subscriptions How different subscriptions for teachers can be combined to create more income and value Why anything you enjoy doing in your classroom can be transform into a digital subscription Inspiration from successful teacher membership models by other CEO Teachers® LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE ABOUT A SUCCESSFUL SUBSCRIPTION FOR TEACHERS:  Stu McLaren Your Membership Journey Starts Tomorrow! video Toastmasters International Catherine Benson on TikTok Robbie Kellman Baxter The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter CEO TEACHER® RESOURCES WORTH THEIR WEIGHT IN GOLD:  What's your CEO Teacher® Type? Find out here! Download my free book, A Teacher's Map of Online Business Secrets, and get started growing your business today! Check out my CEO Teacher® Book Recommendations here! JOIN OUR CEO TEACHER® PODCAST COMMUNITY TO GROW WITH LIKE-MINDED TEACHERS: Send me a DM on Instagram– I love chatting with my people, so send me your subscription for teachers questions ENJOYING THE PODCAST? THANKS FOR TUNING IN! Tag me @theceoteacher on Instagram and tell me what you are listening to! I love seeing what resonates most with our listeners!  I don't want you to miss a thing! Be the first to know when a new episode is available by subscribing on iTunes here! If you would like to support The CEO Teacher® podcast, it would mean so much to me if you would leave a review on iTunes. By leaving a review, you are helping fellow CEO teachers find this podcast and start building a life they love.  To leave a review on iTunes, click HERE and scroll down to Ratings and Reviews. Click “Write a Review” and share with me how this podcast is changing your business and your life! READY FOR MORE? I LIKE YOUR STYLE! LISTEN TO THESE CEO TEACHER® PODCAST EPISODES NEXT! Steal My Pinterest Idea Pins Strategy to Expand Your Reach Children's Book Author: One of Many Meaningful Jobs for Former Teachers with Vicky Weber How to Use the Instagram Close Friends Feature to Make More Sales

  Most people who want to build wealth focus on making as much money as possible. While there's nothing wrong with that, it's only half the equation! The other half is ensuring that you have a reliable stream of recurring revenue. That way, even if your income fluctuates, you'll always have a solid foundation to build on.   In today's episode we chat about WHY you need recurring revenue and the TOP FIVE ways to generate it now!   JOIN THE RICH GIRL CLUB (it's free!)  https://www.facebook.com/groups/makebankwithang 

This one's for you! A special Sunday edition of the  podcast. Want to never be laid off, fired and still have a regular paycheck? Recurring revenue is your answer, and one of the ways you can add that into your business is through creating digital products from online teaching to creating your own membership. An excerpt from one of our Expansive Artist calls featuring my mentor and business coach Stu McLaren and a roundtable of our EA members, Artists sharing ideas, inspiration and a behind the scenes of how they added an additional revenue stream of online teaching into their Creative businesses. Join Stu for his free Membership Workshop kicking-off this Thursday April 21. Click here to register.   The Artists featured in today's episode: Eliza Day Green @elizadaygreen Sarah Kelly @sarahelisekelly Marie Delage Carlson @fleur.de.lys.art   You can find all things Marisa and Creative Thursday creativethursday.com and on instagram and facebook @creativethursday

To succeed, MSPs must stay ahead of constant changes in an evolving channel landscape. Part of that challenge is attracting and retaining technical talent to address customer needs—and that's where Collabrance can help.  Shelby Skrhak talks with Hannah O'Donnell , director of sales at Collabrance , and Melanie DelValle , director of customer finance at Ingram Micro , about:  - How Collabrance helps MSPs - How to know when it's time to outsource - How Ingram Micro provides support to MSPs - Sales strategies of successful MSPs  Email Melanie or visit Ingram Micro's financial solutions for more information.  To join the discussion, follow us on Twitter @IngramTechSol #B2BTechTalk  Listen to this episode and more like it by subscribing to B2B Tech Talk on Spotify , Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Or, tu ne in on our website .

2021 Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit In April of 2017, Dr. Blair Thielemier PharmD launched the first online-virtual summit dedicated to the Pharmacy Professional. In it's 4th year, the Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit is a blue print for any pharmacist who desires to build a better career or a pharmacy owner looking to develop new profit strategies which are not connected to a restrictive traditional PBM payment model.  Join Blair and a hand-picked team of inspirational pharmacy & business leaders who will be outlining how to Build Recurring Revenue with Clinical Consulting Programs.  The 2021 Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit is Presented by Pharmapreneur Academy™ LIVE on October 21st & 22nd Register Now! OVER THE TWO DAY SUMMIT, WE WILL COVER: How to DECIDE on Your Six-Figure Offer™ Strategies for Creating $25k in Recurring Revenue Each Month How to DEVELOP Your Irresistible Offer Machine™ To Attract Your Ideal Clients to You Like a Magnet! How to DIVERSIFY Using a 5-Star Delivery Method™ So You Can Remove Yourself as the Bottleneck and Scale Your Program with Team Members and Automation How to DOMINATE Your Niche with Visibility Explosion™ To Quickly Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader How to SCALE Your Business with the Pharmapreneur Success Formula™ A Strategy for Multiple Revenue Streams that Align with Your Six-Figure Offer™ During our two day virtual event, join Blair and her team as they lay out the Four Pillars of the Pharmapreneur Success Strategy! Register Now! If you are looking to differentiate your income with profitable and outcome-driven pharmacist-led clinical programs, enter your details to reserve your free Virtual Ticket! Get Your Free Virtual Ticket! PLUS – As a SUMMIT SPECIAL BONUS Upgrade to Receive our Beginner's Business Blueprint Workbook, so you can begin THINKING LIKE A PHARMAPRENEUR today!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2021 Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit In April of 2017, Dr. Blair Thielemier PharmD launched the first online-virtual summit dedicated to the Pharmacy Professional. In it's 4th year, the Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit is a blue print for any pharmacist who desires to build a better career or a pharmacy owner looking to develop new profit strategies which are not connected to a restrictive traditional PBM payment model.   Join Blair and a hand-picked team of inspirational pharmacy & business leaders who will be outlining how to Build Recurring Revenue with Clinical Consulting Programs.  The 2021 Elevate Pharmacy Virtual Summit is Presented by Pharmapreneur Academy™ LIVE on October 21st & 22nd Register Now! OVER THE TWO DAY SUMMIT, WE WILL COVER: How to DECIDE on Your Six-Figure Offer™ Strategies for Creating $25k in Recurring Revenue Each Month How to DEVELOP Your Irresistible Offer Machine™ To Attract Your Ideal Clients to You Like a Magnet! How to DIVERSIFY Using a 5-Star Delivery Method™ So You Can Remove Yourself as the Bottleneck and Scale Your Program with Team Members and Automation How to DOMINATE Your Niche with Visibility Explosion™ To Quickly Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader How to SCALE Your Business with the Pharmapreneur Success Formula™ A Strategy for Multiple Revenue Streams that Align with Your Six-Figure Offer™ During our two day virtual event, join Blair and her team as they lay out the Four Pillars of the Pharmapreneur Success Strategy! Register Now! If you are looking to differentiate your income with profitable and outcome-driven pharmacist-led clinical programs, enter your details to reserve your free Virtual Ticket! Get Your Free Virtual Ticket! PLUS – As a SUMMIT SPECIAL BONUS Upgrade to Receive our Beginner's Business Blueprint Workbook, so you can begin THINKING LIKE A PHARMAPRENEUR today! 

Podcast: 2Bobs—with David C. Baker and Blair Enns (LS 49 · TOP 0.5% what is this?)Episode: Different Pricing ModelsPub date: 2019-06-05Blair is struck by how creative businesses have trouble applying their creativity to their revenue models, so he and David discuss some of the best ways firms can get paid.   LINKS Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry by John Warrillow 2Bobs Episode 31: “Mastering the Value Conversation” 2Bobs Episode 25: “Pricing Creativity” Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns   The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from David C. Baker and Blair Enns, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.

In this episode, I have the honor and pleasure of talking with a foremost expert in the subscription industry.  She is an author, keynote speaker, podcast host, Consultant, the co-founder of the D2C Summit, and advisor to the world's leading subscription based companies, the one and only Robbie Kellman Baxter!Robbie Kellman Baxter is the founder of Peninsula Strategies LLC, a management consulting firm, as well as the author of the bestselling book, The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue.  Her new book The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave was released in April of this year. If all of that wasn't impressive enough, have a listen at some of Robbie's clients:  They've included large organizations like Netflix, the Wall Street Journal, Nike and Microsoft, as well as dozens of smaller venture-backed companies.Guest Links:Here's a link to a free chapter of Robbie's book: https://pages.robbiekellmanbaxter.com/ft-excerptRobbie's podcast robbiekellmanbaxter.com/podcastLink to her ebook “launch your subscription business” https://app.convertkit.com/forms/designers/1464235/editLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbiekellmanbaxter/This is the upcoming conference in CT where Robbie will be speaking at: https://www.digitalsalesandmarketingworld.com/conference Deal of the month! Manscaped and their NEW Lawnmower 4.0.  Want 20% OFF?  Visit https://manscaped.com and use discount code TSBS at checkout!  Manscaped, the #1 one Grooming Kit!Eric's Recommended Affiliate Courses & Resources:Eric and Christine's Ultimate Guide for Graphic Design for Your Subscription Box Business: https://www.thesubscriptionboxshow.com/resourcesJulie Ball's Subscription Box Bootcamp 2.0 Course Link:https://ericmusick.krtra.com/t/h67apnWbBQ9cThe Subscription Box Experts Academy Course By Liam Brennan Link: https://ericmusick.krtra.com/t/jIw4to2rXSoQ Host Links:The Subscription Box Show Website: https://www.thesubscriptionboxshow.comThe Subscription Box Show Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/thesubscriptionboxshow.comEric Musick's email: eric@thesubscriptionboxshow.comEric Musick's Instagram: @thesubscriptionboxshow or https://www.instagram.com/thesubscriptionboxshowThe Subscription Box Show Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2960087864057955/To request being on TSBS, please book a call with Eric at: https://www.calendly.com/thesubboxshow

Do you want to be busy or efficient in your coaching business? In this podcast, I give a very practical solution to helping you achieve more freedom in a knowledge business by embracing the concept of membership and subscription models. To get started in my community please visit http://internetlifestylehub.com and learn how this concept is being implemented.

Joining us this week is Robbie Kellman-Baxter author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue and The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Business So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave. James and Robbie discuss the evolution of the way we do business, how consumers buy and how any business can implement a ‘subscription model' into their business. If you're thinking about how the subscription model can be implemented into your recruitment business then you need to listen to this! If you want more information about Robbie you can find it on her website robbiekellmanbaxter.com where you can also find links to purchase both her books. Want to know more about The Recruitment Network and how we can help your recruitment business? Click here The Recruitment Network.

Byrne Hobart is a chartered financial analyst who loves writing about the intersection between finance and technology. He writes The Diff, one of Silicon Valley's most popular newsletters. In this episode, we dive into how Byrne launched his newsletter, how much he's earning, and how he publishes five times a week!You'll learn why Byrne isn't worried about pirates getting their hands on paid newsletters, and why you should worry about selling hard enough, instead.Byrne talks about how to build recurring revenue, and writing for different types of readers. He also points out an important factor that affects the churn rate of your newsletter!Byrne shares further insights on using free social media to lead people to the channels you monetize, and why he competes for readers' highest-value time, instead of appealing to the lowest common denominator.Links & Resources Jonathan Haidt - Social psychologist - Author - Professor Manhattan Project - Wikipedia Apollo program - Wikipedia Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. BitTorrent - Wikipedia Snopes.com - The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. Byrne Hobart's Links Sign up for The Diff Medium: Byrne Hobart on Medium Twitter: @ByrneHobart LinkedIn: Byrne Hobart Episode TranscriptByrne: [00:00:00] I wasn't really thinking of the paid newsletter as this is going to be the main thing I do. you look at tech companies, they often have multiple lines of revenue, one thing they do is 95% of revenue. And the next thing they do is 2% of revenue, and when companies get more mature, it's sometimes spreads out a little bit, but early on you find one thing that works really well. And that's what you focus on.Nathan: [00:00:25] Today's interview is with Byrne Hobart who writes The Diff. Now Byrne is a chartered financial analyst who loves writing about the intersection between finance and technology. What's really interesting about his writing is that he's read by basically the who's who of Silicon Valley. So it's not just, you know, a larger email list that we're talking about today, but really we're talking about writing the kind of quality content that, You know, billionaires are reading that.Like I first heard about him from Patrick Collison at Stripe. So this is the kind of thing that a lot of really important, really interesting people are paying attention to.So in this episode, we're going to dive into how he launched his paid newsletter, how much he earns. He publishes five days a week.These are long form detailed con detailed articles that Bern is posting basically five days a week, which is, is a crazy consistency. So his writing process, what inspires them and so much more what's that then.Byrne Welcome to the show.Byrne: [00:01:23] Great to be here.Nathan: [00:01:25] So I've been following your newsletter for awhile and I'd love if you just gave a quick intro from your side what you write about and why you find it interesting.Byrne: [00:01:35] Yeah, sure. So the idea is that I like reading history and I found that if you read We contemporary coverage of things that are happening at any given time you do get a lot of the details and then you get a lot of stuff that ends up being totally irrelevant And a lot of really interesting developments just are below the surface or they they matter in retrospect but no one really understood them at the time And so what I'm always trying to do which is a really high bar to reach is to write Right things today from a perspective that will still make sense it'd be relevant in the distant future So it's basically trying to spot the important technology trends trying to spot what mattered what people thought mattered didn't matter how those perceptions changed how how perception and reality have interacted and the way to do that is one to talk about financial markets because financial markets are Aggregating knowledge preferences expectations et cetera from everyone around the world And then the other thing to do is talk about technology particularly technology companies And the nice one of the nice things about those companies is that they have to be somewhat open because they're all constrained by their ability to hire people And one way to hire people if if you're trying to compete with Facebook and Google and Amazon and Microsoft and they can all offer a really generous comp package The way to hire people is to to give them some expectation that this company is going to be totally transformative and amazing So even if the base pay is not quite what you get at Facebook it's still worth doing either to make an impact on the world or to cash in some stock options So a lot of companies have this incentive to actually tell their story in a way that that doesn't happen as much in in other fields But at the same time companies have an incentive to hide their story Because if the story is we're doing X but we're actually going to kill Google And here's how you don't want Google to know that So there's there's always this corporate stress He doesn't where you have to be really appealing and inspiring but you can't tell the whole truth because it's too dangerous So I try to parse thatNathan: [00:03:42] yeah, I think that's fascinating. And I'm spacing on who talks about this a lot is a book that I read fairly recently, but about how, Now, this is going to bother me of who I never, what book it's from, if you'll know it, but how the closer like a startup is going to talk about how they can create a monopoly and they can have all the success.And then the closer they are to actually creating a monopoly, in and succeeding the less they're like, Oh no, no, no. It's not a monopoly at all. No. W like, look at all this competition. We have, everybody has a competitor.Byrne: [00:04:14] One has that, they have this, this like nber line of. Here's like everyone, if you're, if you're an airline, you're like, here's why we're really special. Here's why everyone loves Delta. And the United is like, no, here's why everyone wants United. And then, if you're Google, you're like, well, we're one advertising company among many.And our customers could go to all sorts of different media, but really Google has a, basically a monopoly on search and search is an incredibly lucrative business, but yeah, they, they can't quite talk about that. And there are, there are other companies that have these little monopolies, like sometimes, If you, if you look at the, some of the large us companies that had large research labs in the thirties, forties, fifties, in some cases it seems like part of the point of those labs was to give them somewhere.Somewhere, they could dp their excess profits so that they just didn't look that profitable. So if you're at and T you have this incredibly lucrative business with network effects, you have a technology advantage. And one thing you could do with that is, just run it for maxim profit margins right now.But the other thing you can do with it, if you're worried about. FDR are complaining that you're terrible people is you hire a bunch of scientists. You tell them, please just work on something. It should help us. But, you know, we just, we w it's basically a way for them to defer their profits to some future that's more politically optimal.And, and then you get lots of wonderful side effects. The transistor.Nathan: [00:05:36] Yeah. Oh, there's so much to that. And so, anyway, I think those are just fun. Examples of ideas on what you tend to write about, kind of staying on the topic before we dive into newsletters specifically, saying on the inflection points in business, I'd love to hear like what, or maybe I'll start with what's one or two that you've seen in particular this year, since this year has been a very transformative year.Byrne: [00:06:00] Yeah. So, you can, you can look at the obvious inflection point of, you know, before we were all going to social gatherings and going out to eat and traveling. And now most of us are not doing very much of that at all, but I think one of the inflections there was, this. It results. Some policy argents about the extent to which you can actually solve a recession just by spending a lot of money.So there's always this concern of if we spend a lot of money it's hyperinflationary, but in an economy that's already pretty levered. There's actually, there's a pretty good argent for having somebody stabilize that. Then you can, you could imagine one steady state where we just don't have as much leverage.And so you don't have as many people who, if they lose their job now, they can't pay their rent. So their landlord. Can't pay their mortgage. So the bank has trouble with its finances and it just, just bounces through the rest of the economy. in a less levered economy, that's just less likely, but in an economy where you have this pretty robust financial system, where a lot of people have, fixed obligations, a lot of companies have fixed obligations.As it turns out when there's a huge demand shock to the system, you can actually just spend a ton of money and, and things start to get better. So it's, One of the worst recessions on record, but one of the short-term sessions on record and, it so far has worked well. there is a question of how technocratic we want things to be.There's also a question of, did we. Did we stop a depression in 2020 and get something worse than 2021. So there's still some open questions, but I think it does. It does tell you that some policymakers have, have more power than, than we thought, or it can have, have more powers they can use for good than we thought.But at the same time, you have a lot of people questioning a lot of powerful institutions because they're, if you go back to the, the discourse on COVID in January and February, it was, it was kind of seen as, as sort of extreme and paranoid to worry about it. There's the famous of box piece. Yeah.These people aren't even shaking people aren't even what's wrong with them. It's, it's no worse than the flu, get a grip America, et cetera. So, we've had some institutions where we've had to seriously question their legitimacy and, a lot of these institutions are fighting back by kind of dodging it like, there's, there's been a bit of soul searching and actually, some of the, one of the Vox writers who had covered COVID early, actually talked about how they're, She could have done more.Her name is escaping me right now, but she actually did a fair amount of soul searching and actually wrote a thoughtful piece on, part of it was on just the factual question of when was it clear that this was a crisis and what, what should be done about it? And then part of it was this meditation on the institutional incentives.So. It's it's tough to be early, especially. if you are a journalist at a large publication, you have this surface area problem where, the bigger the publication is the, the more risk they take from any one person saying something crazy. And, the bigger they are, the more newsworthy it is. If any one person says something crazy.So New York times has a lot of writers and it's also a well-known institution, which means that they actually face a ton of risk from their employees going off the reservation. And. What, what I think you see is that a lot of these institutions they're converging on some range of acceptable discourse, and they're just, they're writing off the set of people who.Don't really think that way, but they're very much speaking to the they're preaching to the choir for the people who do agree with them. So you actually end up with a much stronger filter bubbles, as a result of this questioning of legitimacy. So that's, that's an important inflection point. And, I think the other, the other side of that is that we did learn that.Tech companies broadly defined, did a great job. They sent employees home very early. the internet kept running. So the telcos did, an excellent job at, not allowing that whole system to fall apart. a lot of, retailers, for example, and manufacturers were able to adapt quite quickly. So there were toilet paper shortages briefly, but then, We got more toilet paper.there are still shortages in a couple areas, but, stuff like exercise equipment, it's still hard to find. last time I looked podcasting Mike's were still hard to find, but in a lot of cases, the, some parts of the system were exceptionally adaptable. So in many ways, you know, if you, if you didn't like going out that much, if you were already the kind of person who used a lot of, a lot of grub hub and Postmates, Some things haven't changed that much.In some ways, things are actually easier because now, now if you tell someone I don't want to hang out, we should just chat on zoom. It's actually kind of normal. So, you know, for, for introverts and a lot of these companies are, their workforce tends to be more introverted if they're tech companies, it's, it just hasn't been that big, an impact relative to the worldwide impact.Nathan: [00:10:53] Yeah, that makes sense. Is there something that, you know, we've seen these changes happen right now? The, all the things that work from home and everything else that's right in front of us, but what's something that an inflection point that you think has happened, but we haven't noticed the effects of it and we won't.You know, three years from now, we'll look back and be like, Oh, of course, that changed in 2020. But you know, you think people right now would be surprised or, not actually expect to see that change.Byrne: [00:11:22] Interesting. I think, one of the interesting changes is this, this, in the. Hardware business. And specifically in chips, there's been this narrowing of which companies can effectively manufacturer the most cutting edge chips. if you look at the, the nber of semiconductors, your fabs at, at every node of design, as the nodes get more advanced than nber of fabs, that can actually do the nber of companies that own fabs that can do this.Just diminishes and diminishes and diminishes. And now we're at the point where, the most advanced trips can get made in Taiwan or they can get made in, South Korea. And there's really, no one else has caught up to them. And this is something that, that people are aware of, but I don't know how much we've thought through the implications of, One country that has had, had disputes with China here and there.And, it was at war with them at one point, in the fifties. And then you have another country that China says as part of its territory and so very, very serious, very deep-seated disputes there. so. These, these countries are, are both pretty, more geopolitically tenuous than, than other places in the world.And they are the only place where this really essential set of components gets manufactured. So that's, that is a case where the, the world of geopolitics and macroeconomics starts to intersect with the world of technology. Right. And you started asking what it looks like if, the U S no longer has access to tips, or if China no longer has access to tips, because both of these countries are, very close to the U S diplomatically and, they're, they're close to try to geographically, so it's, it makes the world much more interesting and much more high risk.And it's, it's part of a general force and technology that you end up with. These increases only elaborate supply chains, where there are these really narrow slices that are super profitable. And, as, as they get more profitable, they get harder to duplicate. You end up with more monopolies and those monopolies just, as, as an shrinks from, you know, there are, there are dozens of companies that can do this too.There are two that can do this. Then you have to stop thinking of this as a statistical process and start thinking of it as, That's something closer to a narrative where there, there are these very specific entities. There are specific people in charge. They have particular incentives and they think about things in a particular way, and it really matters for the future, how they think and what they decide.Yeah, that's fascinating. I. You know, from the, the nineties and earlier you think of oil as being that, that resource that is worth fighting Wars over. And so that's fascinating that it could turn into chips and it might not go to Wars, but certainly very heavily, you know, a lot, a lot of, geopolitical issues around that.Yeah, there's this The good Lord, didn't see fit to put oil only in places where we'd like to do business, but we go where the oil is. And you can think about that with chips too, where you, if you were designing a, a supply chain for the U S technology sector from scratch, you probably wouldn't put the most strategic components.All right. Next to a country that is trying to build its own supply chain. And that increasingly sees the U as a major rival. You'd probably arrange it a little bit differently maybe, but these, these plants in, I don't know. England, or maybe you put them in America. And the U S is sort of trying to do that.And the semiconductor industry is lobbying very hard for the U S to do that. Taiwan semiconductor has, has plans to open a facility in the U S and, Samsung is expanding some of their manufacturing in the U S so it's, it's slowly edging over that way, but China has. subsidized that business massively, a friend of mine, Jordan Schneider, who writes a China talk, he estimates that it's something like $1.4 trillion that China has, has spent, or is planning to spend on this industry.So that's clearly, clearly they're taking it very seriously.Nathan: [00:15:23] Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. So I want to transition right now because, and talk more on the newsletter side. Cause this is a taste of the kind of thing you, you write about and the level of detail that you go into. And so this is why, you know, executives and founders at so many top companies are following your stuff.Cause you're watching. These kinds of trends and seeing, okay, what are the implications of this? And so I'd love to go back a little bit in your story and just, focus on three years ago, five years ago, what, what were you doing? And what's the path that led you to this point of kind of being on the cutting edge of, and the narrative of what's going on in the world.Byrne: [00:16:00] Yeah. Sure. So, mostly doing equity research. So I worked for a while at a hedge fund SAC capital, and then, worked for some research providers who work with ones like that. And, that, that work was actually really fun because the equity research it's, It promotes some really healthy mental habits, because if you were trying to decide if a stock is a buy or a sell, you do want to have your thesis, but you actually want to pay very close attention to who you're arguing with and what their thesis is.Because the most valuable things you learn are from the people who disagree with you. And if you tune out the other side of the argent, then you are necessarily the db bunny. So you can get lucky. You can still make money and that's happened to me, but, You it's, it's a lot smarter to know exactly what these guys are betting against and why you think it's wrong.So that's, and that's. Normally in argents, that's the healthiest way to approach things is you figure out how to reproduce the other person's argent and then you figure out what they're missing or, or you just figure out what fundamental disagreements you have. So a lot of political argents, you think that it's an argent over, over policy outcomes, but it's actually an argent over, what is what's practical to implement?And, there's a Jonathan Haidt has a lot of research on that. Or hight has a lot of research on. And this idea of moral foundations where different people just have different things that they care about or different things that are willing to treat as morally significant. And you can, you can have an argent with someone where it seems like the other person is just, Just promoting something totally inhan and evil, because they have a different set of priorities that they're willing to give credence to.And if they, if they only, if you only cared about the, the care versus harm moral foundation, so it, it, does it hurt people or does it help them? You get one set of conclusions, but if you care about that, but you also care about things like. Respect for, respect for authority and respect for these symbolic things that, that don't have real world value, but do matter, in the abstract, then you get to a different set of policies.And, it's what hight claims is that when people with different moral foundations try to model one another's beliefs, they just tend to asse that if someone waits care versus harm differently, it just means they want to hurt people. Whereas what it actually means is they're balancing a different set of priorities.with finance, you don't really have to worry about moral foundations that much because everyone wants to make money. you can sort of have moral foundations with things like, investing in tobacco stocks, but that's a very quick argent. One person says. This company is a very profitable, and we don't think that they're going to shrink as fast as the market thinks.And then someone else says, yeah, but they cost cancer. So I'm not going to invest in that. So that's a very quick argent. It's not like they have any disputes about fundamentals. They just quickly get to what the substance of the dispute is. And then. When people debate companies like, like Netflix and there, you know, you have one side saying original content is this bottomless money pit.And they have to keep spending more and more and more just to, just to keep up with the other streaming companies. And then someone else says that that's theoretically true, but they actually get economies of scale and they get economies of scale on acquiring users. And so you're, as long as you're amortizing content over a larger and larger user base over time.And as long as you have a lot of pricing power, It doesn't really matter that it's expensive to have this original content. And maybe it's actually good because it means that eventually other companies get scared out of competing in the first place. So you at least figure out what the questions are, what the uncertainties are, and then you start modeling.You start trying to figure out what does it look like if you scale the, the Netflix movie production function up to X or up five X. And then what does it look like when Netflix raises prices in a country like the U S versus what a, what pricing power do they have in. a much poorer country, for example, so that that's a really healthy habit where you're, you're trying to figure out what you actually disagree with people on, and then you want to resolve that disagreement and, and get it right.And. Because prices are set by people who are trading. There's actually an incentive for people to share what they figured out out. If they've figured out something novel and insightful, and they've already made the trade. So a lot of people, well exchange ideas, they debate very vigorously and they're in some sense in some totally cynical utility maximizing, since they're still trying to get at the truth in, in just that narrow domain, but you take the habits from that domain and then you apply them to other areas and it's generally useful.Nathan: [00:20:38] Yeah, that makes sense. Before we get to newsletters, I'm realizing I have one more question. what's something surprising that shaped your view of the world. You have a very unique take. And so I'd love to hear what, you know, what's something that people wouldn't expect that plays into that.Byrne: [00:20:52] Yeah. So I, Very rationalist view of the world. And I'm sure I still, I still try to, I still tend to take a more, more linear left-brained view of things, but, I do think that there's, there are important coordinator functions that are served by these irrational, irrational behaviors.So there. So things like financial bubbles, you can look at a financial bubble as just people being bad at math and paying too much for stuff, investing too much and stuff working too hard on, on, on endeavors that are just not going to have any kind of meaningful payoff, but you can also view a bubble as this coordinating function, where for a lot of complicated technologies, you need a lot of things to go right at once.So you can look at the internet bubble as being this combination of a bubble in, And ISP and telecommunications, but also a bubble in creating content online and also a bubble in selling goods online. If those didn't happen all at the same time, none of them would have been possible. So if you build amazon.com and nobody has internet access, then it's worthless.If you, if you build PayPal and nobody's buying anything online, worthless, but if all of these things are happening at once, then collectively, they are actually worth a lot. It it's still very uncertain. And, a lot of people got burned, including anyone who bought Amazon at the peak. It was a very long time before they got back to breakeven, but it did coordinate all of these developments and build something that was hard to replace.And, I, I think there's a parallel between that and. What happens with successful mega-projects from governments. So, if you look at something like the Manhattan project or the Apollo program, there are all these discrete components that have to be built for the project to work. And if you build one of them and the other one doesn't get built, it's worthless.So you have one group of people designing a bomb, and you have another group of people purifying, vast amounts of the correct urani isotopes to build a bomb. If you purify a bunch of the right isotope, but there's no design for a bomb, then you've wasted a ton of money. And I believe by the end of the war, the investment in that urani project was actually larger than the total investment in the automobile industry at that time.So you would huge project could have been worthless. they did a lot of these things in parallel, so they didn't actually know if the final design would work, but. it's very much like a bubble. You're doing this thing that is irrational at one level, but if everyone's irrational in exactly the same way and you all give up what tasks have to get done, then you end up building something that you could not build on your own.You couldn't build it any scale lower than that.Nathan: [00:23:29] Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So you're going from the world of finance and, then, just this year, right. You made the switch or was it last year? You made the switch to the newsletter.Byrne: [00:23:40] Yeah. So I, messed around for a while, did a little bit of just freelance writing in a couple of different places and did some consulting. And then I, I started the newsletter, mostly promote other writing. So I've been doing that for about 10 years, just very intermittently.And, I started writing the newsletter more regularly and then charging for it in February of this year.Nathan: [00:24:08] I'm realizing we're gonna publish this in 2021. So I should do it throw a year in there. so let's see. Yeah. I mean, going back through your stuff, you've been writing for a very long time, but publish on medi. Well, before you got started on Substack. Yeah. But to what I'd love to hear what some of the things that you were looking at when it was like, okay, let's change it from, you know, we've been newsletter as a way to.Send my writing to people, right. At that point, it's just a push mechanism. And then that transition to the newsletter as a business. Now, maybe two things, one, what were some of the people you're looking to for inspiration there, who sort of charted that path for you? And then, what were the, the markers that you were looking for for like, Oh, I should actually do this.Byrne: [00:24:55] Yeah, I think so there's There's what you work on and then there's how you monetize it and these can be very different. So Nike, for example, in one sense, they are an ad company. They just found a way to monetize by selling shoes. And they're really good at it. And you can look at a lot of other companies that way that they.They do one thing and then they monetize it through something else. So I, I wasn't really thinking of the paid newsletter as this is going to be the main thing I do. I was thinking of it as I have these different channels andI'm in one channel, someone else owns the platform and I, I I really like working with them and I still write for them.but it's, it's, it's not recurring revenue. And so I wanted to have something that's recurring revenue, what I thought. And I actually, I built this little financial model. Which immediately became obsolete. And I was, I was looking at different income sources, different things I'm working on. And, I thought the newsletter, you know, they could end up being a third of my income.And so I'd have this diversified set of, of different activities I do. And there's one that's recurring, so that's really safe, but it won't be that big, cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But, what I should have been thinking was when you look at any. If if you look at tech companies, they often have multiple lines of revenue.And it's like, one thing they do is 95% of revenue. And the next thing they do is 2% of revenue, but they break even doing that. And then the next thing they do is Piney Teddy's revenue. So, I think, and when they, when companies get more mature, it sometimes spreads out a little bit, but early on you find one thing that works really well.And that that's what you focus on. that's, that's roughly how it happened with the newsletter. I got a couple of people to sign up. It started growing and it just, it grew pretty steadily. Like when I look at the chart, there are these bps, mostly from people recommending it publicly. it's and those, those have happened just periodically pretty much since I started.But a lot of it is just this gradual process of. You send an email and a bunch of people read it and some of them send it to someone else and that person reads it, likes it wants to read more. And I have another subscriber. the, the social proof of you got this paid email from some, you got this email, that's a paid subscription product.And, so the person who's sending it to, you knows you and they know you're interested and they're implicitly endorsing paying for it. That's, that's really powerful. So a lot of it is compounding from that. What that means though, is that posting frequently, as long as you have something to say is really powerful.So if you have. Five opportunities a week to do that instead of two, then the compounding process should happen lot faster and there is a balance to strike, but in general, there's a huge amount of information out there. you can, you can always think of just how much competition there is for people's attention, but a lot of it is for attention that people are implicitly putting zero value on.So a lot of, a lot of us, myself included have this just muscle memory for. I'm bored or I'm waiting for something to happen. I'm going to open a new tab and I'm going to go to hacker news or Reddit or Twitter or something. And that time is not the time I'm competing for. I try to compete for time.That's very, fairly valuable. That's why, the newsletter is an appropriate form factor because it's going into the same inbox as a lot of pretty important stuff. I know some people will filter and sort, but. A lot of people have this default approach of I'm going to get a ton of inbound email and I'm going to manually filter through it and decide what's important.So I'm generally competing for people's attention, against pressing business matters. And that's, that sets a really high bar, but it also, again, adds some social proof where if this is worth the time of a busy person, then it's worth it. to read Nathan: [00:28:42] I think that's something with paid newsletters that people worry about, right. Is that I've put this out there and obviously it's only available to paid subscribers, but are they, everyone has it in their inbox. There's no lock on the version in the inbox. So I can just forward that on people say like, But, you know, what's to prevent someone from just giving it away.And what I hear you saying is nothing. And that's the beauty of it, because worst case I'm not going to forward it to dozens or hundreds of people, I'm going to be like, know, I'm going to send it to my friend, Ryan, Hey, Ryan, you've got to read this. And then that's exactly what you're saying of like, Oh, well, if this is $20 a month, I'm reading it.This was good. Nathan pays for it. So he must think that it's worth paying for every month. So like, you know, the other four articles a week are really good, so sure. I'll subscribe and check it out. And you're right. That's really high. It's social.Byrne: [00:29:32] I would say piracy at some point I'm sure it will be a risk I'm sure it will be a risk and I'm it probably exists in private chat groups that there's some roster of. Here's the pirated Stratechery feed here's the pirated sinuses and feed, etc like that stuff happens, but it's just. Part of what you can take advantage of is it's incredibly embarrassing to ask and it's excruciating to ask multiple times, like, I, I signed up for the information because I was midway through sending someone a text message being like, Hey, I saw another headline from the information.I really want to read this article. And I was just imagining him getting this periodic reminder that I'm cheap and just dismissing it. I know people will pirate it some people will pirate stuff at scale, but they're not really, they're not a huge audience. A lot of people just don't behave that way.And in a lot of cases, what we saw in music and movies was that piracy was about usability. That if, if Netflix and Spotify are more convenient than BitTorrent than BitTorrent, it's still a factor, but it's not a huge factor. And a lot of people graduate, they, they torrent the first alb but they eventually get on Spotify and then it's just too easy.They never stop. And, the, since the economics are a lot better for paid newsletters than for piracy, like, look at the ads that, the torrent sites have to run. Clearly, they are not actually hitting a super high-monetization ultra-desirable audience. So I would expect that as piracy becomes a bigger deal, a the, the newsletter technology companies, the platforms are going to notice it before the individual users do.Users, some users might notice and complain. You know, if they see this reader opened the newsletter 500 times and clicked 2000 times on different links, like, okay, that's something something's going on there. But the people who will notice it at scale and actually start detecting it and perhaps come up with countermeasures perhaps just say going to happen, but it's not economically a huge deal for you.that's, that's probably going to be platform-side Nathan: [00:31:31] Well, I think what's most interesting about it is, is not just that it's a small, like piracy being a small issue, as far as the overall monetary side, like, you know, whatever those people were going to pay you, but also that it may be a benefit of, of exposing new people to it. You know, like your friend who sends you, the information says, Hey, you got to read this article.And then later you're texting him, like, can I read that article as well? You know, he introduced you or she introduced you to that quality of reporting and then kind of got you hooked. And so, you know, it's interesting to think about it being potentially a goodByrne: [00:32:04] Yeah, I, I think Piracy is not just, you get an email that you paid for and you send it to someone like piracy is you, you do that systematically, or like you have a special Gmail that a lot of people log into and maybe, maybe they're paying you like $10 in Bitcoin every year to get access to the giant email list.that's that is, there are definitely, there's like a pretty discreet gap and yeah. It's it's kind of, like you can, there's always the continu of how monetizeable a given media, given the physical instantiation of media can be. if you look at the music industry, you could, you could monetize by selling physical albs.You can monetize through radio, you can monetize through touring. You can monetize through merch there's, there's a whole spectrum of price discrimination and you, you generally want to have some aspects of it that monetize very poorly because they have low frictional cost of sharing. In fact, that's a, there's an interesting dynamic across different media sites where sometimes there is a low-monetization low-friction site.And then there's a high-monetization high-friction site that has the same kind of content. But the, there are people who use both of them and they use one to get followers for the other one. And so you can, there are people who will use TikTok to promote their YouTube channel. They know that YouTube subscribers are stickier, they can get advertising on YouTube.A lot of people including me, will use Twitter to monetize Substack So Twitter by design is supposed to be this ultra-seamless process for sharing stuff and having it go extremely viral. Substack is just not going to be extremely viral. There, there are examples of viral emails, but they're all in the distant past.And it's It's viral. But if you look at the, the forward line, it's like 150 people read about it. And then someone posted it, to Snopes.com or something.Nathan: [00:33:58] Right. So let's dive into that on the growth side. I think Twitter is a very common path for growing a newsletter. They, it just has distribution in a way that. You know, email doesn't have built in, or I should say discovery, as discovery built in, in such a good way, what's worked for you on, on Twitter and maybe a couple of examples of either threads or individual tweets or articles that have been right.Byrne: [00:34:22] No, I have, I don't have a good one sense of what actually works in terms of getting a payoff in subscribers, because it seems to happen. So asynchronously that it's more like. If you, if you tweet and people like it, they will follow you on Twitter. Eventually, if you occasionally tweet links or as I do shamelessly tweet links to your newsletter, eventually some of them will subscribe on the free list if they get enough free issues, some of the most apart from the paid list.So the conversion funnel is really gradual and, because. You don't have, you don't have a good way to track the, the user, path from, they saw someone retweet you, but didn't interact too. They saw a tweet. They followed you all the way down to, they paid you money. it's, it's tough to see them through that entire funnel, unless, well, sub-sect dismissed the rors that Twitter was going to buy them.So that will happen. Probably probably for the better anyway. so it's, it's really tough to say other than just, if you can be the, the Twitter ISE 280 character version of what you are in long form on, on a newsletter, then you will, you'll give people a pretty, pretty close approximation. So I'd say that my Twitter.My Twitter feed. I will sometimes tweet general observations. Sometimes I'll tweet something about a story that I end up writing in more detail for the newsletter. Sometimes I'll ask people questions on Twitter. Like if there's just something where I have an open question, I haven't found a good answer from Googling, and I know there's a good answer out there.I'll ask people. I, I do occasional Twitter things that are just things that have to be that day and it, It feels not, not like a good deal at all for someone to put the email newsletter on their expense account and then get a story about a toddler. So, that does not make it into sub stack, but that's just because a lot of my friends follow me on Twitter.So it's a way of keeping in touch with people. I, one of the things I do on Twitter pretty regularly is when I write a post that is paywall, I will generally tweet out a link to it. And I will often tweet out a screen cap of something I said in that post, the only annoying thing there is that I want the screencap to be interesting, but I don't like to post spoilers.Is one of my rules. So I will, I will often screencap a tangent or a footnote or something else in the piece that just gives you a sense of what I'm writing about, but doesn't give away the whole thing for free. And I don't know, I don't know what percentage of the content ends up being given away for free versus, charged for in theory, I, I tell people I'm going to post three times a week.I generally post five times a week. one of those posts is free and the other one's okay. Walled usually, but I will occasionally take something out behind the paywall. So, I had a piece on Palentier that I wrote after the S one was filed and I was just really proud of it. And, I was also kind of disappointed in the overall media coverage of Palentier, which is some combination of this is the evil empire and this company is fantastically overpriced.But when I looked through the S one, it was clear to me that. There's, it's not logically impossible that they're evil, but if you actually look at what they're saying, and you look at what they're doing, they, they make a pretty coherent case that they are fighting for. Good. And. Later on. There was more commentary on them, some interviews with, with the founders.And it did actually seem like they thought through all of these objections. Like if you're, if you're smart people, if you're, the founders are people who majored in philosophy, like they're, they're these used to thinking about moral issues. obviously majoring, yeah. Philosophy doesn't make you a good person.It makes you a person with a better vocabulary for explaining why you're going to do what you want to do. But at least it means that they, they do have this whole, This whole toolkit for, for wrestling, with these issues. And, almost a lack of plausible deniability. Like you, if you know what, what the great thinkers in history have said about things like, is it moral to help, Bad government do something that is going to cause less harm than if you didn't help them, but they're still doing something bad and maybe you're enabling them to do more.And maybe the more that they do will be worse. Like that's, that's stuff people have been thinking about for a couple thousand years now. So, they had been thinking about that and, I was actually really happy with the feedback on the volunteer piece because a lot of people said this. this explains what this at least gives like this counter view to the view that they're evil.But I also had people ping me privately say, yeah, I worked there and this is, this is actually right. Like we, we do believe we're fighting the good fight. that there's a lot that they can't say publicly, in part, because they're working with the government and like a lot of that stuff should not be publicly disclosed, but, that, that was a piece that I made public.More because I thought that it actually contributed to the overall discourse, but a lot of the, a lot of the stuff stays paywalls and, that's, that's something that if people want to pay for it, they should. And in a lot of cases, like the vast majority of people do not, they sign up for the free version.They don't sign up for the paid version. That's fine. And, I'm happy to write for a large audience and get interesting feedback and be an interesting people. even if there's no monetary component whatsoever to that,Nathan: [00:39:39] On the ratio of free to paid and then also the price. So you went with $20 a month or $220 a year. I'd love to hear. You know, is everyone's so many people are like $5 a month and I'm like, no, no, no. Or more like, raise the price for newsletter. It's not, it's not cite there. but what went into choosing the price that youByrne: [00:40:00] So I originally kind of newsy high quality publications that were at 10. And I saw sinus ism was at 15 and Sinocism struck me as very close to what I'm trying to do, which is provide a lot of depth. and be something that you, you could read on your own, but you could also expense at work.either one would make sense. So I basically just said, I'm going to let these people do their, do my research for me. And since cynicism was near the top of the, the meter board, I just went with that. And then, I decided just to see what would happen if I raised the price of it. So raise the price from 15 to 20, I made a big production about it.So I told people two weeks in advance and then when we can advance them the day of, I was like, you need to subscribe by 11:59 PM Eastern time, or it will permanently be. And then, you know, told them. How much they're saving, if they subscribe now, sub-sect does grandfather people in, which is a huge relief to me because I remembered hearing that somewhere and I wrote it in the newsletter.I was like, if you're a subscriber, don't worry, your grandfather did. And you have nothing, nothing you'd have to do. And then I tried to find where on the substantive website, it actually said that, and I couldn't find it. And I was like, I'm going to be Venmo showing hundreds of people $5 a month every month until everyone turns out.And then I found it in that help page somewhere. So that was a huge relief. Anyway, I did that. I sent the, my one actual sales letter to just the free subscribers and it was fun to write. I used to be a copywriter a long, long time ago, and I always liked these bombastic sales letters. And, I occasionally like reading them, like, I like reading Ramit and his sales letters on money and personal finance and career and stuff.And I know I'm being sold to, but it's actually enjoyable and he's really good at it. So I learned a lot from that. I did the sales letter, many thousands of people opened it and plenty of them converted exactly. One person unsubscribed and said, I didn't like this. It was really salesy, but he wasn't even mean about it.He was just like, this isn't really what I wanted. And I was like, that's fine. So, that works out there's there are these, Metta maltheisms. So. Malthus talked about how, when the population grows, you end up with too many people for your food supply. So it always stabilizes at near starvation. And there are a lot of other phenomenon life like that, where if you're not experiencing problems, you could be going further.So, the, the Peter teal quote is if you've never missed a flight that took your life in airports. And I think with newsletters, it's, if you've never gotten a nasty email or even a slightly peeved email from someone saying you're really selling this too hard, You've never gotten that you are not selling nearly hard enough.And I also think there's, there's this, near-moral obligation to sell your stuff. Well, if you think it's good. And I think that part of why people are reluctant to sell is imposter syndrome or maybe some form of cowardice. It certainly is a reason that I'm sometimes reluctant to sell or has happened in the past.And, I it's, it's a way to signal that you actually believe in what you're doing. If you're willing to slightly embarrass yourself with a sales letter and with a sales pitch, and you were willing to pull all the little copywriter tricks, you know, the bullet points and the endorsements from, from celebrities or e-celebrities all of that stuff.Here's what you're getting. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, all that stuff. I think there, there are people who can't get away with it and there are people who can get away with it, but don't try it.Nathan: [00:43:31] I think that's a really good point that, that, that you need to be pushing it to the point where at least some nber of people are complaining. If no one is complaining at all, then you're, you're not charging enough. You're not, you know, something like, you're not confident enough in your own value. Because, yeah, there's always someone to complain on the internet.It's if you've managed to find this perfect community, then, then yet you're selling yourself short. now I want to get into your writing process because five newsletters a week, and you're officially promising three, which is good. Right. We're under promising and over-delivering, I think there's something.You know, you could, take from that, but like Tyler, Cowen has this thing that talks about like, what's the Tyler Cowen production function. Like how does he, he's one of just an incredibly prolific, creator, like what makes him tick? What, like, how does all the work that he does happen? That's the question that I have, you know, just watching all of your stuff.Like what, what is your process? And then, you know, starting from. What sparks the inspiration to all the way through to being able to publish, you know, a detailed well-researched article, every Workday.Byrne: [00:44:43] I've always read a lot and I've gotten more systematic about it now that I have the defacto daily deadline. So I have lots of RSS feeds, probably a hundred. I don't really keep track as a lot of them. It's someone who publishes once a month, but it's always good. And then for some of them, it's, this site publishes 50 or a hundred articles a day.Most of them, you read halfway through the headline and it's garbage, but occasionally you'll see something interesting. In terms of what I read of, I try to read one major business publications business section from each of the 10 largest GDPs, the countries with the 10 largest GDPs. I think there's one or two that I'm missing, but I just try to get this cross section of business stories that are going to be local to one place today, and then they'll get big tomorrow or next week.a lot of blogs, I read, the major tech blogs, and then there's this long tail of things like, Industry specific sites. So someone like a semiconductor digest or ad exchanger, finance sites like pension investment online, a lot of these more niche ones where I'm done, probably not reading every single thing that they post, but, I'm looking at the headlines and I'll often find something worth diving into, when I come up with article topics, the structure of the newsletter by the way is, It's one long form piece, only around a thousand words, but it varies a bit.And then, maybe half a dozen short links with commentary. So. A lot of the things that I read, they end up going into that is short links with commentary thing. And that's what I definitely not trying to do is be one of the morning news dp emails, like the deal email. Cause those are, those are really valuable for knowing everything that's going on.And I try to write for someone who either a. Already gets deal books. So they don't need one more of those emails and there are dozens and dozens of them, or be someone who actually doesn't care what's going on. They care about what's. What's interesting. So it's either, and this is why it's called the diff it's from the, the, the Unix function.So I'm, I'm dipping against, like I'm trying to diff out the, the, the interesting stuff and the inflections from just the general flow of news. So I try to, I try to extract that stuff and, be your value added for people who are already immersed in this stuff all the time, which is like a lot of the finance people who read it or to be what interesting thing happened today to someone who's not reading the daily news, for the longer form pieces, there, there are a lot of ideas that sort of vaguely linger in my head for a while.And then. I eventually write something about them or there'll be a pattern where I noticed that I've, I've seen five different instances of this same kind of thing happening. And so I should write a full story about it. So, one example of that from fairly recently was I noticed that retailers and brick and mortar retailers keep launching some kind of ad business that is adjacent to their e-commerce business.And I was wondering why that was, and I realized that. Amazon did it and did it really well because they have all this first party purchase data. So if you are selling anything, Amazon probably knows everyone, almost everyone in the country who has purchased something like that, or who's statistically likely to purchase that.So they should be really good at targeting ads. If you look at someone like, target or CVS or Walgreens or someone like that, they actually have a lot of this offline purchase data that's tied to individuals and their e-commerce position is relatively weaker, which means that their ratio of. First party purchase data to e-commerce data or to e-commerce revenue is really high.So it actually makes sense for them to monetize some of that through ads rather than through selling products directly. so that's, that was one, one case where there was just this ongoing pattern. Another pretty frequent source of things to write about is companies that are just going public. That's often the first time that you get this look into the unit economics of a company that people have known about for a long time.And, there's this tradition where. Company files their to go public and it gets posted to hacker news. And someone pulls out a line from the risk factors saying this company has never reported an accounting profit, and doesn't expect to necessarily the future and is like, this is a disaster it's worth zero.And someone has to chime in and be like, well, if you look at their free cash flow, they've actually been making more money than they spent for a long time. They just have to appreciation or whatever. But basically having, having a cogent answer to the question of why is this not worthless when the company's not reporting an accounting profit, or if it's really profitable, why is this interesting?So, that's, that's another source. And then sometimes there are just general trends that I might not have written about or general patterns I might not have written about where I think it's worth a long treatment. And, that can be, that can be anything from just an economic phenomenon that I know of that, That isn't talked about that often.So one of my early pieces that I was really happy with was about, this economic law for determining the optimal amount of a resource of a finite resource to extract where the paper was. They went through a bunch of complicated math and the basic argent was your, all you're doing is saying. Do I want money now or money in a year.And, like, do I want to drill for oil now and have money now or drill oil in a year and a half the money then? And that, that depletion rate is determined by how much you expect the price to go up. So it ultimately comes back to interest rates, but. If you, if you actually try to operationalize that the interest rate that you should think about is not just what does a treasury bond yield it's actually like, what, how much do you value money right now versus in the future?And what that means is that in a lot of really unstable countries, it actually makes sense to drill way more or drill for way more oil than you otherwise would because. If you are, I don't know the dictator of Venezuela, you don't actually expect to be in power in 20 years. So even if you think oil is gonna go way up 20 years from now, you actually want to drill for it now and spend the money on tanks.Venezuela is a special case because they also are not currently able to drill for oil at all. And, so there's, there's another way the model breaks down, but I thought it was an interesting model to explore because it's. It's useful directionally. And it's actually a really elegant approach for thinking about the question of depleting a finite resource, and it's always wrong.It never actually describes reality, but the, the gap between the model and reality is actually instructive. And I think that's, that's one of my meta themes is that there are all these interesting theoretical models or interesting analogies that are imperfect, but the ways that they're imperfect actually tell interesting about the world.Nathan: [00:51:30] Yeah, that makes sense. So then, so you're doing all of this research and finding those, those trends. what does it look like when you're actually sitting down to write? Is that, are you dedicating, you know, an hour, three hours, five hours a day to writing what's what'sByrne: [00:51:45] I don't keep great I, I will spend a lot of my day reading, reading books, reading news articles, reading sec filings and academic papers and things. And then at some point I realized that I should actually start writing. And so I started writing, but I kinda zone out and I'm always surprised when I look at the clock, when I'm done writing the newsletter with how late it's gotten.So, it, it is a couple hours of writing, but. I think some of it is like trying to get in the zone and that's just, struggle with distraction and then eventually to start writing. And that just happens pretty smoothly until I'm too tired to go on.Nathan: [00:52:24] Yeah, it sounds like you're, I mean, you're doing the research and reading until the article becomes really clear what you want to write becomes clear. And then, then it's the transition to getting into a focused mode to write that.Byrne: [00:52:38] I used to, before I was writing all the time, I did have a backlog of ideas and I slowly worked through the backlog. And for a while, I was at the point where I never knew what I was going to write next. at this point I do sort of have a backlog, but it's more like, So I would have this list of just here are things I want to write about.And then periodically I'd write about one of them off the list. And what naturally happens is you write about the stuff that you can actually get done. And then you don't read about the stuff that's going to take you. So, the list just keeps getting more ambitious on average because it's always like more and more research is required or you've got to somehow find this dataset and do the statistical model, or like, I had a conversation with a commenter who was asking, he was talking about how, There was this big trend towards business articles about, what American can learn from Japan in the seventies and especially eighties.so it looks like Japan is nber one. Like what, what are they doing differently? Why are these companies just, just annihilating the U S auto industry? What can we learn from them? But there haven't been a lot of books like that about China, even though a lot of the, a lot of Chinese companies are competing really effectively.And, in, in cases like conser internet, they, they seem to be well ahead of the U S companies. And, so we were, what, what ended up coming up was the question of in the 1930s and forties, were people writing these like management secrets of Joseph Stalin pieces on like, how can we compete with Russia there?They had, they were this agrarian nation, and now they're making all this steel and mining all this coal. So, I, I Googled around, I actually couldn't find anything good on that, but I realized that you could actually write something interesting about just. What was Soviet economic policy like, because the country did industrialize at that absolutely enormous han cost, but they did industrialize, it didn't hit first world status, but, well, I guess they were second world by that, that taxonomy.But anyway, they, they were a lot richer, afterwards, and then they went through this long stagnation and decline. So I think learning about what. What the Soviets did. And then what was wrong with it is, is something pretty fun. But the sources that I looked into are pretty extensive. So there's going to be a lot of reading.That's gonna be one of the, the very low ROI posts where it's like, I'm going to read three books and write a thousand words in smary, but I'll probably learn a lot in Bali. Find some useful lessons that can apply somewhere else.Nathan: [00:54:59] It'll turn into more than one post over the next period of time. It may not be a series back to back, but over the course of a year or two, you'll pull in trends from that kind of thing. so there's a huge amount of work that goes into all of this, obviously in the end, the, the effort you think there's, do you think it matters for say the economics of your business, right.To be publishing five times a week versus say two.Byrne: [00:55:25] I'm sure it matters. I think there's, there's definitely room to, to adjust the publishing frequency and there's actually room to adjust the schedule. Like when one of the things I pay really close attention to is why people unsubscribe and there's a field that there's a form they can fill out so they can tell me.And they often do. one of the common things people say is there's too much for them to read. And especially that it's too hard to work through the back catalog. If they haven't been reading it for awhile. And I think that is, that is not really about too much content total. It's about email being a really good form factor for sending high value content that someone's gonna read that day.But it's, it's really tough to work through an archive of email newsletters. That's in your inbox, you might have to do some kind of special search, or you might just be scrolling through your inbox. So you're getting this random assortment of here's you know, an invite to a zoom meetup that I didn't go to.Here's an Amazon receipt. here is an essay and then here's another Amazon receipt and another essay. It's just a weird change in context. So. one of the things I've been thinking very hard about is switching some of the things I write to a longer delivery cadence, I'm basically working on a book and then having the giving the subscribers access to that book and probably doing four posts a week instead of five and spending one day a week.Working just on the book. probably a good trade. It's going to be the same level of output, but, I think the final product is going to be something you can actually binge-conse easily. And I think writing, writing for, habitual snackers and writing for bingers is useful because different people have very different approaches to consing information.I do too. Like I, I will have, have times where I'm going back and forth between a lot of different things and reading. Reading little bits of information here and there when I have time and then periods where I'm just going to sit somewhere forfour hourswith a book Nathan: [00:57:18] Right. I think that's really interesting. Kind of what you're getting at is what's the highest leverage, application of your writing. And so if you're, if you're looking to reach new people and this is probably why people like Tyler Cowen have done really well, right? There's a lot of that is going into another book, you know, or Seth Godin, right.We're into the 22nd book or something, right. That he's put out because he's realized it's the same writing that goes into the newsletter or the blog, or, you know, this idea is just flushed out in longer form, but it's higher leverage and that it's going to reach more people. And so, you know, if you keep a hundred percent of your writing for the newsletter, that's going to have one amount of leverage, which is actually pretty significant leverage, which is why we're all here talking about newsletters because they have great leverage and they're amazing.but if you peel some of that off and say, okay, but this is going into. A book that, you know, then you can reach so many more like CNBC is not going to necessarily have you on to talk about the newsletter. But if the book comes out, then they're like happy to have you on, because that is a format of, you know, authors going on TV tours to promote their book is a well-known thing.And so that would get you a level of exposure that the newsletter wouldn't.Byrne: [00:58:28] Yep. Yeah, that's exactly right. That you, you can, you can package content in different sizes, but it's, in some ways there is just a mental difference between what you're doing when you write. An essay versus a tweet versus a book that with an essay, you can have this more unstructured approach where you're, you're watching stories go by and you're just grabbing something that looks good and turning it into, a quick story or a not so quick story.But then with the book you actually want to come up with, you have to find that idea that's actually worth a books or the material. And then there's a lot of research. So, I am working on a book with a friend and, there's. It's like, I'm working on one chapter and stack of books is about this high that we're going to convert into a chapter in a book and it's going to be great.Cause there's going to be a lot that I'm gonna learn. And it's a, it's a fun topic. The chapter has a fun time. So I'm, I'm excited about it, but that, that is a really different process because. And part of what you're doing is, it's like the newsletter process of there are these themes to talk about and you find different iterations on the theme.So they're always reading a story through a bunch of different lenses and trying to see if there's, if there's some broader trend that this story speaks to or contradicts, but wit

Robbie Kellman Baxter has written the book—quite literally—on the Membership Economy and subscription-based business models. This is the way the world is going. In fact, it’s already gone. And it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way into the CPA profession and starts impacting accounting and finance. In some ways, it already is. Robbie recently released a book called “The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave.” (https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Transaction-Subscription-Compelling-Customers/dp/1260458709/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=robbie+kellman+baxter&qid=1595259138&sr=8-1) And doesn’t that sound appealing? She talks about what a successful subscription model might look like for our profession, how generational differences might come into play here, and how leaders can decide whether they’re ready to make this type of move — and if they are, what the logical first steps might be. To learn more, and for the complete show notes, visit blionline.org/blog (https://blionline.org/blog). Resources: Learn more: robbiekellmanbaxter.com (https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/) Read: “The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue” (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TTAL78Q) Read: “The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave” (https://www.amazon.com/Forever-Transaction-Subscription-Compelling-Customers/dp/1260458709/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=robbie+kellman+baxter&qid=1595259138&sr=8-1) Read: “Subscribed” (https://www.amazon.com/Subscribed-Subscription-Model-Companys-Future/dp/0525536469/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=tien+tzuo+subscribed&qid=1595261799&sr=8-2) "CPA-as-a-Service: Re-imagining Your Clients as Subscribers" (https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/firm-management/article/21136575/cpaasaservice-reimagining-your-clients-as-subscribers) Future-Proof is a production of (http://crate.media)

What You Will Learn How to validate your membership site idea The different ways you can build a membership site The main differences between Memberships and Courses Ever thought about starting a membership site before? Perhaps you think you have the million dollar idea that will take off, or maybe you just can’t resist the … #215 – How To Build Recurring revenue using Memberships with Mike Morrison (The Membership Guys) Read More »

What You Will Learn How to validate your membership site idea The different ways you can build a membership site The main differences between Memberships and Courses Ever thought about starting a membership site before? Perhaps you think you have the million dollar idea that will take off, or maybe you just can't resist the … #215 – How To Build Recurring revenue using Memberships with Mike Morrison (The Membership Guys) Read More »

Rob and Paul host Dave Monahan, CEO of Kleer, an advanced, cloud-based platform that enables dentists to easily design and manage their own dental membership plan and offer it directly to their patients. In this episode, Rob and Paul chat with Dave about why a dental practice should consider implementing a membership plan now as part of their COVID-19 recovery strategy, how a membership plan can help patients access the care they need and drive treatment acceptance, the impact that a membership plan can have on dental practice results and best practices for implementing a membership plan (spoiler alert - DIY isn't one of them). Listeners who want to learn more about Kleer can visit www.kleer.com, and they can email Dave at Dave@Kleer.com. Listeners who want to reach out to Paul can do so at Paul@DentalNachos.com and those who want to reach out to Rob can do so Rob at Rob@RMontgomery-Law.com. For the inquisitive minds, here are links to the books Dave and Rob mention on this podcast: “The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue” by Robbie Kellman Baxter: Click here. “The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry” by John Warrillow: Click here. “Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” by Dan Ariely: Click here.

My guest on the podcast today brings more than twenty years of strategy consulting and marketing experience. Robbie Kellman Baxter is founder of Peninsula Strategies, helping companies leverage subscription pricing, digital community and freemium to build deeper relationships with customers. Her clients have included start-ups and mid-sized venture-backed companies as well as industry leaders such as Netflix, Oracle, Electronic Arts and eBay. As the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue, a book that has been named a top 10 marketing book of all time by BookAuthority, Robbie coined the popular business term “Membership Economy”. Her new book is The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave. Here's my conversation with Robbie Kellman Baxter in series two, episode seven of the Financial Planner Marketing Playbook.

Episode 99 features Robbie Kellman Baxter, Founder and President of Peninsula Strategies, strategy consulting firm focused on helping companies leverage subscription pricing, digital community and freemium to build deeper relationships with customers. Her new book, The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave, releases in March, 2020. Connect with Robbie Online:Website: robbiekellmanbaxter.comFacebook: facebook.com/robbiebaxInstagram: instagram.com/robbiebaxTwitter: twitter.com/robbiebaxLinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/robbiekellmanbaxter About Robbie:Robbie Kellman Baxter brings over twenty years of strategy consulting and marketing expertise to Peninsula Strategies, her strategy consulting firm focused on helping companies leverage subscription pricing, digital community and freemium to build deeper relationships with customers. Her clients have included start-ups and mid-sized venture-backed companies as well as industry leaders such as Netflix, Oracle, Electronic Arts and eBay. Over the past 18 years, Peninsula Strategies has advised over 100 organizations in over 20 industries on growth strategy.A sought-after writer and keynote speaker, Robbie has presented to alumni organizations at Stanford, Harvard and Haas, associations including the AICPA, the American Society of Association Executives, and the National Restaurant Association and organizations including the Wall Street Journal, and Coursera. She has been quoted on business issues in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Consumer Reports, and has had pieces published in HBR.org, CNN.com, Associations Now and the Journal for Quality & Participation. Robbie has created and starred in eight video courses in collaboration with LinkedIn Learning on business topics ranging from innovation to customer success and membership. Robbie is also on the board of Amava, an organization dedicated to helping people stay active and engaged post-career.As the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue, a book that has been named a top 10 marketing book of all time by BookAuthority, Robbie coined the popular business term “Membership Economy”, which is now being used by organizations and journalists around the country and beyond. Robbie’s expertise with companies in the emerging Membership Economy extends to include SaaS, media, consumer products and community organizations. Her new book, The Forever Transaction: How to Build a Subscription Model So Compelling, Your Customers Will Never Want to Leave, releases in March, 2020.Prior to launching Peninsula Strategies, Robbie was a strategy consultant at Booz-Allen & Hamilton, a New York City Urban Fellow and a Silicon Valley product marketer. Robbie received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and graduated with honors from Harvard College.........Follow the Just Get Started Podcast on Instagram at @justgetstartedpodcast or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/justgetstartedpodcast and to learn more about me and what’s going on in my world check out https://www.brianondrako.com/now/ or find me on Instagram at @brianondrako or twitter @brianondrako As always, I’d appreciate a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts if you believe I’ve earned it. -> Leave a Review Thanks for listening! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The membership economy is growing faster than before. How can you ride this wave and build your own system? In this episode, my guest Robbie Baxter shows you how to build your own membership model. Robbie is the bestselling author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue, a book that’s been named a Top Five Marketing Book of the year by Inc. She’s working with industry leaders like Netflix, Electronic Arts, The Wall Street Journal, Asics to name a few. Our definitive expert takes a deep dive into the idea of the membership model so you can build not only your membership economy but also a tribe of super fans.

Jason helps developers and designers discover their niche, plan out and market themselves to build recurring revenue. So that they can live the life that they want and ultimately reach the goals of why they started their own business in the first place. He has run his own web development business since 2010 helping established online businesses, increase sales through optimization, conversion, and behavioral strategy. He does this through on-site personalization, email, and marketing campaigns to learn more about the potential and existing customers to decrease the time to first purchase and increase repeat purchases. Website: https://rezzz.com/ https://rezzz.com/feast https://rezzz.com/how-to-start-freelancing-successfully/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rezzz

Blair is struck by how creative businesses have trouble applying their creativity to their revenue models, so he and David discuss some of the best ways firms can get paid.   LINKS Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry by John Warrillow 2Bobs Episode 31: “Mastering the Value Conversation” 2Bobs Episode 25: “Pricing Creativity” Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns   

The changing face of business is getting our customers and our teams to buy into more than a single, or for that matter, a repeat purchase.Business, leadership, and most importantly, the way the economy moves, have all changed. We’ve all heard of the share economy, brought into popularity with shared cars. But do you realize there's a new emerging economy that business leaders and entrepreneurship are moving into called the Membership Economy?Well stay tuned because you are about to find out; our guest on this episode is Robbie Kellman. Robbie Kellman Baxter coined the term “Membership Economy”. She has been advising entrepreneurs on business strategy for 20 years and has worked with nearly 100 organizations in over 20 industries on growth initiatives.She’s a sought-after writer and keynote speaker, who has presented at top universities, associations and corporations, as well as corporate boards and leadership teams around the world. Robbie's latest book, 'The Membership Economy, Find Your Super-users, Master the Forever Transaction & Build Recurring Revenue', has been named a top 5 Marketing Book of the Year by Inc.com. Prior to launching Peninsula Strategies, Robbie was a strategy consultant at Booz-Allen, a New York City Urban Fellow and a Silicon Valley product marketer. Robbie is the leading subject matter expert on membership and subscription models. She has advised companies including Netflix, the Wall Street Journal and Electronic Arts.On this episode we discuss:What is the membership Economy and why does it matter to leadersWhy Membership and Purpose fit so beautifully togetherHow to build a forever transaction with the people you serveThe difference between subscription and membershipWhy does the The Membership Economy matter to the leaders of todayFind out more about Robbie Kellman Baxter: www.membershipecconomy.com To find out more about hiring Dov Baron as a speaker or strategist for your organization: http://fullmontyleadership.com/consulting or http://fullmontyleadership.com/speakingRemember you can now also find us on iTunes, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or wherever you tune into podcastsAnd on traditional radio stations across the US every Monday and Thursday on: 99.5 FM & 1520 AM Las Vegas102.1 FM & 1640 AM Lancaster, Philadelphia87.9 FM & 810 AM Macon, Gorgia 92.1 FM & 1630 AM Tampa, Florida97.7 The Villages, Florida96.3 FM Boulder, Colorado90.3 FM Milwaukee, Wisconsin 94.7 FM Pittsburg, Philadelphia87.9 FM Colorado Springs, ColoradoAlso look for us on ROKU TV where there’s 100K subscribers. If you are a regular listener, then a big thank you to you for making us the #1 podcast Globally for Fortune 500 listeners! And with a potential reach of 2.5 to 3 million listeners for every show, we’re honoured and grateful to be cited in INC.com as The #1 Podcast To Make You a Better Leader. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Liz Pineda helps online entrepreneurs transform their knowledge into recurring revenue by helping them building sales funnels and other high-performing lead generation systems.   I first met Liz in 2017 and contracted her to build evergreen funnels around some old products and the results were absolutely amazing. She was able to take a course I created years ago in a niche market and setup a Facebook evergreen funnel from A to Z -- to the tune of $7,000 in sales in the first 45 days.   In short, Liz made me a believer in this kind of marketing and I’m so excited to share this interview with you. I can’t say enough about her. Here are a few questions I asked Liz:   "How to know if your funnel will be profitable before you launch it?" “Where do I even start when building a sales funnel?” "What are the typical lead magnets that are most successful in putting a funnel together?" "When can you expect to make your money back from a funnel?" “Are there any secret ‘hacks’ that people use when building sales funnels?” “Where is the money really made in a funnel?”   This episode is absolute gold for anyone that wants to turn their online business into a recurring revenue machine.   FREE RESOURCE: For tuning in, Liz is giving you her amazing guide, The 5 Ingredients of Virtually Every Sales Funnel.   Download The 5 Ingredients of Virtually Every Sales Funnel here   She also mentioned a calculator so you can test against the benchmarks in your industry which you can find here.   Liz’s website: lizpineda.com FREE GIFT: Marketing Mastery Insider #1   As a thank you for tuning into the show, I’m offering you a free copy of the first issue of my paid newsletter Marketing Mastery Insider (retail $97 a month). To get your free copy: mikekim.com/list   EPISODE CREDITS:   If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment. Here’s an article he wrote about the benefits of podcasting:   A Few More Podcasting Benefits   Check it out and then schedule a FREE strategy call with him at the bottom of that page.  

In recent years, we have experienced a massive transformation in the way organizations relate to the people they serve. The focus has shifted from ownership to access, from transactions to relationships, from single payment to subscription pricing, and from one-way conversation to open dialogue. In this new Membership Economy, businesses are called on to build trusted relationships with customers in order to earn their loyalty. Robbie Baxter is the founder of Peninsula Strategies, a consulting firm that supports solopreneurs, venture-backed startups and industry leaders in developing business strategy. She has 20 years of experience working on growth initiatives with nearly 100 organizations in 20-plus industries, including ASICS, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal. Baxter is also the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue, an Inc Top 5 Marketing Book of 2015, and she received her MBA from Stanford, where she serves as the Vice Chair of Stanford Women on Boards. Today, Baxter explains the Membership Economy, describing how she supports entrepreneurs and startups in building authentic relationships with their clients and customers. She shares her transition from corporate product marketing to independent consulting, discussing how being the mother of young children made it difficult for her to be an A-player in a traditional nine-to-five setting. Listen in for Baxter's insight on defining your area of expertise and learn how to choose a career path that works for your life. Key Interview Takeaways Businesses benefit from building relationships with customers. Baxter coined the term Membership Economy to represent the massive shift in how organizations relate to the people they serve, developing trust with consumers in order to win their loyalty. Independent consulting requires niching down to a specific area of expertise. Baxter fell in love with the Netflix business model and leveraged her understanding of the Membership Economy to build a successful consulting business helping entrepreneurs and startups establishing meaningful relationships with clients and customers. Integrity is key in the membership economy. Subscription businesses that don't treat their customers well will lose them. As an independent consultant doing knowledge work, it doesn't matter WHEN you work on a project, as long as you complete it on time. The flexible model affords more control over your career and may be ideal for women who are the mothers of young children. Connect with Robbie Baxter Peninsula Strategies Robbie Baxter on LinkedIn Robbie Baxter on Twitter Resources The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter Stanford Women on Boards Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tom Schwab knows how to build an online business. Marketing at its heart is starting a conversation with someone who could be an ideal customer. Our discussion includes: How to overcome obscurity to your ideal customers Why podcasts are a good medium for breaking through the noise Why working with your ideal customers increases your recurring revenue The importance of asking your ideal customers who influences them Thinking about what activities you do that drive revenue How a business is an entity that has recurring revenue Why you need to focus on how you can help your ideal customer If you never lose a customer, you don’t have to gain many new ones to be successful How we know what our customers want by what our customers want If you serve your existing customers well, they will help you get new customers Every time you have a problem in your business, it is your opportunity to fix it Drawing on his engineering, corporate, and eCommerce inbound marketing experience, Tom helps thought leaders (coaches, authors, speaker, emerging brands) get featured on leading podcasts their ideal prospects are already listening to. Then, he helps them to turn listeners into customers. Tom is the author of Podcast Guest Profits: Grow Your Business With a Targeted Interview Strategy and Founder of Interview Valet, the category king of Podcast Interview Marketing. Learn more about Tom at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ThomasSchwab) . (http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smashing-the-plateau) Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 0Shares

Joel Salomon is a Prosperity Coach. He helps identify and overcome the roadblocks standing in the way of personal financial freedom. We discuss: How to understand your purpose, develop your mindset and implement your action plan How acting “as if” can help you overcome a major challenge How solopreneur experts can use their mindset to build recurring revenue Prior to becoming a Prosperity Coach, Joel launched his own hedge fund, Salaurmor Capital, a dream that Joel had had from the early 1990s. Joel was designated a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries in 1992 and a Chartered Financial Analyst in 1995. Learn more about Joel at LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-salomon-2703358/) . (http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smashing-the-plateau) Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 0Shares

Tyler Sheff is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Cash Flow Guys, a company that aims to educate their clientele in investing in real estate and building long-term wealth. The Cash Flow Guys treat each client as a student, giving them the necessary tools needed to succeed as a real estate investor from the ground up. Tyler and his team have one goal – to simplify the process of buying and selling real estate for investment purposes. As an educator, the greatest reward Tyler gets from all this hard work is watching Cash Flow Guys students learn and ultimately become successful. We discuss: How the U.S. tax code explains how not to pay taxes Why it is critical to work hard, leverage resources involving other people and build a team Why you need to understand the monthly expenses needed to support your desired lifestyle The value of being a good listener to help your sales success How to turn your common tasks into evergreen content that you can sell Tyler is also the host of the Cash Flow Guys Podcast. He focuses on cash flowing assets as an investor and syndicator with a concentration in multi-family apartments and non-performing notes. As a realtor, he specializes in working with investors who are looking to build long-term wealth. Tyler has been involved in Real Estate for over 17 years and now focuses on investing for cash flow and long-term gain while helping others do the same. As an educator, coach and master facilitator of Robert Kiyosaki’s CashFlow 101 Game, Tyler hosts workshops in the Tampa, FL area to teach busy people how to escape the rat race by acquiring assets creatively. Tyler is a huge advocate of financial independence and helps others achieve just that. Learn more about Tyler at Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/cashflowguys/) . (http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smashing-the-plateau) Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 0Shares

Robbie Kellman Baxter is a consultant and speaker who has been providing strategic business advice to Silicon Valley companies for over 20 years. We discuss: What kinds of businesses work well for a membership model Why professional services are particularly suited for membership clients Where you might start a membership program for an existing business She is the founder of the consulting firm Peninsula Strategies LLC, and regularly presents to and advises companies, professional associations and leading universities. Robbie is the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue (https://www.amazon.com/Membership-Economy-Superusers-Transaction-Recurring/dp/1522642366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512685279&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Membership+Economy%3A+Find+Your+Superusers%2C+Master+the+Forever+Transaction+and+Build+Recurring+Revenue) . Learn more about Robbie at Twitter (https://twitter.com/robbiebax) .   (http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/smashing-the-plateau) Facebook Twitter LinkedIn 0Shares

Robbie Kellman Baxter is the founder of Peninsula Strategies and the author of The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue. Resources: * https://peninsulastrategies.com/ – Website * @robbiebax – Twitter * The Membership Economy – Facebook Page * Buy her book, The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue Sponsored by: * LEADx.org – subscribe to become 1% better every single day Subscribe on iTunes to join our Ambassadors Club: Please click here to subscribe on iTunes, and leave a quick rating. Nothing matters more for bringing the podcast to the attention of others. After you subscribe and leave a review, send an email to info at leadx dot org to let us know, and we'll invite you into the private LEADx Ambassadors Group on Facebook. Group members are eligible for ridiculously good prizes each month, have special access to me and LEADx guests, discounts on live events, and of course it's a great forum for peer-learning and support. Share: And, by all means, if you know someone you think would benefit, please spread the word by using the share buttons below. — What is LEADx and The LEADx Show with Kevin Kruse? Imagine if you could have the world's best executive coaches and leadership mentors whispering into your ear every morning on your way to work. Every weekday, there will be a new episode of The LEADx Leadership Show with an interview from a different thought leadership or business expert. Many of these guests are thought leaders, famous authors or high-profile CEOs from innovative startup companies. Others are creatives, artists, entrepreneurs or corporate career leaders. They have all achieved extreme success and they are willing to share practical advice on how to advance your career and develop your leadership and management skills by offering daily career tips on time management, productivity, marketing, personal branding, communication, sales, leadership, team building, talent management and other personal development and career development topics. There will be a new episode waiting for you every day just in time for your morning commute, morning treadmill session or whatever else it is you do to start your day. LEADx isn't just the name of this new podcast, it's the name of a digital media and online learning company that is re-imagining professional development for millennials and career driven professionals looking to break into manager roles or excel in current leadership and management roles. If you're looking for management training or professional development that is delivered in a fun and engaging way, sign up for our daily newsletter at LEADx.org. It's packed with life hacks, daily career tips and leadership challenges that will turn you into a high potential leader in no time. What does LEADx stand for? We are exploring leadership. We are about NEXT GENERATION leadership. We believe that professional training and workplace education has not kept up with advances in digital media. Today's emerging leaders and management professionals just don't find 5 day workshops or eLearning modules to be very compelling. Today's talent is mobile and social. LEADx wants to help those that want to make an ...

Robbie Kellman Baxter served as a consultant to Netflix when all they did was mail out DVDs. That experience got Robbie thinking deeply about a new emerging business model.  She developed these ideas over a period of nine years before publishing in 2015 her book The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue. In our discussion, Robbie goes into some detail of how the book came about, how she promoted the book, and how it transformed her practice from more traditional consulting projects to work that is more advisory in nature .  She has made an investment in becoming a thought leader, and it has paid off: Robbie is regularly invited to give keynote speeches and she has clients who’ve read the book reaching out asking for her help.  You can learn more about her work by reading her book, the membership economy, and by checking out her website: peninsula strategies.com Robbie studied at Harvard College and Stanford Business School, and started her consulting career at Booz Allen. She has been running her own consulting firm, Peninsula Strategies, since 2001, so she has been a successful independent professional for 16 years.

Naveen Dittakavi is a software engineer who, after gaining incredible access to Ramit Sethi, grew his business to the point where he could barely keep up. It was at this point that he realized, like most entrepreneurs, he was tired of trading his time for money. Naveen began to change the way he thought about his […] The post Naveen Dittakavi | How to Build Recurring Revenue appeared first on Smart Business Revolution.

The smartest, most successful companies are using radically new membership models, subscription-based formats, and freemium pricing structures to grow their customer base―and explode their market valuation―in the most disruptive shift in business since the Industrial Revolution. Today's guest, Robbie Baxter, unpacks The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue.   Key Takeaways: [1:09] The big idea behind the membership economy. [2:47] Cost certainty is part of the appeal to subscribers of membership-based organizations. [8:18] Robbie Baxter unpacks three components within the membership economy: suspension, community, and loyalty. [16:02] Businesses who adopt the membership economy business concept experience major benefits, including recurring revenue. [22:27] Incumbent businesses in classically organized industries can adapt to the membership economy by focusing on and building off of the mission of their members. [30:42] Robbie Baxter explains how a manicure business demonstrates the difference between fixed cost and incremental cost and why this matters in the membership economy. [36:24] How to best Contact Robbie at Peninsula Strategies and read The Membership Economy.   Mentioned in This Episode: Peninsula Strategies The Membership Economy @robbiebax on Twitter Praxent

Today's podcast is the first in a new mini-series I'm doing on creating effective membership programs. Over the next few episodes I'll be sharing my best tips, experience and ideas on creating profitable membership sites and programs. And I'll also be interviewing a veriety of experts on membership site strategy, how to build them, and how to run them. My special guest on this very first episode is Robbie Kellman Baxter. Robbie is the author of the Amazon #1 Hot New Release The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue. She created the popular […]

Today's podcast is the first in a new mini-series I'm doing on creating effective membership programs. Over the next few episodes I'll be sharing my best tips, experience and ideas on creating profitable membership sites and programs. And I'll also be interviewing a veriety of experts on membership site strategy, how to build them, and how to run them. My special guest on this very first episode is Robbie Kellman Baxter. Robbie is the author of the Amazon #1 Hot New Release The Membership Economy: Find Your Superusers, Master the Forever Transaction and Build Recurring Revenue. She created the popular […]

Naveen Dittakavi www.HowToBuildRecurringRevenue.com talks about how to build recurring revenue in your business. He also shares how he moved upmarket to increase prices and what he does to avoid churn. 0:48 80% of the work is done BEFORE you meet somebody. He prepared for over 30 hours to meet his mentor Ramit Sethi 2:38 After meeting Ramit he changed focus to work on simple key pieces 5:10 Why recurring revenue has giving him real freedom in his business 7:15 How saying “NO” is so difficult and what he did to overcome that problem 9:22 The reasons why to validate ideas very quickly and how invisible future fears cause roadblocks 13:23 AUTOMATION is the paralyzing word for software developers and entrepreneurs 16:13 Marketing wasn’t necessarily the cause of sales but rather gave him clarity to acquire more valuable clients 18:15 Modeling Others: “We don’t want to model people where they are now. We want to model people and understand what they did to get there” “What can I do for my client to help him or her succeed?” 19:33 How he changed his mindset from thinking he just developed code to knowing he was an asset helping his clients. 20:10 His process for MOVING UPMARKET and taking his customer experience to the next level Tool: Use AwayFind and setup alerts to acknowledge VIP’s 22:50 How positioning his business as a value added service provider and not a normal dev shop differentiates him in the market 25:20 What separates the people barely scraping by from high producers? 26:30 Story of how he avoided churn from a client that has been with him for 10 years. 29:45 What he does to AVOID CHURN “To avoid churn, I just make sure they are happy” “We manage churn by building and maintaining real relationships with our clients” 31:42 What barriers he had created in his mind to growing his business “The fundamental tenet of marketing is to keep doing what works until it stops working” 35:20 We talk about Naveen’s mom and a funny story he had explaining his business to her 39:35 The most important paradigm shift he had to overcome 42:39 Understanding what you really want is a key factor in growing your business 44:10 Do the exercise of the 5 year and 10 year path 46:37 How to drill down into the small next steps when looking over big goals Learn more about creating recurring revenue at www.HowToBuildRecurringRevenue.com and view his blog www.dittakavi.com 51:27 The 48 hour challenge Click here to download the transcription

The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue by Robbie Kellman Baxter https://www.salesartillery.com/marketing-book-podcast/the-membership-economy-robbie-kellman-baxter

Robbie Baxter talks with us about her new book, The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue.