Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing a business takes a lot of effort and time investment. So when the time comes to exit, it would be a waste not to harvest the value you’ve created. So how do you get the ultimate reward for selling your business? Today, host Robbie Kellman Baxter sits down with John Warrillow, the founder of The Value Builder System™. John and Robbie first met when John published The Automatic Customer around the same time as Robbie released her bestseller, The Membership Economy. They bonded over a shared belief in the value of businesses that were optimized around recurring revenue and long-term relationships with customers. John is launching a new book, The Art of Selling Your Business. In it, he connects the dots about why subscription businesses are so valuable, how to optimize business processes and dashboards to create more value, and how to determine what your own business is actually worth. Tune into this episode to learn how to maximize the value of your own subscription business.   Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the Subscription Stories Community today: robbiekellmanbaxter.com Twitter Facebook

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

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

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