Podcasting Secrets

Whether we like it or not, the government laws and regulations can massively affect the way we operate or cannot operate our businesses. Sometimes we need to advocate to make sure these laws and regulations are affecting us and, our customers, and our industries in positive ways. As we advocate, or do anything in life, conflicts of interest may arise. 

In today's episode, we’re going to discuss what Marion Mass is doing to improve the health care system through advocacy, how we as entrepreneurs can be better advocates within our industries, and how we can remove our conflicts of interest to improve our credibility. 

Dr. Marion Mass is a mother, pediatrician, community volunteer, writer, and advocate for high-quality, sustainable health care in the U.S. that will attract bright, hardworking minds in the future. She trained at Duke’s School of Medicine and the Northwestern Children’s Memorial Hospital. She now practices in the Philadelphia suburbs. She co-founded the nonpartisan grassroots Practicing Physicians of America and serves as part of the leadership of the Free 2 Care coalition. She speaks, writes, and advocates for improving health care access and lowering its costs. 

Why Marion Advocates

Marion is passionate about health care. She loved her journey through medical school and residency and loves taking care of patients. While looking at the landscape of medicine, she realized people aren’t choosing to be doctors in the future. 

She sees a lot of physicians going through what she calls Drexit: doctor exit. Doctors are frustrated with all the boxes they have to check through mandates, authorizations, insurance, etc. “There's so much that we have to do,” Marion said. “Physicians either get burned out or they get morally injured.”

Doctors are leaving. Many are retiring early. The profession has one of the highest rates of suicide in the U.S. The health care system is broken and unsustainable. “If we don't fix it,” Marion says, “America will be very unhealthy and sorry in the future when they show up to deliver their baby or have their appendix taken out and there's not a quality physician there that's well-trained to take care of them.”

Health care isn’t just a problem in the U.S. I lived in Brazil for a couple of years, where they have a socialized medicine system that doesn't work. People often joke that those are the hospitals where you go to die. But they have a secondary health care system not provided by the government. It’s surprisingly inexpensive and the doctors don’t have to jump through all the same hoops, so they can focus on providing health care. 

Marion shared a story about her friend who is from Ukraine, where they also have a socialized system. Her mother needed a hysterectomy there. She went to the government-run hospital and found out they had no soap, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper. She had to bring her own. For an inexpensive fee, Marion’s friend moved her mother to a hospital that accepted cash, where she got good care and wasn’t afraid of getting an infection.

Health care has consumed costs all across the board. Marion said the public sectors like school districts are paying more and employers are paying more. Overall, it’s way more expensive than it needs to be. Marion realized all these things and came to the conclusion that she needed to do something about it.

Advocacy Efforts: Anyone Can Advocate

Marion started looking for groups to join and ways to advocate. On her first trip to Washington D.C., she was nervous. She went to a congressperson’s office for a meeting, thinking, “These guys are going to be so well-versed. They're going to know everything I'm talking about, everything I've learned over the past couple of years.” Her hands started to sweat and she was worried she’d stumble over her words.

By the time the conversation was over, she thought, “Oh, I should have been doing this a long time ago.” Marion said, “I'm in a robe. I'm a recovering soccer mom with an MD. I'm a real person. I will have conversations with lawmakers while I'm in my bathrobe, sweeping my kitchen. . . . But if I can do this, anyone can.”

Sometimes we think we can’t do something until we learn more about it or until we reach a certain point in our career. Marion didn’t wait. She cared about the issues and wanted to do something to help, so she did. 

She started writing, speaking, doing podcasts, hosting and attending events, serving on the editorial board of a county newspaper, and talking to lawmakers. To those who are considering getting involved, she said, “Finding your voice with speaking and writing to people that can change policy . . . is so important. We trained to do this. We're the ones that close the door and hear people's intimate stories. And it breaks my heart when people can't get what they need. I can't tolerate it anymore.”

Marion told me about a doctor who recently published a piece in 14 Pennsylvanian newspapers. She went to medical school in Pakistan and Marion said she’s got a great voice. Marion encouraged her to speak up. Her piece was published and she’s been on a podcast or two.

Anyone can do this. The internet has made it easy for anyone with a phone to make a difference. Our background, age, or experience doesn’t matter. If we have an issue we care about, something that affects our lives or the lives of those around us, we can make an effort to change it. If we want to change something, we have the power to make change happen.

Entrepreneurs and Advocacy

Health care advocacy itself should be very important to us as entrepreneurs and CEOs because not only is it one of our biggest costs, but also because it is an essential part of taking great care of our people and our families. But health care isn’t the only legislative issue we deal with in our organizations. Sometimes those legislative issues can cause a lot of problems in our businesses.

For example, over the past 10 years, there have been some adoption laws, rules, or regulations passed or implemented that have caused fewer children to be able to find loving, permanent families. Working with Adoption.com, I've had to get a lot more involved in advocacy within my niche of adoption over the last decade. I’ve worked with senators, congressmen, government organizations, and associations to try to get bad laws and regulatory implementation changed and prevent more bad laws from being created. 

For example, this morning I did a little work to help encourage an Idaho senator to support some adoption legislation. As another example, when there were regulatory implementation issues causing a decline in international adoption years ago, I was able to go to DC to speak with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Glenn Beck, an adoptive father, had me on his show to discuss the solutions to the issue. It has been amazing over the years to see the people passionate about adoption and children come together to try to impact that change. 

Shiza Shahid is an example of an entrepreneur striving to make a difference. This Stanford University graduate co-founded the Malala Fund with Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Shahid led the organization as founding CEO, focusing on creating access to high-quality education for all children around the world. She also founded The Collective, a community of leading entrepreneurs that come together to build collaborative change (Source: CAA.com).

We often fall into the trap that “somebody should do something” about an issue. However, often, we are one of the somebodies who need to help solve the problem. You can probably make a lot more of a difference than you think when you work together with many others who share your passion.

Removing Conflicts of Interest

Many people who lobby and advocate in D.C. have conflicts of interest. Conflicts of interest take away from a person’s credibility, hurting what they’re trying to accomplish. That person’s opponent can use conflicts of interest to attack them and destroy their credibility. 

In 2010, the U.S. passed the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. Marion described how this database allows any citizen to look up any physician in the country and see how much money they are taking from pharmaceutical manufacturers. 

Marion detailed how important it is to have this information. If I go to a doctor and they prescribe me medication X and I look them up on the database and find out that they’re taking thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical company that manufactures medication X, I’m going to be suspicious; it’s going to make me question whether I actually need that medication or not.

These aren’t the only conflicts of interest. Marion believes that taking speaking or writing fees may do the same thing. Marion said, “As soon as you get paid by someone—a university, a hospital, an insurance company—as soon as you open up your mouth to take a speaking fee, it may make you suspect the same way that a doctor would be suspect by taking fees from pharma.” We can choose to take that money, but it may erode our credibility depending on who is paying for our speaking and writing.

Marion has done something to remove these conflicts of interest. She doesn’t take speaking or writing fees. “I think the fact that I don't take speaking fees, and I know others like me that don't, I think that means something.” Refusing to take these fees gives Marion credibility.

Conflicts of interest can be a big part of reducing credibility. As customers realize we have a conflict of interest—even if we are honest and ethical—their trust declines. We need to remove our conflicts of interest wherever we can to improve our credibility.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Marion for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Anyone can advocate. We don’t need any special qualifications; we just need to care about issues and have a desire to make a difference.
2. When we advocate, we should work together with many other people who share our passion for the issue.
3. There are many issues that affect the businesses that may require us to advocate for our industry, our customers, and our businesses.
4. If we remove our conflicts of interest and communicate that effectively, we will improve our credibility.

Connect with Marion

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Marion or connect with her, you can find her on LinkedIn or visit Practicing Physicians of America.  

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4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Have you been involved in advocacy? If so, how has it affected your business? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/how-to-become-an-advocate-for-our-industry-and-customers/ 

Influencer marketing has grown exponentially within the last few years and is expected to reach a market size of $13.8 billion by 2021. In 2019, the number of influencer agencies and platforms grew to 1390, which is about three times more than the year before (Source: InfluencerMarketingHub). 

In the last episode, we discussed how we can become digital influencers and build our online presence. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how we can collaborate with influencers and take advantage of the opportunity they present to our businesses. 

Benefits of Influencer Marketing 

Influencer marketing allows us to leverage other people’s social media accounts, something businesses are just starting to take advantage of. If we really want to increase our visibility on social media, we need to get people talking about us, and influencer marketing does just that. Instead of bragging about our own products, we can partner with influencers with a strong following who will talk about our products for us. 

Neal shared five benefits of influencer marketing. 

• Builds Trust 

“It comes down to two core facts. People trust people more than ads and social media was created for people, not business,” Neal said.  

Social media is a powerful tool as it allows for virtual word-of-mouth communication between customers. Instead of relying on what we say about our own products or services, customers can talk with friends and other customers. 

“Facebook ads [are] extremely powerful, but you're not going to get word of mouth from it. You may not even build trust from it because it's an ad and people distrust ads more and more,” Neal explained. “The whole idea about influencer marketing is tapping into people that are passionate about your company, about what you do, and having them basically incite word-of-mouth marketing for you.”

Customers build trust with the influencers they follow. Instead of taking the time to build our customers’ trust, we can use the trust they have already established with influencers. If a customer trusts a certain influencer, they will trust the positive things they say about our brand. When influencers on social media recommend products or services, it’s similar to a recommendation from a trusted friend. 

Influencers have become the difference between a connection with a person vs a logo. While a personal brand can help with this as well, it isn’t quite the same. An influencer isn’t trying to sell us something. They are only trying to provide value and customers are more likely to trust them because of it. 

• Increases Credibility

When we collaborate with influencers we gain credibility. As I mentioned above, influencers help our brand build trust. The more trustworthy influencers talk about our brand, the more credible we become. 

“[Influencer marketing] gives you credibility for the fact that you're working together with this person and they're talking about you,” Neal said. “If this person is talking about you, then immediately you become a trustworthy brand. [Customers] may not buy from you, they may not follow you, but at least you're getting in their ear from a trusted entity. I think that's one of the biggest benefits.” 

• Expands Our Reach

There are only so many people that know our business and an influencer will help expose our business to a new community. The chances of any influencer having the exact same followers our brand has are impossibly slim. In fact, most of the people following the influencer we collaborate with may be completely new consumers who have never even heard of our brand. By teaming up with that influencer, we get access to the feed of everyone who follows them. 

• Creates Content

Most influencers are influencers for a reason. They create great content. When we collaborate with them, we get access to their talents and skills. 

When Neal did his first influencer marketing campaign for a client, he reached out to bloggers who posted about motherhood. Often, those mothers’ photography about the client's product was better than anything they were doing. A lot of influencer marketers create great content, even better than what we could create on our own. We can collaborate with them with the goal of using their abilities and talent in creating blogs, photography, or videos for our products and services. 

• Provides a Focus Group 

We can work with influencers and view them as a focus group to learn how we can improve our products and services. 

Neal got a job offer earlier in his career to become a brand manager at Procter and Gamble at their Asia Pacific headquarters in Japan. At that time, they spent a lot of their budget on focus groups. They brought in housewives to talk about their product and give feedback before sending it out into the market. It made Neal think that social media is one big focus group and a team of influencers helps control it. Instead of paying for a focus group, we can look at the one we already have on social media. 

“You now have this really awesome focus group that's going to teach you a lot, not just in terms of how to do better at social and digital marketing, but also what people are talking about, what people say about your competitors, [and] what people are saying about your products. I think that has incredible business value for companies,” Neal said. 

With influencer marketing, we can start with word-of-mouth to gain exposure, leverage their content, and then learn from them as a focus group to see where we should go next with our business. 

How to Collaborate With Influencers

In order to find the right influencers to collaborate with, Neal suggested we start by searching for keywords and using hashtags. What keywords do we use for our business? We can search these on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other channels. Keywords can lead us to influencers who are talking about things that attract our target audience. Which influencers resonate the most with our ideal customer? Those are the influencers we want to collaborate with.

As we search for keywords and do our research, we should be intentional about what platforms we are searching on. If our business doesn’t use YouTube, why would we search for influencers on YouTube? If we mainly use Instagram, we should focus on Instagram influencers. That way, when they talk about our product, they can lead our customers to our social accounts while also raising awareness. 

As we create a list of podcasters, bloggers, and other influencers to choose from, we can also look at the followers we already have. We can start filtering through our followers, people who already know, like, and trust us. These influencers will be more likely to connect with us as we know they already have a strong opinion of our brand. Neal suggests this is even better than trying to start from scratch by searching keywords. 

“I would absolutely start with the people that already know, like, and trust you,” Neal said. “When you start with people that don’t know, like, and trust you, that's when it gets transactional. That's when you get a lot of rejection. That's when you get jaded. . . . When you work with people who already know, like, and trust you, that is your best insurance.” 

Once we’ve determined which influencers we want to work with and have made an agreement with them, Neal suggested two ways we can work with them.  

• Give the Gift of a Free Product

When we connect with an influencer, Neal recommends we give a free product or free service. We need to understand that the goal of working with an influencer is not to monetize them; it is to spread the word about our business. We should give them free products so they become a customer and can share positive reviews to bring in other potential customers. 

“Why wouldn't you want them to become a lifetime customer? You're not looking to monetize them. You're thinking, if they become a user for a lifetime and they're always talking about you, every month they're gonna introduce new users to you. So why are you trying to go dirt cheap?” Neal said. 

One way many businesses work with influencers is by sending them a free package they can open on their social media accounts, in an Instagram story for example. The influencer will then talk about the products or services and share their positive ratings. We could send packages every month or offer lifetime value to continually strengthen the customer relationship with our influencers so they will want to share more about our products.     

If we want lifetime reciprocity from the influencer, we should provide continual value. We shouldn’t try to give the least we can give. We should give them sustained value so they give us sustained value in return. “Influencer marketing is not a campaign, it's a commitment,” Neal said. We should make our offer really special so the influencer wants to work with us. 

• Provide a New Experience 

We can provide our influencers with exclusive experiences. We can host an event and bring them out to it. It comes at a cost, but it can create a year's worth of content. The influencer will also feel bonded to us and feel like a part of our community. The stronger relationship they have with us, the more genuine their comments on our products and services will be. 

The goal of influencer marketing is to invest in people instead of investing in ads. As we do this, we will see benefits such as increased credibility and trust with our audience, an increase in leads, a bigger reach, a stronger online presence, and more high-quality content. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Neal for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Influencer marketing allows us to leverage other people’s social media accounts. Instead of bragging about our own products, we can partner with influencers who will talk about our products for us. 
2. Influencer marketing builds trust, increases credibility, and expands our reach. 
3. Most influencers are influencers for a reason. They create great content. When we collaborate with them, we get access to their talents and skills. 
4. Social media is one big focus group and a team of influencers helps control it. We can work with influencers and view them as a focus group to learn how we can improve our products and services. 
5. In order to find the right influencers to collaborate with, we can start by searching for keywords and looking at the followers we already have. 
6. The goal of working with an influencer is not to monetize them; it is to spread the word about our business.
7. Influencer marketing is not a campaign, it's a commitment.
8. We can give influencers free products or services or provide them with a new experience to build our relationship with them. 

Connect with Neal

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Neal or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at NealSchaffer.com. You can also find his podcast online and his books on his website. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

Have you used influencer marketing? If so, what benefits have you seen? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-benefits-of-influencer-marketing/ 

In the United States, adults use digital media for an average of 7 hours and 50 minutes each day (Source: eMarketer). This includes an average of 145 minutes on social media every day (Source: Statista) plus additional time spent on the web, CTV, digital video, and digital audio. The consumer is spending more and more of their time living in a digital world, and if we want our businesses to succeed, we should market in that same digital world. 

Neal is the author of four sales and marketing books including Maximize Your Social and The Age of Influence, a groundbreaking book redefining digital influence. He's also the host of the podcast, Maximize Your Social Influence.

Neal Schaffer is a leading social media strategist who helps innovative businesses digitally transform their sales and marketing strategies. He's the founder of the digital marketing consultancy PDCA Social and is a fractional CMO for several companies. He also teaches digital marketing at Rutgers Business School and the Irish Management Institute. 

In today’s episode, Neal shared how we can become digital influencers and build our online presence. 

Becoming an Influencer 

I asked Neal to share the biggest business tectonic shift he sees in today’s marketplace and he told me it is the growth of the digital world. Over the past decade, businesses have started waking up and seeing that consumers live in a digital world. They shop online, they consume content online, they communicate online, and they go online for entertainment and solutions to their problems. If we want to succeed, we need to be digitally engaging. 

“People are still searching on Google, people are still reading emails, and people are spending a ton of time on social media. You have to nail those three areas,” Neal explained. “They're equally important for different stages of the funnel; they all have the unique roles they play, but [being digital] should be the 100% focus of your marketing today.”

Neal said if we’re not creating a digital presence for our businesses, we’re going to be invisible to our consumers. We can begin by building our own platforms such as a website or social media account. By expanding our reach, building an audience, and providing unique value to customers, and establishing trust we begin to become influencers in our specific niche.

Neal shared four tips we need to consider as we become digital influencers.

• Create Content 

To be an influencer, we need to create content. “How are influencers influential today? They have a platform, and they're creating content,” Neal said. “You have got to create a platform. You have got to create content. If you can't do that, you want to tap into other people who can.” 

During Neal’s entrepreneurial journey, he began tuning into the challenges and issues other people had. He listened to and stayed in direct contact with his customers. While he was paying attention to the people around him, he found there were a lot of issues about marketing technology. He specifically noticed a lot of questions about social media marketing and influencer marketing.

From the problems his customers had, Neal found a way to be a solution. He wanted to give a unique perspective on marketing, so he wrote a book on it and became known for influencer marketing. Not only did he create a book, but he also built a website, created blog content, and started a podcast. If we want to create influence online, it comes down to having a platform and creating content. Most powerful influencers post at least once a day and this often includes posts on multiple platforms. If we want to build influence, we should start creating consistent, frequent, and valuable content at least once a week, but daily would be much better. 

• Be Passionate

If we want to become an influencer, we need to build an audience of people who are willing to listen to us. To do this, we should start by connecting with our customers' passions, what I call passion marketing. Instead of solely focusing on our own passions, we can find ways our passions overlap with our customers’. As we do this, we begin to establish and build strong relationships with our audience. 

“If you want to tap into people with a certain passion, you need to show it yourself,” Neal said. “That's what social media is great for. I think if you do that and share your passion, you will attract these people with that similar passion, who won't mind spending money with you.”

As we share our passions with the digital world, we will eventually find our tribe. People will connect with us through our passions and be more willing to spend money on our product or service if it is something they love. 

“When you’re really passionate about something, you will invest the money in it,” Neal said. For example, Neal shared that he has a passion for music and so he is willing to spend money on building his CD collection. If we can connect with our customer’s passions, we will have a much higher chance of monetizing our businesses.

• Stay in Direct Contact With Our Customers

We want to be in direct contact with our customers. It’s the only way we will know enough about their problems to effectively solve them. 

The biggest mistake Neal made was caused by a lack of connection. While he was working with a company, they lost one of their biggest clients. “We did not know what was going on in the decision-making process and technical evaluations, but our partner was saying, ‘Oh, you're a shoo-in,’” Neal said. “[But] then we didn't get the deal.” 

He continued, “You can never assume anything in business. A lot of people internally assume because they're working through a partner, [they already have] direct sales. And to this day, although I see the benefit of working through distributors, you’ve got to understand what's going on with the client with your own ears.”

We should understand what is going on with our clients and customers at all times. We have to pay attention to what is going on and how their needs and wants are changing. If we aren’t in direct contact with our customers, we may have a miscommunication and end up losing them. 

“Even if you work through distributors resellers, you have got to keep your finger on the pulse directly because everybody else in between is just out; they have their own business objectives,” Neal said. “You need to check in and really keep your finger on the pulse of that end customer if you ultimately want to be successful.”

• Use Failure as an Opportunity for Growth

Despite his failures, Neal was able to push past them and find room for improvement. “With every mistake is an opportunity to improve,” Neal said. “If you're an entrepreneur, you're going to make mistakes. You just don't want to make the same mistake twice.”

As we develop our digital influence, it is essential to remember it will take time and failure to get to the point we want to. We have to accept failure as a lesson and make changes accordingly. 

When people hit a roadblock or brick wall, they often get frustrated and want to give up. While it’s natural to feel discouraged, we can shift the way we look at challenges so they become less of a roadblock, and more of a hurdle we can jump over. It is about a mindset and attitude shift. If we can look at a mistake as an opportunity to pivot, it will bring so much more success. 

We will deal with rejection. Every successful entrepreneur has experienced or will experience rejection. We should view rejection as a sign we need to do something differently to improve. We can take every bad customer review as feedback and a way for growth. As we learn from the feedback, we can build something that will resonate with our customers so we can start to get testimonials and reviews. Positive testimonials and reviews are key to building our influence, but it may take some bad reviews and changes first. 

We should remember to keep our vision and final goal in mind. There will always be times of danger, however, if we are serving our community and keep our end goal in mind, we will have the mentality to push the small mistakes aside and not let them get in our way of fulfilling our mission. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Neal for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. The consumer is spending more and more of their time living in a digital world. If we want our businesses to succeed, we should do the same. 
2. If we want to build digital influence, we need to create content. We should start creating consistent, frequent, and valuable content at least once a week. 
3. As we connect to our customers’ passions, they will be more willing to spend money on our products or services.
4. We want to be in direct contact with our customers. It’s the only way we will know enough about their problems to effectively solve them. 
5.  If we can look at a mistake as an opportunity to pivot and grow, it will bring so much more success. 

Connect with Neal

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Neal or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit his website at NealSchaffer.com. You can also find his podcast online and his books on his website. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How have you built digital influence? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/147-how-to-become-a-digital-influencer/ 

Welcome back to another episode with Paul Chambers. In the last episode, we discussed how to take care of our customers using recurring revenue models. Today, we’re going to discuss the pros and cons of several different recurring revenue models, along with tips and tricks for each model.

Subscription Boxes

Today there are thousands of different subscription boxes we can subscribe to, such as Ipsy and Birchbox for beauty products, Naturebox and Urthbox for super yummy natural snacks, Bulubox for workout products, the Beard Club, and the Candy Club. There are a lot of opportunities with subscription boxes. People love to watch unboxings on YouTube or Instagram. They’re great for holidays and events. There are boxes for travel, for kids, for lifestyle, or for your horse or dog that you get on a monthly basis. Paul said, “If there's a niche out there, there's an opportunity to build a subscription box.” 

There can be many pros to subscription boxes. One of these is the recurring revenue it provides every month, which can take a lot of stress off an entrepreneur's shoulders. It also limits unnecessary expenses because we only have to order enough products to fulfill our subscriptions. Our customers can also have a lot of fun with the discovery and delight side of subscription boxes by introducing people to new products and working with a lot of different brands to put new items in the box. When Paul was working on the Gentleman’s box, they worked with Manscaped and Dollar Shave Club.

A con of subscription boxes is they tend to have a faster turnover. After six or seven months, people can get what Paul calls box burnout and stop subscribing.

The Right Software

Picking the right software to run a subscription box business can be tricky. It’s important to know what we’re trying to accomplish. Cratejoy can be a one software option because it is fast and easy to build a subscription box. They also have a marketplace, so they already have an audience for us to sell to. However, it can have its challenges with products and flexibility. 

Shopify is another platform that allows us to sell subscriptions through their widget where we can add on plugins and easily build on top of that. But it doesn’t have an audience like Cratejoy, so we’d have to go market on mysubscriptionaddiction.com or other places like that.

There are OrderGroove and Zuora that take it to the next level. OrderGroove is making big waves; they have some cool AI features and they are getting tightly integrated with Shopify. Zuora is an enterprise software company that is good for larger companies like Nike. 

When Paul launched the Gentleman’s Box, Cratejoy didn’t exist yet, so they used WooCommerce which is a little more flexible, but they had to play with it a bit to get their subscription box management the way they wanted it.

Discovery and Delight

Subscription boxes tend to go two ways: discovery and delight or replenishable. Discovery and delight boxes send new products that customers can find joy in. They aren’t necessarily products that need to be replaced on a regular basis. 

Paul said these kinds of boxes tend to work well on a quarterly basis rather than a monthly one. On a monthly basis, people often unsubscribe after about six or seven months, but they’ll stay longer on a quarterly basis.

Replenishable 

A replenishable service or product is something people continue to need. It’s a great subscription model because customers must buy these every month or so anyway, so making it a subscription box that shows up right at their door makes it very easy for them. These are products like razors, which Dollar Shave Club does, or toothbrushes, which Quip does. However, this type of subscription isn’t limited to boxes. SaaS products often work great in this category because customers need access to that service every month.

Early on in the days of Gentleman’s Box, Paul and the founding team were thinking about raising capital, so they met with some investors. One of those people was Jack Abraham, a successful entrepreneur, and investor. He told them, “I love what you're doing. This is so cool, but it needs some sort of replenishable product inside.”

The team told him to thank you but they were happy with what they had. Abraham went on to co-found Hims, which is now one of the leading hair growth subscriptions, doing exactly what Gentleman’s Box should have been doing, Paul said.

If we are doing a subscription box and there’s an opportunity to put a replenishable product in it, we should take it because it will increase the longevity of our customers.

SaaS

The pros of SaaS are longevity and opportunity. “If you can build a good solution that people love and need, they're . . . less likely to leave you at some point in time. They'll stay on as long as they're using that solution,” Paul said. SaaS gives us that audience and the opportunity to build and expand our audience.

SaaS also has lots of opportunities. Paul said, “There [are] tens of thousands of SaaS companies out there, but tons of opportunity still to create solutions that people are looking for.”

We can look at a company like Canva, which is very popular and successful. They could have looked at Adobe’s subscription for Photoshop and thought, there’s no way we could compete with them. But they didn’t give up and tried to find a way to make it easier. “My philosophy is to leave no stone unturned. Look at what your biggest pain points are and challenges in your day and if something doesn’t already exist for that, then that's a great opportunity to build,” Paul said. 

The challenge with SaaS is we must frequently evolve it. We can’t just create the software, put it out in the world, and sit back as the money starts rolling in. Paul had this problem with Quotegine. They did just that and thought they were done, but then people started getting bugs, breaking the system, and requesting new features and integrations. Paul and his team hadn’t anticipated that. 

“You can't have that mentality of building a SaaS solution that you're not going to need to continue to invest in,” Paul said. Having a technical co-founder, especially in the beginning, can help because paying developers can be expensive.

Membership Models

The key to membership is consistently providing value. Paul described how the Subscription Trade Association is constantly putting out new content, and they’re constantly deciding what they’re going to give away for free. “We err on the side of giving more away than we probably even should, because . . . we want to grow the community,” Paul said. “We want to help people as much as possible, and if they find this helpful, then they'll engage and subscribe and become members.”

Being a member and being a subscriber can overlap. For example, Paul and I are both members of Amazon Prime, but we also subscribe to Amazon Prime. “A good membership,” Paul said, “is something you'll pay for on a monthly basis and never question that charge or not even know when that charges your credit card.” 

Paul and I couldn’t remember when Amazon charges us or even how much the membership is now. This is a great example of customers never questioning the value of that membership.

Amazon isn’t perfect, however. Personally, I don’t feel like part of a community when I say I’m a member of Amazon Prime. I pay for it—and I will continue to pay for it—but I get a service from it, not a community. Amazon is missing the opportunity to build that community. For example, with their streaming service, they could create a way to watch TV and movies with other members online as Disney+ and Netflix have done. 

Community is a crucial part of membership. Without it, our audience may just feel like subscribers. We should be doing everything we can to foster our membership communities.

Access/Streaming

The next recurring revenue stream is what I call the access model, but it could also be referred to as streaming. This model is where customers pay to access something. Streaming services like Netflix and Hulu fit into this, but it can also include something like Adobe Stock Images where customers pay to have access to millions of images.

A concern that small businesses have with this model is they’re too small to create something like Adobe’s image library. They don’t have the resources or the finances to build out that library. 

The access model is a two-sided marketplace: there are creators putting content out there and people accessing content from the creators. It would be hard for a small business to create all that content themselves. If I want to start a stock photography site, instead of going out and taking thousands of pictures myself, I could let my audience provide pictures. It may still be a challenge to find photographers, provide them with value, and get them to feed my library, but it is easier than trying to do it all myself. 

On the streaming side of access, we may think all the big companies (YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or Disney+, Amazon Prime, Peacock, Paramount Plus, etc.) have it covered, but Paul believes there’s still a lot of opportunities out there. If the top 10 YouTube creators right now started their own streaming service, people would download that app immediately, and they would have a good chance at competing with the big companies.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Paul for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. There are tons of opportunities with subscription boxes. Consider creating a box with a replenishable product to increase the longevity of customers.
2. The SaaS model is a great way to have lifetime (or at least very long-term) customers. However, we need to ensure we are constantly providing value by evolving and upgrading the software.
3. To think of a SaaS solution, find the pain points in your industry and see if there is existing software that could help fix that. Is there a way you could add a tectonic shift to an existing SaaS product, as Google Docs did by adding remote collaboration to a market that Microsoft Word used to dominate?
4. The membership model should be about providing value and creating a community where your target audience can feel they belong.
5. When building an access library, we can use our audience to help us provide content as long as we are also providing them value.

Connect with Paul

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Paul or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit subta.com.

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5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

What recurring revenue streams have you tried and what pros and cons have you seen from them? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/the-pros-and-cons-of-different-recurring-revenue-models/ 

Recurring revenue is a great model to have because it can provide us with stability, but how do we make sure we continue to provide value to our recurring customers and not just treat them like commodities? In today’s episode, Paul Chambers and I discuss the ins and outs of recurring revenue and customer service, as well as Paul’s entrepreneurial journey. 

Paul Chambers is an expert in subscription-based business models. For more than 20 years, he has built, scaled, and sold multiple subscription-focused businesses. He partnered to create and sell a successful subscription box company, Gentleman's Box. He also operates the Subscription Summit and the Subscription Trade Association (SUBTA), which has the largest conferences and is the largest association in the space. 

The Importance of Customer Care

Successfully starting and running the Subscription Summit has been one of Paul’s greatest home runs. That first summit they held was a rollercoaster of emotion as they planned and had speakers back out, forcing them to find new ones. “Even though it was a lot of friends and family, it set the stage for where we've been able to take it and where we've been able to help that community, and it's the start of something really big in a movement that's really big out there,” Paul said.

With the accomplishment, Paul still has two big items on his bucket list. First, he wants to have Elon Musk, who has talked about Tesla becoming a subscription service, join him on stage at a summit. Second, Paul would like to reach companies like Comcast and Xfinity that struggle with customer care. “It's no surprise that I think this is . . . one of the worst subscription companies out there in terms of how they handle their customers, how they deal with their customers, [and] how they don't even treat their customers like customers. They treat them just like commodities.”

Companies like this know we need their services, so they continue to raise prices. With SUBTA, Paul believes there is an opportunity to reach whoever’s in charge of customer care and help them realize their customer service needs to be better.

“That's our opportunity to make an impact,” Paul said. “And at the end of the day, if we can help Comcast fix that, then we can impact millions of lives. . . . That's what's super important in this space [of] recurring revenue. It's not [just] one transaction, it's ongoing, and you have an opportunity to make a big impact in people's lives.”

How do we make sure we’re making the right impact with our customers? Here are Paul’s tips for treating customers well in recurring revenue models.

Increasing Longevity and Building Relationships

About 10 years ago, Paul was working on a company called Quotegine, which was an online proposal software. The company used a recurring revenue model. Paul said, “[Recurring revenue is] so nice because you can count on it, you can build your model around it, you can understand your acquisition costs, and it's not a one-off transaction. . . . For me, it's a comfort level . . . because I can count on it.”

Paul built another piece of software called Unity that helps teachers’ unions collect dues from the teachers online instead of having to hand collect checks or charge credit cards. “Finding an opportunity where something is a very manual process,” Paul said, “and putting a piece of software behind it, and then collecting the subscription revenue behind it as well is oftentimes a very fun way to look at a traditional business model.”

These kinds of recurring revenue models have so many benefits like reliability, sustainability, and longevity, but they can also help us plan for the future and give us higher valuations when we are ready to sell. Paul encourages us to increase that longevity by doing things like making it easy for customers to pause or cancel subscriptions because they’ll likely come back. As we understand the customer lifecycle, we can keep giving them value and tailoring our products to them. We can use recurring revenue to build a better relationship with our customers instead of just focusing on the transaction.

The Company’s Mindset

When I asked Paul if he considers the SaaS recurring revenue stream to be the best recurring model, he said it was a tough call. “While I just finished saying SaaS tends to see a little bit higher valuations, I think there's a big movement in the DTC (direct to consumer) space and other types of subscription that can yield just as much value. Any subscription is a great one because there's recurring revenue behind it. It's, oftentimes, the mindset of the company that will dictate that success or failure.”

If our goal is just to get subscribers without nurturing them, caring for them, or giving value to them, we won’t be as successful as we could be and we could fail. “The truly successful subscription is one where the company embraces [a nurturing] model and continues to find ways to enhance it,” Paul said.

MeUndies is a great example of a company that does this. They don’t look at their customers as subscribers, they look at them as members. They must be constantly asking, “How can we continue to do more for them? How can we continue to offer more value to our members as part of this?”

Subscribers vs Members

What is the difference between subscribers and members? A subscriber is someone who pays us on a monthly basis, and a member is someone who belongs to something. There is a difference between how we provide them value. We might give members exclusive access to events, special promos or deals, special pricing on additional purchases, etc. We continue to provide them value beyond the product they are subscribing to.

Paul’s Journey 

Paul started his first business when he was 16 years old. He borrowed $10,000 from his grandfather to build an internet service provider. He bought a bunch of equipment, but he had no idea what he was doing and it failed. He needed to pay back his grandfather, so he started building websites using the equipment he’d bought. He started a website hosting business as well and that was his first true subscription company.

He loved the website hosting business because it was hard for people to leave. They knew they had to pay their bills every month and if they didn't we’d have to shut their website down and nobody ever wanted that, so it gave him a more secure income. Paul worked in that business for 10-15 years until the FBI told him he had some bad guys inside his servers. 

After that, Paul decided to leave hosting, but he still had his business building websites, and he still has that agency today. About six years ago, two of Paul’s close friends approached him with the idea for the Gentleman’s Box, a monthly subscription that sends ties, socks, and pocket squares to make every man a true gentleman. Paul loved the idea. He said he would help them out in exchange for an equity stake in the company. He became a partner and they built the company until they exited last year to focus on their summit.

As they were working on the Gentleman’s Box, Paul and his partners tried to find a conference where they could meet other subscription box owners, experts, and entrepreneurs. They searched for one but couldn’t find any, so they decided to create their own. 

They learned it was hard to run a conference, but they pushed through and had the first one in 2016 with about 200 people. They persevered and in 2019 they had over 1,000 attendees. Their focus now is to help create the biggest, most supportive community around the direct-to-consumer subscription industry by making the barrier to entry very low and providing tons of value.

Build a Community First 

Paul has realized the importance of reflecting on mistakes, learning from them, and moving on. “I'm never one to say, dwell on the past, go back and say, ‘Gosh, I wish I had done this differently.’ It's always good to reflect. What I always say to the team is, ‘It's okay to make mistakes, as long as we don't make the same ones over and over again. Let's learn from our lessons and let's move on.’”

When they first launched SUBTA, they made some mistakes. Paul said at their first event they should have given everybody a free membership for a year, which would have immediately grown their community. Instead, they tried selling it for about $40 a month. “We weren't exactly focused on the solution, more on what the end was. [We] didn't put the building pieces, the billing components, in place.”

When we focus on our customers first and on building that community, we can show them we’re going to treat them well and it will grow loyalty and credibility. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Paul for sharing your stories and insights with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Recurring revenue can usually provide stability and sustainability for our businesses. 
2. Instead of just focusing on the transaction, recurring revenue allows us to continually provide value to our customers and tailor our products to them. 
3. As we continue to provide value, we can continually develop relationships with our customers.
4. Which recurring model we choose doesn’t matter so much as our mindset about it. If we have a nurturing mindset, it greatly increases our chances of success.
5. Treating our customers like members can help us constantly provide them more value.
6. Like Paul, we can build supportive communities in our niche by always providing value and focusing on that community first.

Connect with Paul

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Paul or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn or visit subta.com.

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content:

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How have you used recurring revenue models to provide great value to your customers? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/building-customer-relationships-with-recurring-revenue/(opens in a new tab)