Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches – Details, episodes & analysis

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Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches

Robbie Kellman Baxter

Business

Frequency: 1 episode/20d. Total Eps: 94

Subscription models are crazy powerful. Savvy small companies can easily deploy them to knock huge Goliaths off kilter. We’ve seen it in entertainment, software, hardware, news, retail, hospitality—the list goes on. In her podcast series, Robbie Kellman Baxter interviews the leaders of this revolution about how they’re using subscription pricing and membership models to redefine the biggest industries and generate predictable recurring revenue along the way.

Recent rankings

Latest chart positions across Apple Podcasts and Spotify rankings.

Apple Podcasts

🇬🇧 Great Britain - management
09/06/2026
#75
🇨🇦 Canada - management
24/05/2026
#82
🇨🇦 Canada - management
23/05/2026
#54
🇫🇷 France - management
29/03/2026
#82

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

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https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/r
65 shares
https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/how-to-subscribe-rate-our-podcast-5-stars-on-itunes/
60 shares
https://robbiekellmanbaxter.com/the-forever-transaction/
31 shares

https://twitter.com/robbiebax
63 shares
https://twitter.com/caitlin_roman
1 share
https://twitter.com/robb...
1 share

https://www.facebook.com/MembershipEconomy/
32 shares
https://www.facebook.com/robbiekellmanbaxter
31 shares

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RSS feed quality

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Score global : 68%

Publication history

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Latest published episodes

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How to Price for Both B2B and B2C Subscriptions with American Home Shield’s Braeden Russell

Season 6 · Episode 77

Wednesday, October 2, 2024 • Duration 44:57

Making pricing simple can be really complicated, especially in the world of subscriptions, where every pricing change can affect how much your members trust you. How do you manage different pricing for different segments? And how do you change that pricing over time?

Today's guest, Braeden Russell, is the Director of Pricing for American Home Shield, a home warranty provider with over 2 million members. He needs to optimize the price for the realtors, who often gift the first year of coverage to new homeowners, with the pricing needs of the homeowners themselves, who will eventually be responsible for the relationship.

In this episode, you'll learn how to balance the pricing needs of your B2B and B2C members, when to bill monthly versus annually, and how you can use pricing to drive loyalty among your best members.

Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Here’s How »

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How Membership is Transforming Magazines with Katie Vanneck-Smith, CEO of Hearst UK

Season 6 · Episode 76

Wednesday, September 18, 2024 • Duration 43:36

The subscription stories of publications like The Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Tortoise Media have one person in common, Katie Vanneck-Smith.

In her latest role, Katie is going beyond subscriptions. She's leading Hearst UK's efforts to create deep, valuable memberships around each of their 16 specialty magazines, titles ranging from Elle to Men's Health to Good Housekeeping.

In this episode, you'll learn how to build a platform that allows for rapid launches of multiple brand memberships, while still incorporating unique features and pricing bundles. You'll also gain insights on how generative AI will and won't affect the publishing world and why the forever promise of news differs from that of specialty content.

Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Here’s How »

Join the Subscription Stories Community today:

How a Subscription can “Smooth the Lumps” in B2B Services with DDI’s Dr. Tacy Byham

Season 6 · Episode 67

Wednesday, February 7, 2024 • Duration 40:35

You're in for a special treat today. My guest, Dr. Tacy Byham, is the CEO of Development Dimensions International, or DDI, a global leadership consulting firm that helps organizations hire, promote, and develop exceptional leaders. A few years ago, I worked with Tacy and her team as they incorporated subscriptions into their business model. The results have been extraordinary. Three years into the launch, over 50 percent of DDI's revenue comes from subscription clients.

I've been asking Tacy to share her journey for quite some time, and I'm thrilled that she finally agreed. In today's conversation, we'll talk about how subscriptions can smooth out the lumps in B2B services, how to put together the right team with the right mindset for subscriptions, and how to keep up the momentum after the initial experiments with subscriptions are over.

Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Here’s How »

Join the Subscription Stories Community today:

Subscription Pricing, Metrics and the Changing Role of the CFO with Maxio’s Randy Wootton

Season 6 · Episode 66

Wednesday, January 24, 2024 • Duration 36:21

The world of B2B subscriptions has changed a lot since companies like Salesforce first paved the way for what would become known as Software-as-a-Service. And while there are hundreds of marketing and sales-oriented SaaS products, it's taken a lot longer for the subscription model to be fully embraced in the CFO's office.

Randy Wootton has seen the evolution of SaaS and understands the changing role of the CFO better than most. He's led businesses focused on sales and marketing solutions at companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Rocketfuel, but more recently took over the CEO role at Maxio, a leading provider of billing and financial ops solutions for B2B SaaS companies.

In this very rich and full conversation, we talk about why pricing and packaging of subscriptions is so hard, the power of a pricing council, and the changing role of the CFO in a SaaS world.

Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Here’s How »

Join the Subscription Stories Community today:

Best Practices in Subscription Funnel Management with Ken Houseman, VP, Product at The New York Times

Season 6 · Episode 65

Wednesday, January 10, 2024 • Duration 28:48

If your subscription uses a freemium model, it can be tricky to decide what’s always free, what’s free for a while, and what’s always behind the paywall. Knowing how to manage people at each stage of the funnel can be really challenging.

Today’s guest, Ken Houseman, is an expert on both the strategy and the technology required to monetize the funnel for acquisition, upsell, and retention. Today’s conversation isn’t based purely on Ken’s work as VP of Product for The New York Times, and in no way represents the editorial perspective of the organization. Ken’s experience there, as well as his work with organizations, including Oracle, Nike, and even the US military, have shaped his perspective on managing the customer relationship.

In this conversation, we discuss why retention is the next obsession for subscription leaders, what needs to be different about how to optimize your ERP for subscriptions, and a few of the less obvious things that can go wrong on the path to conversion.

Love the show? Rate us ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts!

Here’s How »

Join the Subscription Stories Community today:

Season Five Wrap-Up and Season Six Sneak Peek with Robbie Kellman Baxter

Season 5 · Episode 65

Wednesday, December 6, 2023 • Duration 02:03

Season 6 is launching soon, but while you wait, catch up on our most recent season. Some of Season 5’s most popular episodes include Mighty Network’s Gina Bianchini returning to subscription stories for a second time to share her wisdom about building purpose-driven communities, as well as Dan Zavorotny of Nutrisense talking about blending hardware, software, and services into a single subscription, and Anne Janzer on subscription marketing.

We went deep on customer success with Rod Cherkas, author of the Chief Customer Officer Playbook, and about scaling membership with Pavilion Founder, Sam Jacobs. We talked a lot about subscription product design with Silicon Valley Product Builder, Tom Willerer, Samsara’s CPO, Jeff Hausman, and Mailin Jappé of Acer.

I always love conversations with academic researchers with a strong practical mindset, and this season I was happy to host Harvard Business School’s Ava Escarza and. And we got into the details of two of the trickiest parts of subscription design, pricing and the law, with respectively, and .

Keeping Complex IOT Subscriptions Simple for Customers with Samsara CPO Jeff Hausman

Season 5 · Episode 64

Wednesday, September 13, 2023 • Duration 40:16

Subscriptions are going beyond software, content, and community, and increasingly are providing access to the physical world. The internet of things lends itself well to providing subscribers’ ongoing benefits, blending data from sensors and cameras with sophisticated software. This type of subscription can be complex to build, but has to provide value that is simple for subscribers to understand.

My guest today, Jeff Hausman, is the Chief Product Officer at Samsara.

Samsara provides an integrated subscription-based platform to increase safety, efficiency, and sustainability in the physical operations world. Think trucks, cargo, oil fields, and construction sites.

I invited Jeff to talk about how his team uses customer input to develop his product roadmap, how they bundle hardware and software to deliver on their forever promise, and how they've partnered across the ecosystem to keep things simple for their subscribers.

Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

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RSS feed quality and score

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Apple Podcasts

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Subscription Stories: True Tales from the Trenches – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

Other99+

Twitter3

Facebook2

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Other99+

Twitter3

Facebook2