The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry

While working for a fee-only RIA firm I was charged with developing a trading system that met the standards that we were held to as fiduciaries, i.e. worked in the best interests of our clients at all times.After three years of stress and anxiety The Safety First System emerged.Auto-Adaptive Asset Allocation defines it but, if you want less hyphens, it is a system that follows the concepts of Dr. Andre Lo's "Market Adaptive Hypothesis". Essentially, find out what the market is doing and you do that. Take the market's existing characteristics, put them into a scoring and ranking mechanism, drop in your choices and allocate assets to the beauty contest winners.The book will be instrumental in allowing me to provide access to The System for 401k participants who are working toward the definition of for high-net-worth individuals.Our clients went 20 years without a quarterly loss.

The media could not be loaded. These days, just about anything you need can be purchased through a subscription. And when you think about it, it actually makes buying easier. Before I read this book I didn't realize how many products and services I already subscribe to.So in the book, John explains that you are now competing in the new subscription economy, and it's up to you to decide if you're playing defense or offense.Warrillow explains that subscribers, or "automatic customers" are the key to increasing cash flow, igniting growth, and boosting the value of your company.The book has three parts: The first part explains why subscribers are better than customers. Then he goes into the nine different subscription business models. Your business will fall into one of them. The last part of the book goes into detail on how to go about building your subscription business including all the math behind it.If growing your business (and possibly selling it one day) is on your mind, you'll want to read this book.

Synopsis: Subscription Biz models are here to stay in everything from software, to content to household consumables.The author has listed 9 specific models/approaches to take:1. Membership Website Model: Works best in a tightly defined niche with specialized knowledge is needed2. All you can eat library model: Evergreen content is an example. Think netflix - even the most addicted watcher could not go through it all3. Private Club Model: Limited supply being sold to an affluent clientele. High prices, low numbers4. Front of the line model: Different prices for different levels of service/support. works best on complex products/services.Think salesforce.com's model for how your complaints are dealt with5.The Consumables Model: Selling products that naturally run out as a service, where ordering things can be a chore. Food, blades, vitamins etc.6. Surprise Box Model: when you have a network that is willing to buy deeply discounted consumables from manufacturers at deep discount. The idea being some of the consumers will then order a subscription service at regular prices.7. Simplifier Model: Its a complex word, simply the buying process and choice. Works best with an affluent consumer needing a service on an ongoing basis8. Network Model: fixed price, and value of service grows as number of subscribers grow. Think phones9. Peace of Mind Model: this is the insurance sale , where you pay for a peace of mind in the event you may need the service.He closes the book out with the new math of the subscription game with concents such as Customer acquisition cost, Monthly renewal rate, Life time Value of customer, Margins and Churn.The book is a good way to think about what models will work best in your industry / Excellent premier.If you are in a service biz or work with technology - BUY THE BOOK to learn the new language and math of business!What would have made it more powerful was a workbook or a step by step process to figure out which combinations of business models work best in the type of industries. Further commentary on the drawbacks of each model would have made this an invaluable text.Mahipal Luniawww.TheRenaissancePath.comwww,RadicalChangeGroup.comwww,MountainViewAiki.com

I've read a LOT of books about starting and growing a business and every now and then one crosses my path that stops me in my tracks and makes me re-assess what I'm doing.In The Automatic Customer, John Warrillow spells out the benefits of, and more importantly, the path towards creating a subscription based business model. I've had 2 x subscription businesses for a few years now so some of this was just affirmation and research for me. However, when it came to measuring the success of the subscription business model, Warrillow crystallizes exactly what you should be measuring and the benchmarks to aim for. This was music to my ears.He has clearly done his research (and references it for further reading - thank you) and distills the complexities of running a subscription based business into clear, actionable steps.This book was recommended to me by one of my students and I am eternally grateful. Our Director's meetings have a new agenda with new metrics and a whole new conversation about our viability threshold.

This is a great idea. Years in legal publishing -- where publishers sell not only a book on some legal topic but also automatic annual case law updates for nearly as much as the original book -- followed by years selling business consumables by mail showed me the power of a business model based on subscription sales. Your best prospect for a new order is a current customer, and the best way to get that order is through automatic reorders. For a long time, this approach was the secret of a few businesses, like publishing, but now technology makes it available to many more. Warrillow explains how. If you can apply what he says to what you do, it will transform the economics of your business. "Until forbid" -- legalese for "Keep sending me this product every week/month/year until I explicitly say to stop" -- are magic words.