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Thoughts on subscription models, tripwires and upselling.

Transcription

Taco Bell’s, Taco Lover’s Pass.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I can’t believe it. This is a really interesting concept, especially when it comes to business.

So this is a show where we talk to people who are business owners when people want to be business owners or people that are at least executives within their business.

You’re the movers and shakers, the ones that really make it work from top to bottom.

And I wanted to talk about this concept of the Taco Bell that the taco pass created by Taco Bell.

Look at this, look at this article that I came across this was this particular one was in USA Today. There were a lot of people that talked about it but it basically says you pay $10. And you get, I believe, 30 days of tacos.

So you get a taco a day. But you can go every single day into Taco Bell and get a taco for $10. And I think it limits it to one a day from my understanding. But this is an interesting, really interesting concept, I want you to see it first from the consumer end, and then look at it from business owners’ end.

So from a consumer end, there are a lot of people that I know at one time, at one time in my past, I was eating from Taco Bell on a regular basis.

I would have gladly paid $10 once to have a taco every single day.

No problem whatsoever.

And it’s a done deal for people who are hardcore Taco Bell people.

How do you go wrong and how does Taco Bell go all this time or any restaurant that you know of without offering subscriptions?

Subscriptions work in just about every single place you could think of I have not found a business yet that you cannot somehow tie a subscription to if you can’t, that business has other issues that needs to be that need to be fixed.

But there’s no reason why you should not be able to have a service or a product that can be offered by subscription. Any fast food joint can easily offer a similar deal.

And why not?

Why not make it renewable to where every month that automatically charges you another $10 and tries to bring you back into Taco Bell more often than they would have otherwise.

How many people are going to pass up Taco Bell when they have a subscription?

You could take Amazon Prime, you could take anything, and there’s so much magic to the concept of a subscription.

It’s unbelievable that most businesses don’t take advantage of it.

Go check out this book, the automatic customer.

I’ve talked about many times, I don’t have a physical copy in front of me. So I put up this picture.

This book is incredible.

It’s the best book I’ve ever read on subscription model, whether you’re talking about a membership, whether you’re talking about what would be considered a traditional subscription.

Everything that came from magazines and everything else, all the way down to when you’re talking about Netflix, whether you’re talking about Amazon Prime, whether you’re talking about all the other things that you pay for on a monthly basis, I know it’s driving a lot of people nuts, because like I’m paying for everything on a monthly basis.

It’s true. But we’re also offered more things that we’ve ever had in the time in our life, that you can have access to any I mean, just rewind things back 1015 years ago, for those of you who have the memory for that.

Imagine saying at one point, you’re going to pay one price and have unlimited, virtually unlimited movies, there are more movies on Netflix alone than you can ever watch in a lifetime.

What’s currently on there, and they’re putting new stuff on there. Sure they’re taking other stuff off, but at the same time, there is more on there than you could possibly ever get to.

Yeah, you may not find all the stuff that you want to get to right away and that’s a whole nother issue.

This is why people don’t only subscribe to Netflix, they subscribe to Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime, all these different spots HBO Max, you know, Disney plus, I mean that it’s endless, all that that’s only when we’re talking video cut mainstream video content.

That’s all we’re talking about here, all alone, everything else in your life that can be bought by subscription.

Now, subscriptions will overrun an industry like that to the point to where people are going to start cutting back but that increases quality it causes the people that are offering these things to offer higher quality stuff over time and offer more creative subscription models.

This is only a good thing. It’s good for the consumer. It’s extremely good for the business owner. Now, from the business owner perspective, you’ve got to look at this.

You have consistent payments, and you’re saying, Yeah, but what about the people who take advantage of it, and you know, that you pay 10 bucks, but they’re taking a taco every single day.

For one thing, that person is very, very, very unlikely to be there. They’re, it’s very unlike even if they went and took the taco and gave it to somebody else, it’s unlikely that someone’s going to come every single day.

But here’s the other thing.

Who is going to go to Taco Bell and buy a single taco and nothing else for 30 days straight?

I guarantee you 99% of everyone that goes and gets a taco is going to get something else, they may just get another taco, they may buy one of those giant tankers full of soda, they might they may get you know all the other things that because a taco is simple, it’s small.

They know you’re going to want something else. So all they got to do is get you in for the taco, and they’ll get you for everything else. Is it tricky?

Yeah, it’s tricky but it’s up to you on whether you want to pay for it or not.

You could cancel at any time type of deal, right. So that’s the magic of the subscription. It puts both parties in a in an area that is useful, at least in temporarily, I don’t know how popular this is going to be over time.

I applaud Taco Bell for trying something new look at all the attention that they’re going to get from this.

Having this applying the subscription model to an industry that does not have a subscription, or does not have a very well-known subscription, and it is brilliant.

So I applaud them and I implore you to think about how a subscription model can work for your business. I love this idea. I talk about it a lot. I’ve got a whole chapter set aside specifically for subscription models in my, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

It’s one of those things you can do. You can literally copy Amazon, and you but you can outdo them in a way of the subscription model, which I talk about in here, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can go buy a copy on amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or anywhere you get your books, or go download a free copy if you want AmazonProofBook.com.

AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s where you can get a copy of this book. I’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.