These Subscription Companies Are Getting Out Of Hand! #Podcast

Yo, what's up everybody? It's Justin live from B2B Vault, the biz to biz podcast sponsored by Nationwide Payment Systems, hosted by this guy, the Bill Nye of payment processing himself, Allen Kopelman. And in today's podcast, we'll be discussing the subs— the subscription economy and ways that you possibly could implement that into your business. You know, there's a lot of different, uh use cases that, you know, businesses are missing a real big opportunity, uh, you know, to— for a subscription-based model within their business. And it's literally taken over. I mean, everything is a subscription now, you know. So we thought it'd be— we touched on it a few, uh, almost a year ago, I feel like, uh, actually. And, uh, so yeah, man, we wanted to talk about it, and here we are. What's up, bro?

It's another week going at it. 2024.

2024 has started off pretty intense.

We're like, uh, three-quarters through the first month.

Yeah, it's already the 18th. That's crazy.

Yeah, I know. It's time, time to, time to get, uh, time getting busy. It's very busy already. Yeah, well, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. In the payments world, there's been a lot of shakeups. So things are shaking out, like Worldpay separating from the other— they were with FIS. And then news came out today that Fiserv, formerly First Data, wants to become their own bank. Oh really? Yeah, they would need a special— actually, they could move to— if they headquartered in Georgia, if you're in Georgia, you can like become your own bank, right? I think that's just a state bank.

No, you can— because Killer Mike, shout out to Killer Mike, he started— he was— he partnered up with another Greenwood, I think it's called.

Okay.

And you can— anyone can go get in a bank account there, right?

Yeah, I'm just saying, I'm saying it, saying it. I think it has to be— I think Georgia—

I mean, their headquarters has to be stayed in them. Yeah, I think Georgia has some That makes sense as to why there's a bunch of like those types of banks popping up and they're all located in Georgia.

And then, you know, Elon Musk finally let the cat out of the bag on why he's getting all these money service licenses.

Oh, I didn't see that. Why?

He's going to be— he wants to have a peer-to-peer payment network. Oh yeah.

He's been talking about that for a long time.

Well, he was saying maybe he was going to get into like merchant accounts, but it seems like—

No, he just wants to be able to send money.

Yeah, he just—

On Twitter. So if you— so like a use case scenario for me would be like, okay, I'm a graphic designer, I did this, uh, cool profile picture for you. Boom, you could just send me money right inside of Twitter, right? Instead of me sending you an invoice or requesting it in Cash App or wherever. I don't know how these people are getting paid anymore, it's insane. Yeah, it's way too much going on. Um, yeah, man. Lots of shit happening really in 2024, but I don't really want to talk about it because it's terrible. Nothing good has happened so far. Well, for me, I mean, I'm doing fine and everything's good, but I'm talking about in the world. The world is going burning up everywhere. But I digress. In the payments world, it's going great. Anyway, yeah, man, I don't know. I ain't got much going on, dude. Started a class, digital marketing, digital marketing nerd class.

Okay.

More, more stuff. Just, you know, this woman I follow on LinkedIn, she posted something at the end of last year and I was like, you know what? Let me just go ahead and finish something that I— because I'm self-taught, right? Like, I've learned how to do this throughout the years, you know? And I don't say self-taught like I just— oh, I know what I'm— I mean, it's trial and error, right? So I've literally trialed and errored for 15 years, right? Uh, so a lot of the times it's kind of like nothing changes, right? Like, a lot of the stuff hasn't changed in the past 15 years, you know? I mean, Content, content, content, quality, good blog posts.

Like, the only thing that's really— the only thing that's really changed is this is AI. AI is added to that.

I mean, you throw in pay-per-click, you know, you throw in a few other minor things. But yeah, man, I mean, so I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna finish because I have— I mean, I, I don't even know, like, I've been paying Coursera, I should, for, for 16 years, I feel like, because I never even So I mean, I literally logged in the other day and I'm like, oh, I have a membership with you and I'm paying $50 a month. So, you know, it's for me, it's all right, finish. I made a vow to myself. I got a bunch of stuff that I have to finish. And so 2024 is the year of finishing for me. Um, I got a lot of stuff in that I've been cooking for the past 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 years that I just you know, for whatever reason, whether it be financial or mentally, whatever, I just haven't really pulled the trigger on the stuff. So yeah, 2024, the year of finishing.

Finish him.

All right.

It's good to have a goal.

Yeah. Subscription economy. I don't know how we could do— you're not really a subscription-based service that we offer. I mean, oh yes, there is. You're tripping.

We do have a subscription.

No, no, no, no. I just had another idea. You could do the chargeback thing. You should be charging people monthly for that. Yeah, you should definitely think about, hey, you want to sign up for my chargeback rescue service, right? Uh, $1,500 a month or whatever, you— $150 a month and you'll never have to worry. You just call me or you send me the info and boom. That's a good business model. I don't know, bro, you're tripping.

Maybe we should do that.

I think we should.

Okay, we have a website, Chargeback Rescue.

That I built.

Yes, Justin made it.

Well, I rebuilt it.

Yeah.

No, I didn't even rebuild that one.

Well, you should look at it.

It's got a damn life preserver thing. Yeah, no, I didn't do that website.

Yeah. Well, that's something we should maybe think about because people are really complaining about chargebacks. One of the biggest problems with subscriptions is, You really need to look at your terms and conditions and all that because you got—

Well, before you get into all that, man, we got a lot to— we're diving into more technical stuff. So like the subscription economy, right?

Yeah.

That's where we are today.

Yeah, everything is a subscription. I complained about the TV subscription. Like how many channels can you pay for?

Right? Like, so I mean, I'm at the end of the— not even the end. Couple months, like 6, 5, 6 months ago, I canceled, you know, cable, right? Because we have 5 TVs in the house.

Yeah.

And every time I walked into any room, yeah, there would be no TV on, you know. It'd be YouTube or Netflix or some other streaming service that they have a subscription for, you know. And I'm like What are we even paying this? Why are we paying this bill? You know, and it comes to find out that through the, the internet, the internet is the bill and the rest of the TV was like $7, right? So I wasn't saving any money. Oh, you know what I mean? Like $15.99 or whatever it was for basic TV. But yeah, I guess I say all that to say like subscriptions for, to me, in my opinion, have eliminated like cable television.

It's crazy that you could like literally go to basic cable just so you have basic— that's what I had, right?

You don't need that.

Oh, you don't need it?

You need the antenna so you can get the local television shows, right?

Okay.

My dad has that in his room, like I said, in a couple of pockets. It's weird because it's like, you know, we used to have the rabbit ears. You have to be playing around. My dad just like stuck something on his window.

Yeah. I've seen that.

And that's the antenna.

Right.

So, and he never has any issues. Like he's never like moving it or anything. You know what I mean? Like back in the day you'd have to put aluminum foil on the ears. One guy be like, "Hey yo, you gotta stand right there.

All right.

Don't move." You know what I mean? So it's not like that anymore. It's real simple, but yeah.

Rocky doesn't like that.

Rocky didn't like my antics. He never does. He always barks and moans.

Yeah. Yeah. TV's crazy. Everybody was complaining about the Peacock with the Dolphins game.

And that's kind of messed up. I mean, I think it's cool. So as a person who's not from Florida, right, who still watches sports from his teams back in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Milwaukee Bucks, the Green Bay Packers, right? We've been lucky down here in South Florida. Dude, you're yawning again.

Sorry.

Uh, and, um, anyway, this guy, um, we've been lucky because the Packers have been like, they've been kind of good, so they've been on local television, right? Pretty much I haven't really missed a game.

Yeah, they've been on like the Fox channel like almost every week.

Well, last year I wasn't so lucky. Oh, last year we— I think I had— I may have watched one Packer game, right? And then, you know, we found some other thing. And, you know, of course I'm— I just found it's online and now like— and now I don't— you mean I'm not paying for the shit, but I'm watching the games.

But, you know, now they put some of the football games on YouTube also. But you gotta pay for that.

Well, YouTube, yeah, I mean, I pay for YouTube Premium because I hate ads.

Right.

So I pay the extra, you know what I mean?

Cool. Yep.

You need some B12 in your life or something, man.

Man, I don't know. Just tired today.

You've been tired all week, son.

Well, that's what happens.

I call you son 'cause you shine like one. Anyway, yeah, man, like, I think that the subscription economy is, it has its uses, right? It's like, it's— there's certain things that I think, okay, this makes sense, right, right? And then other thing, I'm like, why would I? I don't know. But for businesses, I think that most businesses are, you know, just like how I said that, like, you already helped those people who are clients. It's just you saying, well, hey, I'm not— I can't do this for free anymore. It takes up too much of my free time. You know, here's this, I got, you know, 6— when I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't know.

No, a lot of times I give people like, you know, we could also have a course, how to fight chargebacks, and you can be a member of the course. We could have some videos, you can explain to people how to fight the chargeback.

Well, stop giving all the ideas on the podcast.

Okay, we won't give that idea.

Right, right. But yeah, man, I mean, there's definitely ways for businesses to get creative. Yeah. And implement a subscription into their business. So, you know, maybe hopefully you catch this podcast, you might, you know, you know, another light bulb might go off.

Yeah. But, you know, a lot of things like you're used to having, let's say you have a pool service or a lawn service, you know, the lawn service guy comes around and whatever, the guy leaves me an invoice and then if I don't see him he doesn't get paid till I see him because he doesn't take credit cards, right? And they don't want to, you know. Then the pool guy, they just— you just give them card on file and you just pay for everything. But you know, the crazy thing is, is you got this Rocket Money now. That thing, that thing's going crazy. You hook up your bank, somebody bought that. Yeah, somebody did just buy it because they changed the name of it. It was called True Mortgage. That was called True Bill.

Rocket Mortgage bought True Bill then. Okay, so then like that, I don't know, because I was using that True thing a long time ago, right?

Truebill, a long time ago.

Yeah, long, long, long time ago, 7, 8 years ago, trying to figure out what the hell.

And so one of my friends like hooked up that Rocket Money the other day and they were like, oh, I didn't realize I was paying for 2 Netflix subscriptions.

Oh, absolutely.

They had, they had some other subscriptions that they didn't even know that they had.

Yeah, when I last time I checked on Rocket Money, I was paying for 2 MGM subscriptions, one from my Amazon, and somehow I was just paying for it. I was paying for Amazon Prime on— from my— I was paying mine and my wife's.

You don't need 2 accounts.

I want my own. I'm sorry. Okay, she could pay her own, I pay for— I don't want— because they all look like my kids are so nosy, bro. They log in and they see what I'm buying.

Okay, you can't buy them nothing and they'll know when it's coming.

It's sucks. I don't do that. Okay. So I did, so I canceled my Prime, like the, to watch TV.

Oh yeah, the extra part of it.

Yeah, I canceled that. And so I could just have my Amazon account.

Yeah.

Right. So I'm not paying for that. So yeah, that's, but that was it. And then I found out a couple other things and I was like, wow, dude, I've been paying for this shit a long time.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like one of them I did reach out to because, it was Udemy, like that academy school stuff. And I had looked and it said the last time I logged in was like in the beginning of 2023. So they were cool. They sent me like $60 back or something.

If you do it through the Rocket Money, they'll try to get you some money back. They'll do whatever they have to do. And the merchants have to work with them.

Because it's tied in for, so they're using that so for people to, you know, buy their houses.

Right. But also, you know, you don't want to get a chargeback. The merchants don't want to get a chargeback. That's why I was saying, like, if you're running a subscription, you need to have a liberal way for people to cancel. And a lot of—

easy— liberal is too big of a word.

Okay, easy way for people to cancel, because a lot of times these businesses don't have an easy way for people to cancel. You have to call up on the phone, then nobody answers. And then you don't get anything, then it ends up with a bunch of chargebacks.

Like, I, I was talking to a merchant, canceling like subscription, like the channels on Amazon. Yeah, it's kind of not the easiest thing either. Like, when you have— sometimes it makes you log into the, the, you know, like the individual, right? I never signed up, you know what I mean? I didn't sign up through Starz. How the hell am I gonna get into— you know what I mean? Like, there's a— there was But yeah, no, I agree. People, yeah, you have to make that shit easy for people to cancel, man.

Yeah, this guy the other day, and they have this, they have this, um, there's, they're like, oh, we don't know what to do, we're having all these, um, chargebacks. And then they're, they're showing me like these inquiries, and some of it was from Rocket Money. Yeah, telling them, and I'm like, you have to cancel because if you don't, then you're gonna get like a whole slew of chargebacks coming through because they just hit a button and it's, it's all over.

They're going to submit, right?

So, you know, I tell them, I go, you know, the only way you can, you know, the best thing to do if you're going to run a subscription, make it easy for people to cancel. Pay an answering service when you're not at work so that somebody calls that phone number up, somebody answers the phone. Oh yes. Oh, Mr. Smith, you want to cancel? Okay. What's your email address you signed up with, your phone number, and what was the last 4 digits of the credit card? Now, that person might not be able to take care of it, but then somebody can get that information and cancel this, you know, make sure the person gets canceled out. Because the last thing you want to do is go over this, go over this half a percent chargebacks. I mean, I was telling somebody when I started in this business in 2000, the chargeback percentage was 3%. Now it's a half a percent. Damn. So every— it started going down 3%, 2%, then it went to 2.5%, then it went to 1%, then it's inched its way down, and I think it's 0.6%. But the banks all want half a percent or less.

Really?

Yeah. They don't— they don't want— they don't want to see, you know, they don't want to see you go over that. The 1% is like the limit before, you know, and if you get high chargebacks and you got to go through and you got to say, you have to look at your business and go, why am I getting chargebacks?

You got to audit your business.

Yeah. Why am I like— we had a client and I kept telling them, I go, you're getting all these chargebacks. Can you look into it? I was like, oh, I'm busy. I'm like, don't be busy because you got a whole mess, a slew of them. Right. And then they figured it out where they were all coming from. And it turned out that they sell a product that gets advertised through a lot of hotels. And somebody figured out at this one hotel that they're going to buy— they got credit cards and they bought a bunch of these packages off of their website. And then whoever— they don't know who it is, but whoever the person was, was reselling them to people., right? They had no cost in it because they're using stolen credit cards. So all these cards are getting charged back. And then when the people showed up for the, for the service, right, like it was a, it was like, you know, jet skis or whatever, right? So when they showed up, then they found out from those people who they bought it from because they found out from the person. And then they, and then they sort of figured it out. So they cut off They told the hotel, hey, this is coming from your hotel, you need to figure out what they're doing. And then they flagged everything coming out of that general area, you know, where, you know, that from that one, not just that hotel, but that area. Got it. Of figuring it out. But you can figure out, like, sometimes you got to do IP blocking, you got to do, you got to employ all kinds of stuff if you got people trying to do nefarious— I mean, there's a bunch of shitty shit going on in 2024. Listen, I wish that there would be like every time I did a credit card charge, I got a text message said, oh, did you do this? Yes or no? And I could answer yes or I could answer no.

Well, what if you're in a shitty bad cell phone reception?

Well, there's got to be something's got to give because—

Allen Kopelman. I mean, the government can send push notifications at the drop of a dime. So I'm under the assumption that your bank could do the same as well.

Yeah, one thing is it's on the rise, but subscription economy, you can figure it out into your business. You could create a new product that maybe you don't offer right now. You could create a new service.

Or bundle your products.

Yeah.

Turn that into an offer.

Right, turn it into an offer and say, oh, for, you know, like one—

$29.99 a month. You'll get— unlimited graphic design.

I don't know, they already have that.

No, they do, but it sucks.

Well, I'm sure it's people that—

depending, you get what you pay for.

Exactly. But there's, you know, you got to figure out like what kind of service you could offer. But I've seen people like air conditioning companies do it because people forget, like, oh, if, if they're paying $20 a month and the guy comes twice a year, right, you know, you're calling that company to do your service. Yeah, but you might forget. If you weren't doing that, then you might call somebody else. I agree. So that's a way to, you know, to build your customer base also and make it more your service.

Do you think when companies offer subscriptions, or like if a company's been around and they have a subscription, do you think that people tend to trust that company more?

I think it's— I think it's more trustworthy depending on what type of business it is, right? You know, especially if, let's say, you're, you know, like air conditioning service. You know, you don't want to— you know, what benefits are there to being doing in this subscription?

I mean, I don't know. I like— I guess once a year I have my AC maintained, but other than that, what would you— what would they—

oh, so I have one and they—

and so come and clean your filter?

No, no. So they, they come, they come twice a year, clean the air conditioner And then for like an added whatever, whatever the extra fee was, they give you like every 6 months they send you a box of, uh, the air filters you need for your house. So I don't have to worry about ordering them. The box shows up and they send you a reminder, don't forget to change your air filter, like every month. Get a little text message from them, it's time to change the air filters.

So nice of them.

No, but I'm just saying, like, that's creative.

No, I mean, it's good, it's good marketing.

So they're selling air filters, right? They're selling—

I'm sure they're making a killing on that.

Yeah, they're selling air filters.

They probably got the Manufacturer Connect, so they're buying them wholesale and they're able to—

by having them drop shipped, hopefully. Yeah, so that, you know, the air filters show up and then you get a text every month saying change your air filter. So, you know, those are the kind of things that that can help you with your business? Or let's say, maybe it could be anything, like even Panera has whatever, that coffee club.

I mean, yeah.

But I'm just saying, you can come up with what's an interesting subscription you would come up with.

Well, you put me on the spot here. If I was a cannabis dispensary, I would definitely have like a subscription base that would just automatically just drop cannabis to the medical marijuana patients. Like as soon as they, you know, whatever, you know, for—

Yeah, but what if they want to change up what kind of stuff they're getting?

Oh yeah, I guess you're right. You'd have to make it easy for them to edit their shopping list.

Yeah, edit the shopping list. Right.

Um, one thing that I always thought— a couple years ago, a couple people I know in the web design industry, they started a whole business called WP— I don't want to, I don't want to mess it up, I'm sorry, but it's a WordPress maintenance, uh, subscription. So, you know, small business owners who have websites or whatever who don't want to pay someone like myself you know, $1,500 a month to manage the website. Say that, you know, it's not doing any numbers, it's just there for like a brochure style, you know what I mean? There's nothing to it. Um, you know, they have 6 edits a year, right? You know what I mean? That's not my typical, you know, that's not my client base that I'm looking to, you know, work for, work with. Um, so what they did is they, they, you know, they set up a like 3 different packages, packages, and they're doing okay.

That's a good service.

It is. It was really smart, you know, for me, like, as someone who's been in the industry as long as I have, is kind of a pain in the ass. Like, I don't want to deal with someone, so, you know, I don't—

yeah, but if you had 100 customers paying you X amount a month, then you wouldn't care. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, but you have to scale.

Well, right, but obviously they're hiring out people in the Philippines, etc., etc.

Etc. Right.

Yeah, you know, but the game is to be sold, not told.

Exactly. No, but I'm just saying you got to come up with something interesting like you can do in your business that would, that would help bring in more clients, you know, and build that loyalty up so that you had—

you know, sometimes I'm a little tired of this. I'm not gonna, you know, like the fact that you have to have a subscription for like everything though. Bro, it's kind of, it's a big pain in the ass. Like, for me, like I don't watch TV.

Right.

I don't, like I don't know what the new series is out or who's the, you know what I mean? I don't really, the information I get, I'm online, you know, 20 hours, you know, 18 hours of the day I'm online. So, well, that's not true.

Anyway, but Justin does sleep a little bit.

Not really lately, but, uh, yeah, I mean, you know, like if you're— so I have to have a subscription for everything. I got HBO, I got Netflix, I got Hulu, I got Tidal, I got this, I got that, and that, and that. It's kind of like, damn, now what? You know what I mean? Like, you know, you have to really, uh, you have to trim the fat, like I said. So last year I started just cutting subscriptions. When was the last time I logged into Starz? Boom, dead. You know, when was the last time I looked, watched Hulu? If I'm not watching it, you, someone else, you know, my wife watches shows on there and my kids. I'm like, you guys got to pay for this then. My kids specifically, you know what I mean? Like, you, y'all pay for this, you know? I mean, it's just, uh, it's just a little—

I'm just surprised like that the cable company hasn't figured out like, oh, you know, that people are like not into cable so much and then just have to say, oh, bundle up all these subscriptions. They have— well, they haven't figured that out.

They don't— they, they can't because one, they're not the TV network, right? They just— they're just the net.

Well, they could aggregate it, so true.

But at the end of the day, they still have to— they gotta answer to them.

I know, I'm just saying it just would make a lot more sense that I feel like packages of these streaming services. So, you know, I think it's gonna get real one—

I think it's about to get real crazy with the internet thing too, the way that like, uh The way that they're tracking our data, I mean like the usage.

Yeah.

I think soon it's gonna be, oh, you use 100 gigs a month, you use 500 gigs a month, or you use a terabyte a month. That's gonna be how it goes. I think that's gonna be the next subscription-based model. Kind of like they're already doing with cell phones. Remember when they did it like that? Yeah, yeah.

Well, what's crazy is, is I noticed that like some of the new plans coming out on the cell phones have limited data. Of course. I have like a really old plan, so I have unlimited.

Your great-grandfather did?

Yeah, but I got it, but now Sprint got bought by T-Mobile, so like T-Mobile sent me a message like a few weeks ago and they're like, oh, you have unlimited data, but you used XYZ amount of data.

So now we're gonna throttle your data usage.

Yeah, they're gonna throttle my data usage.

Yeah. Shout out to T-Mobile, man. I wish I would've never transferred my lines to AT&T. If there was anything that I could have done, I would have went back to you guys, but I dropped the ball, sorry. Tried to save a buck and it ended up punching me in the gut.

So it's kind of crazy when you think about it. The internet, could you survive without the internet for businesses? Couldn't survive without it. I mean, everything would just stop, come to a complete halt without the internet. Like you couldn't process a credit card transaction.

We're talking about What everybody else is talking about in 2024.

What?

The big blackout type thing. I don't know. Anyway, man, this is Subscription Economy Podcast episode. If you got any, you know, cool ideas for a subscription-based business or you, you know, anything to add.

Or you have a subscription-based business, you want to tell us about it. Yeah, let us know.

Yeah, we'd love to hear from you, man. So smash the like button, Subscribe. See you guys next week. Peace.