October 28, 2023

Subscription Service Boundaries

There are lots of levers you can pull to make subscription services profitable.

They basically all involve putting boundaries around some combination of:

What kinds of clients you’ll work with and what kinds you won’t
What activities are included and what ones are not
Who can contact you directly and who can’t
Communication channels that are acceptable and ones that aren’t
What’s an appropriate frequency of communication and what’s not
etc etc etc

You can pick whatever boundaries make the most sense for you or are the best fit for the situation, but you have to pick some.

If you don’t, you’ll end up being treated like a full-time employee.

And if that happens, you won’t be able to handle more than one or two clients like that at a time.

Which would defeat the purpose of having a subscription offering in the first place.

Here’s the thing...

If you’re going to create a subscription service, you’ll want to design it in a way that would allow you to handle at least 5-10 active clients at one time without being buried.

Keep that in mind when defining your boundaries.

Yours,

—J