Can I get a “hell yes”?
Psst. Rather listen to this email? Get me all up in your ears with a recording I made just for you.
September 8. That’s how long I’ve got.
I’ve got 26 days to watch…
📺 Hit Man (hi, Glen Powell)
📺 Butterfly in the Sky: The Story of Reading Rainbow
📺 All the Queer Eye I’ve missed
📺 The Umbrella Academy, maybe
And…huh. That’s kind of it. (What did I miss?)
Netflix is jacking up its prices again, this time by four dollars a month — and I’m not sure I can justify the cost anymore.
I ask you, Netflix, in the immortal words of Janet Jackson: What have you done for me lately? 🎶
(Besides Bridgerton.)
Not much, is what.
Quick business-context dream sequence…
For a long time, the customer journey was linear — a funnel that attracted loads of curious people and nurtured them down (sploosh 💦) into a pool of paying customers — until HubSpot suggested in 2018 that it’s more of a ciiiiiiircle of liiiiife… 🦁
They call it the flywheel.
Well, duh: We know now that anyone can hop on the customer-journey carousel at any point, with varying levels of readiness to buy. Our message has to meet them where they are at all times, and we can’t stop once they fork over their hard-earned cash.
Because if we play our cards right, our customers can become evangelists who help our businesses grow far beyond our direct marketing efforts.
The funnel tends to lose track of customers once they drop into the money bucket.
The flywheel relies on their ongoing delight to stay in motion.
The funnel doesn’t care what happens at the bottom — because it assumes the top will always be full — but the wheel only keeps turning when it’s powered by “hell yes” energy.
Aaaaaaaand we’re back.
Hey, remember when Netflix tweeted this? 👇
And then, in May 2023, they broke our hearts with a shameless money grab?
They demanded we all get our own accounts after years of being encouraged to share them, then assumed people wouldn’t care enough to jump through the cancellation hoops. Well, they were right, at least with me. I sucked it up and stayed.
But now that Netflix is jacking up the price and offering me little more than regular releases of made-for-streaming movies (which I’m pretty sure were written by AI), syndicated sitcoms, and 15 spinoffs of Love Is Blind, I’ve had it.
The last straw can sneak up on you… We’re breaking up.
And speaking of breakups:
I will not be renewing my StoryBrand Guide certification in September 2024. After five years, I’m deleting my badge from my website and embarking on life after the Marketing Made Simple directory.
(Yes, I’m nervous as hell.)
I have roughly 437 reasons for this decision. Some of them are “I don’t wanna watch these shows” adjacent; some of them are more existential.
The biggie is this: It’s no longer a hell yes for me.
And these days, if something’s not a hell yes… It’s a no from me, dawg.
For some people, Netflix’s offerings are still well worth the money.
The same goes for StoryBrand Guide certification.
But for me, it’s time to cut the cord — and put that combined $5,150 a year toward some hell-yes investments.
