You have a service-based business that’s completely dependent on you and you want to grow. You’re painfully aware that there’s only one of you and there’s only so many hours in the day, and you want to shift to a business that doesn’t completely depend on you so that you can take some time off so that you can focus on other things or maybe build something new.
Your work feels like it lacks momentum and you don’t feel like it’s on an upward trajectory. Project after project, client after client, everything just kind of stays the same. Sure, you can increase your rate, serve better clients, but at the end of the day, you’re the one that’s primarily responsible for fulfillment and it’s preventing you from scaling and isn’t exactly giving you that pathway to the freedom you’re after.
So what happens next? Chances are, you look for the path to a product based business. Maybe you think about launching an online course or, a coaching program, something that can teach others to get the result or do the work for themselves. If they wanted to hire you to do the work, then they’d hire you to teach them to do it themselves, right? Maybe not. It’s one of the biggest mistakes I see service-based businesses make when they try to scale their business. There’s nothing wrong with a group coaching program or an online course — we help our clients build them all the time! But there’s a big difference between the type of customer who will pay you for a service and a customer who’s willing to invest the time, money and resources to learn how to do it themselves.
For most service providers, the most viable, easiest, and the path of least resistance to transitioning into a product-based business is by productizing your service. It might be time for you to make the shift from freelancer or independent contractor to a business owner with A productized service.
So what is a productized service? It’s a service that is built to solve one specific problem for one specific audience in the most efficient way possible and packaged to have a defined scope and price.
5 Reasons To Love A Productized Service
1. Productized services almost always have a defined, fixed scope so everyone knows what’s included and what’s not.
The things that you do for the client, the tasks, the deliverables, the schedule at which those deliverables are delivered to clients, is fixed, predesigned, and packaged into your offer. That means no crazy custom work, no reinventing the wheel with each customer, and no scope surprises.
2. Productized services almost always have a fixed price so there’s little to no negotiation.
Even if your service has multiple tiers or packages for customers to choose from, your pricing is fixed from the start. There’s little to no negotiation. It’s priced just like any other product would be priced.
3. Productized services are very system and process-oriented and run like a well-oiled machine.
A productized service runs systematically like a machine. The systems and processes are set up to consistently deliver the set scope of work. And it’s these systems and processes that allow you to have the machine run effectively with or without you.
4. Productized services are not dependent on the owner’s time so you can be as involved (or not involved) in the fulfillment process as you’d like.
A productized service is designed and intended to run with or without you. It’s designed to give you that freedom, not depend on you showing up every day in order for the business to work.
5. Productized services are priced on value, not time, so you can stop the hourly rate rat race.
Unlike most freelancing which has time-based pricing, a productized service is priced based on the value that it delivers. This typically helps you with profit margins and moves you away from thinking about trading time for money.
It’s much easier for a client to buy a productized service because it identifies a specific problem and has a defined scope of work for a defined price that they can understand. They can buy your productized service just like they’re buying a product off of Amazon. There’s no custom proposal and negotiation process. Every project isn’t always different, which means you’re not constantly doing different things, trying like mad to manage scope creep which we all know can be a nightmare. Instead of hopping from one thing to the next, a productized service is intentionally designed to be repeatable. When the creation and delivery process is standardized and repeatable it means you can more easily train others to step in and do the work, allowing you to step out of full time fulfillment and step into the role of a business owner.
Ready to create your productized service? I’m looking for 3 more people to take through our “Productize Me” process before we open it up to the public. Send me a text at 317-676-3131 to learn more.