0:00 If I had to start over, I'd never offer
0:01 custom services again. In this video,
0:04 I'm going to be breaking down 16 brutal
0:06 truths and lessons about productized
0:08 services after mentoring 800 plus agency
0:11 owners that I wish I had learned sooner.
0:14 So, here's 16 things I wish I knew
0:16 sooner that will make your journey
0:17 easier as you escape custom services for
0:21 the wonderful world of productized
0:22 profits. Number one, I thought
0:24 productized services meant done for you
0:27 execution, like design services or
0:30 content. The first time I heard of
0:32 productized services was WP Curve, which
0:34 was $99 a month for unlimited WordPress
0:38 support. Then really popularized was
0:41 Design Pickle, which was a few hundred
0:42 bucks a month for unlimited creative
0:45 tasks. Again, simple creative assets
0:47 like banners and flyers and stuff like
0:49 that. A turning point for me was when I
0:51 realized that I could actually package
0:53 my thinking, my process into done with
0:57 you trainings, workshops that could be
0:59 delivered in 90 minutes, 2 hours, 2
1:02 days, or even digital products, courses,
1:06 and training that could either be
1:08 executed by someone else like a client
1:11 or a team member, or delivered in a a
1:14 workshop-like environment where it was
1:16 done with you, done together. So the
1:19 lesson here is that you can actually
1:21 productize more than services. Your
1:24 expertise is scalable, not just your
1:26 labor. Number two, in the beginning, I
1:28 knew my offer was great because our
1:30 clients were getting results. They were
1:31 telling their friends. The problem was
1:33 nobody else outside of who they told
1:34 knew that I existed. So it was a real
1:37 big turning point for me when I started
1:39 building my own authority through
1:41 releasing weekly YouTube videos andor
1:43 writing my unique points of view and
1:45 sharing insights on my email newsletter
1:47 and my primary platform of choice at the
1:49 time which was Facebook. It was the
1:51 sharing of those insights that allowed
1:53 me to collaborate with other people to
1:56 expand my audience but also get
1:58 introduced to my content because I was
2:00 out there sharing and publishing my
2:02 point of view. So the lesson here for
2:04 productized service owners is that
2:06 distribution is the most important lever
2:09 that you have. The best product will
2:11 lose to someone who has better
2:13 distribution every single time. Number
2:16 three, many agency owners that we talk
2:18 to and you know when people come into
2:19 our world and we start working with them
2:21 inside of our programs, they're in a
2:23 situation where clients are leaving
2:24 faster than they can replace them. When
2:26 I realized that I needed consistent
2:29 marketing, the turning point was because
2:31 of that authority building that I had
2:33 been doing, I realized that I needed
2:35 more consistent marketing oftent times
2:37 just to break even bringing in the
2:40 amount of clients that were actually
2:42 also turnurning out at the same time. So
2:44 the lesson here for productized services
2:47 in the marketing and creative space if
2:49 you're truly a productized service.
2:50 Really in most businesses, you will need
2:53 to always outrun your churn with
2:56 marketing. You're not just selling,
2:58 you're outselling churn every single
3:00 month. Number four, so many people that
3:03 are interested in productized services
3:06 and the ones that advocate for
3:07 productized services, at least many of
3:09 them that I see on YouTube, brag about
3:11 recurring revenue as one of the primary
3:13 benefits of productizing your service.
3:15 And in fact, it's why I see a lot of
3:17 people choose to productize their
3:19 service because they think that by
3:21 productizing that they're not going to
3:23 have to worry about marketing as much
3:24 because clients will stay forever. But
3:26 we talked about churn. But the reality
3:27 is they're still experiencing clients
3:29 dropping off. The turning point for me
3:31 was when I started tracking churn,
3:34 lifetime value, and the retention of
3:37 different cohorts that we were enrolling
3:39 into our service instead of just monthly
3:42 churn. The real lesson here is that MR
3:44 in productized services in most cases is
3:47 a lie. And when I say a lie, what I mean
3:50 is it's really more of a vanity metric
3:52 than anything else. Especially because
3:55 clients are going to be leaving pretty
3:56 frequently inside of a productized
3:58 service, whether that's month three to
4:00 month six, which is pretty common for
4:03 most marketing and creative related
4:05 productized services. Number five,
4:06 whether it's early days of my business
4:09 or many of the clients that we've had
4:10 the opportunity to coach and mentor over
4:12 the years, the cheapest clients were
4:15 always the neediest and they also were
4:17 the ones that left the fastest. So, when
4:19 I started raising my pricing, taking
4:21 fewer clients, I had better retention
4:24 and higher profit. Just because you're
4:26 productizing your service doesn't mean
4:29 you need to have something that is super
4:31 low price, which we're going to be
4:32 talking about a little bit later. So,
4:34 the lesson here is that low prices often
4:37 attract high churn. So, cheap clients
4:40 cost the most. Number six, like most
4:43 service providers that come into our
4:45 world, you probably have been in a point
4:47 in your business where you feel like you
4:48 had to be involved in every single
4:50 project for it to succeed. Once I built
4:53 a repeatable framework, a repeatable
4:56 process that others on my team could
4:59 follow. I was the person that every
5:01 client needed because everything was in
5:03 my head. I knew how to do everything. So
5:05 the lesson here is if you want to
5:06 productize, the real pathway to a
5:09 business running more smoothly without
5:11 you or at least the minimum amount of
5:13 you is that you need to create a
5:15 framework because frameworks are greater
5:17 than you. If it depends upon you,
5:20 literally you as the founder, it's not
5:21 scalable. It's extremely fragile. Number
5:24 seven, pretty much every single service
5:25 provider will resonate with this is
5:27 trying to serve everyone and thus
5:29 resonating with no one. Once I got clear
5:32 on who my niche was, and by niche I mean
5:34 who I serve, what problem I solve for
5:38 that person and specifically how I solve
5:41 that problem, I would take anything that
5:43 I could get. I'd get a client. I'd go
5:45 into project delivery. That project
5:47 would stop. I'd come out, pick my head
5:48 up, and I'd be like, "Oh my god, where's
5:50 the next lead coming from?" And I'd be
5:51 so desperate because I wasn't doing any
5:53 marketing. I wasn't trying to attract
5:55 anybody that I would have to take
5:57 whatever opportunity came my way. That
5:59 was also custom. So it kept kind of
6:01 facilitating this flywheel of like being
6:04 desperate and having to take projects
6:05 just for money. So getting clear on your
6:08 niche, who you serve, what problem you
6:10 solve, and your how is going to be a
6:13 catalyst. So the lesson here is that
6:15 specializing is a
6:17 non-negotiable. Specificity will be more
6:20 scalable while vagueness will stall you
6:22 out. Number eight, again, many service
6:24 providers expect clients to stick around
6:27 forever just because they created a
6:29 productized service. I accepted the fact
6:31 that many clients, especially early on
6:34 while I was trying to figure out my
6:35 service, would leave after 3 to 6 months
6:39 because they got what they came for.
6:40 Now, this obviously varies very much
6:43 depending upon what your service is and
6:46 the value of the deliverables and things
6:48 that you have productized. So we have
6:50 seen productized services where people
6:52 stay for over a year. But if you look at
6:54 most agency services and specifically
6:57 productized services around marketing
6:59 deliverables, creative assets, they're
7:01 going to churn somewhere between months
7:04 three and month six for most businesses.
7:06 Again, there is exceptions to the rule.
7:08 So the brutal lesson is even though
7:10 you've productized your business, you're
7:12 still likely going to have higher churn.
7:14 And so you need to manage it
7:16 intentionally. Churn isn't always
7:18 failure. It's part of a model where they
7:21 come and they got what they came for.
7:23 So, you have to plan around for it.
7:24 Number nine, many services and agents
7:27 that come to us, they have really big
7:29 ticket items like quoting a $45,000
7:32 package and that scared people off. And
7:34 what was interesting is I had an
7:36 interview on this channel with Hunter
7:37 Hammonds who's created a handful of
7:38 productized services behind people like
7:40 Ali Abdal and Sahil Bloom. He even
7:42 shared that he hit a point where he
7:44 realized that that 45K package was
7:46 scaring too many people off and made the
7:48 sales process more friction. So he
7:51 switched to monthly pricing with a
7:53 3month expected duration. So a
7:55 three-month commitment. So it was
7:57 $15,000 per month for 3 months and then
8:00 it would go monthtomonth. And that was
8:02 for his high-end design service which is
8:05 like a premium version of unlimited
8:07 design. But again, even in this
8:09 interview, he talks about how some
8:10 people will stay for month four and
8:12 month five, but when they're coming for
8:14 a specific thing, which most people are,
8:17 a website or logos or new brand or a
8:20 bunch of assets, there is a finite time
8:22 in how long it's going to take to
8:24 deliver that. And so, the lesson here is
8:26 that if you've been packaging things up
8:28 into this one big offer, it might
8:30 benefit you to leverage into the sales
8:32 psychology of just a three-month
8:34 commitment with monthly pricing. So, how
8:36 you frame pricing changes how fast
8:39 people will buy. Number 10, because of
8:41 services like WP Curve and Design Pickle
8:44 and and all of those. I thought early on
8:47 that productize just equaled unlimited
8:49 design subscription or unlimited
8:51 deliverable subscription. What I really
8:53 realized was it's about fixed price for
8:56 fixed outcomes no matter the delivery
8:59 style. So when you are creating a
9:02 productized service of your own, whether
9:03 it's strategic productized consulting or
9:06 deliverables like a creative service,
9:09 it's not just unlimited. Unlimited is a
9:12 tactic. Productization is a model.
9:15 Number 11. I like many service providers
9:18 thought that productizing meant remove
9:20 all chaos from business. I realized that
9:23 at the end of the day, a productized
9:25 service business is still a service
9:27 business. You're still in a service.
9:28 It's just more of a structured one. The
9:30 lesson here is that if you got into
9:31 productized services because of
9:33 recurring revenue and it being more
9:35 passive, recurring revenue does not
9:37 equal passive income. Productiz does not
9:39 equal passive. You still have to show up
9:42 and serve because it's a service
9:44 business. Number 12. Most agencies and
9:47 services, myself included, in the
9:48 beginning, required a custom proposal,
9:51 which usually led to some sort of back
9:52 and forth sales cycle that sometimes
9:54 could be dragged out for way too long.
9:56 Once I packaged my offer into a clear,
9:59 easy to buy, easy to sell, easy to
10:02 deliver solution, sales started
10:05 happening a whole lot easier. So the
10:07 lesson here is productizing does make
10:09 getting clients a whole lot easier. If
10:12 it's hard to buy, it's always going to
10:14 be hard to sell. Number 13. I set my
10:17 price in the early days and I left it
10:19 alone for far too long and revenue
10:21 flatlined. Once I started adjusting and
10:23 playing and testing pricing based on
10:26 things like the information that I got
10:27 about churn retention and the value of
10:30 each and every client, things started to
10:32 change inside of my business. So, the
10:34 lesson here is that pricing and LTV will
10:38 require ongoing tuning and optimization.
10:42 Pricing is not a one-time decision. It's
10:44 an optimization lever that happens
10:46 ongoing. Pricing is a living, breathing
10:48 thing. Number 14. Like many that go to
10:52 productized services, they expect that
10:54 the client will show up to their sales
10:57 page, scroll down, see the different
10:59 packages, and just click buy now and
11:01 commit. The reality is, I've seen that
11:04 not to be true more times than it has
11:06 been, right? So, I added a simple call
11:10 with a filtering process to ensure that
11:13 I was talking to the right people, and
11:15 that led to way more sales and way more
11:18 income in my pocket. If you are
11:20 productizing in the hopes of now I don't
11:24 need to have a sales call or people will
11:27 just click and buy without me talking to
11:29 them. I think you are very far gone. You
11:32 still need a sales process. Selling
11:34 outcomes still requires trust and trust
11:37 still requires a process. Now if your
11:40 marketing is amazing, you can probably
11:42 get away with driving people to a sales
11:43 page. But after doing this over, you
11:46 know, 800 times with 800 clients, most
11:49 people need to build the skill of being
11:50 good at marketing so that their
11:52 marketing is building enough trust that
11:53 people will buy from a sales page
11:55 without a sales conversation. But in the
11:57 early days, you're going to need a sales
11:59 conversation. Number 15, you think
12:01 productizing means you will escape
12:04 client chaos. You productizing is the
12:07 beginning, right? It makes getting
12:08 clients easier. It wasn't until I really
12:11 built systems for the operational side
12:13 of the business, for the delivery side
12:15 of the business, for client support and
12:17 client management that actually unlocked
12:20 my time freedom. So, the brutal lesson
12:23 here is that it's still a service,
12:24 right? It's still a service business. It
12:26 will just run smoother when you have the
12:29 right systems in place, not because it's
12:31 productized. Number 16. The problem with
12:34 most creative services, which this one
12:36 will sting for you a little bit, is you
12:38 want to get better at your craft. We all
12:40 do, right? We want to be masters of our
12:42 craft. That's how we got into this game
12:44 in the first place. But the problem is
12:46 that while trying to continually get
12:48 better at your craft, you ignore the
12:51 business side, pricing, operations,
12:55 acquisition, sales. I started treating
12:57 creativity as a skill inside my
13:01 business. My craft was treated as a
13:03 skill inside the business, not the
13:05 business itself. So, the lesson here is
13:08 most creatives actually suck at
13:10 business. It's not a skill that you have
13:12 naturally. You don't need to be a better
13:15 designer or necessarily better at your
13:17 craft. The skills you need to acquire
13:19 and hone are your business skills. Now,
13:21 if any of this hit a little too close to
13:23 home, I totally get it. I was deep in
13:26 custom service burnout myself, but I
13:29 found a way out and I documented exactly
13:32 how I did it. So, click on the video
13:33 here or the link in the description to
13:35 watch how I went about escaping custom
13:38 services and built a business that
13:40 actually works with the minimum amount
13:42 of Me.
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