YouTube Transcript:
Brutally Honest Advice About Productized Services in 14 Minutes

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