Notes on Brian Casel's course on how to make the transition from freelancing or full-time employment to a productized service. See http://casjam.com/productize.
This section details how to create a value proposition by working on our business instead of in our business.
Promote yourself from freelance to business owner. The differences:
- freelancers work in their business consumed by daily tasks
- freelancers don't get paid when they don't show up for work
- business owners focus on bigger picture to create more value
- business owners have paychecks that are decoupled from time spent working
You're going to be working in both worlds. There will even be tactical tasks you'll still want to perform because you enjoy them - such as designing or coding.
Figure out what's not working for you right now. Examples:
- income tied to time?
- too much time spent on tasks you don't enjoy?
- can only find clients who want cheap labor?
- want to grow/scale your company?
Choose a goal: solo productized consulting or scalable productized services. Visualize your ideal day-to-day.
Eliminate the discovery phase, or proposal and estimation stages. It is tailored towards customizing solutions for your clients, is unpredictable, and constantly reinvents your service. A productized service will: focus on a single type of client, is predictable in scope/value, and establishes a clear service.
Attributes of a productized service:
- does one specific thing very well
- is "done for you" - whereas software products are DIY
- aligns incentives between you and your client
- non-negotiable terms
How to find your productized service:
- list the things your clients or company pay you to do
- narrow it down, which items would serve as a good core for a productized service?
- look for things that: solves a painful problem, people pay for, can be automated
- create a compelling value proposition by starting with the end result - and remind clients what that end result is really worth
- price based on value and show your pricing publicly (to pre-qualify leads)
- use price anchoring (vs ROI or competition)
This section details systematizing and scaling. The course covers two routes for scaling: solo or hiring.
The 5 steps to automating are:
- standardize - create repeatable processes and define exactly what/how/tools of your service
- streamline - incorporating software and frameworks to leverage time more efficiently
- document - document new processes in SOPs (standard operating procedures)
- hire/delegate - remove and replace yourself over time
- refine, improve, iterate
On standardizing:
- create predictability from onboarding new customers to your sales/marketing funnels
- focus on single tool for each purpose: if you offer a newsletter service you'll only work with Mailchimp
- have a process for gathering feedback from customers
On streamlining:
- add guidelines or tools to make your job easier
- automate tasks with software if possible
- consider replacing onboarding discussions with a single form that a customer can fill out
- consider batching manual tasks together, eg batch all meetings into a single day
- say "no" to requests that don't fall within your defined productized service
On documenting:
- start simple and build up momentum
- positions teammates for success
- include as much granular detail for each step as possible, sequence the steps, and add tips/tricks
- if possible, show via screenshots
- video can actually be more problematic than helpful: requires too much time, difficult to navigate, and hard to update
- the sections of a documented procedure: overview, table of contents, steps + details + screenshots, comments, templates
On hiring:
- do it yourself first and document the procedures, you'll learn what needs to be done that way
- figure out which tasks you want to keep doing
- the remaining tasks should be delegated
- plan your team member's role in advance before hiring so you won't waste time/money
- when documenting, categorize by role instead of name in case team members shift in/out
This section details how to get customers.
Marketing is intertwined with the product itself. Think about it from day #1. Marketing:
- revolves around your customer so have a clear definition of your ideal customer
- do customer research: present pitch, get in front of ideal customer, ask questions and internalize feedback, revise and apply what you've learned
- consists of three pillars: traffic, leads, and sales
- in terms of actions it's: get traffic, convert traffic to become leads, convert leads to sales
- always be measuring: amount of traffic, # of conversions of traffic -> leads and leads -> sales
On building traffic:
- it's about quality not quantity
- that's why it's so important to know your ideal customer
- target where your ideal customer hangs out (websites, forums, etc...)
- short term strategies are guest blogging, public speaking, and pay per click ads
- guest blogging: target highly relevant sites, sites with more traffic than yours, write an educational and relevant article, byline link should point to more free content
- public speaking: conferences or meetup.com
- pay per click: only for short-term, link to more free educational content
- long term strategies are blogging, SEO, and email list
Education-based marketing is the best way to convert visitors to leads. Teaching does two things; provides value to visitors and builds trust. A lead is a visitor who: subscribes to email list, downloads some free content, attends a webinar, etc... Use lead magnets such as a free ebook, checklist, email course, or webinar. Continuously provide value and your email list will grow.
What to write about:
- get to know your ideal customer
- through customer research interviews, you'll hear about their questions/problems over and over again
- create evergreen lead magnets to answer questions/problems
On your website:
- focus on your customer NOT yourself
- write copy as if it's a one-to-one conversation
- structure: headline, agitate the pain, focus on benefits, show results and social proof, pricing, FAQ, call to action
Over time you'll want to systematize your marketing as well. Create standard operating procedures for writing guest posts, running PPC ads, and more.