Welcome!

I’ve now built, scaled and sold two Productized Agencies (Content Pros & Applause Lab), and consulted with hundreds of Agencies over the years.

What I’ve learned: Services don’t scale. Products do.

The Productization of services is a powerful concept still gaining traction as more and more enter the “gig” economy.

This Playbook is here to help you package your expertise to sell at scale.

Imagine turning your agency, consulting, or freelance services into products that customers can buy with a single click?

No proposals, no hourly billing, and no more accounts receivable.

Only smooth, predictable systems driving your business forward.

Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?

The Greek philosopher, Archimedes, said it best, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

“Levers” provide exponential outputs.

When you productize your expertise you install leverage into your business.

A normal joe with the right “levers” can now move a car effortlessly.

A smart Agency owner with the right levers can now scale to millions with zero or close to zero employees. I’m seeing more of these productized solo agencies pop up constantly.

Bolt on emerging A.I. tools and your leverage is even more exponential.

Traditionally, agency services have had very low leverage.

By Productizing you too can escape traditional.

This Playbook distills over 10+ years of lessons, refined thoughts, and proven processes that have helped hundreds of service business founders like yourself.

So Why Productize?

Trading time for money doesn’t scale.

Most Agencies are time traps, draining leverage and sanity from founders.

Productizing is about packaging your services based on the value you provide, not the time you spend. Then building systems to duplicate yourself to exit the delivery. This disconnects you from the time-for-money trap.

A service business also shouldn’t just depend on one singular productized service offering. This is how I recommend starting but as you will see in the “Levers” module you will want to complete your value ladder in many cases with having different types of productized offerings that capture value as your customer enters and ascends over time. (more on this later)

Your biggest problem right now is that once you close your computer, the income stops.

Your business goes into hibernation. You’ve failed the laptop test.

Many agency owners start with huge ambitions and dreams.

We believe that going at it alone will give us more flexibility, autonomy, and financial independence.

There’s a better way.

My personal experience shows there’s a specific solution to the chaos—a method to achieve stability, freedom, profitability, and growth. I’ve used this approach to launch and sell multiple scalable service businesses over the years.

This Playbook is based on my direct experience, enabling me to explore the world while living in places like Costa Rica, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, and the mountains of Santiago, Chile over the past 10 years.

This Productized Playbook will provide the key elements needed to “productize” a service business—something I wish existed in my earlier days.

Enjoy!

TG

💡Thinking Time Chief
@ Productized.Services

Overview

The Productized Playbook will be broken down into 4 core modules with over 40+ lessons on the most vital areas you will need to know as you productize and scale your Agency.

Table of Contents

• Define

• Analyze

• Foundations

• Levers

Define

Let’s run over how to define and look at productized services.

I want to help you break down the positioning of a productized service with the exact checklist I use.

Here we will cover 5 core strategies:

1. What is a Productized Service?

2. Who is it for?

3. The 3 Ingredients that make up a Productized Service

4. How to Position your Productized Service

5. My Productized Service Checklist

1. What is a Productized Service? (And Why It Matters To Your Business)‌‌‌‌

So what does "productizing" actually mean?

Let’s hear from my inner circle.

Most service businesses include you collaborating closely with a buyer to develop a bespoke solution or solve a specific issue they face.

When you say “yes” to everything a client needs it becomes easier to sell but harder to deliver.

When starting out this is great but should be held to a minimum and skipped entirely once you have found product market fit.

Most get trapped here.

Once you have the slightest taste of validation you should move your efforts into a more productized offer.

Productization provides a system.

Instead of developing a unique solution for each consumer, you now are developing a solution that is relevant to a niche of customers that is repeatable.

You also begin to start saying “no” more and “yes” less.

Instead of complex, one-of-a-kind service offerings, you now rely on the same repeatable procedure. This procedure — or set of procedures — yields the same result for each customer.

Rinse and repeat.

So to recap and aggregate some of the commonalities from all the expert definitions above, a productized service has 6 key elements or what I call “ingredients”.

1. Predictable & repeatable systems

2. Fixed deliverables

3. Fixed outcomes

4. Fixed-price

5. Fixed scope

6. Delivered within a fixed timeline

Productizing maximizes your outputs but not without some risks.

• Market Risk: Don’t try inventing a completely new category. It's easier to differentiate within an existing market than create something from scratch. Aim to provide services in a proven space. Competition isn’t a bad thing. Even today with the amount of “unlimited” design productized services there is still demand.
  

• Race to the Bottom: There may be stiff competition that cuts into your margins. To avoid this, choose a niche where you have an advantage and can create a moat based on your unique experience. I’ve personally enjoyed seeing productized services like Hey Friends, Viral Cuts, and Testimonial Hero go up market and charge premiums. They end up having wait lists, higher profit margins and less competition. Zig when others Zag.
  

• Third-Party Dependencies: Be careful if you white-label and or build on top of other platforms or technology. This can be a quick way to launch and validate your offer but long-term you should aim to bring that in-house.
  

• Scope Creep: Set clear guidelines and limits to avoid over-servicing unprofitable accounts. There is an art and balance of saying, “yes” & “no”.

Remember: multiplying a bad process just amplifies a bad process. You need to fix the actual “problems”, not the often confused surface level “symptoms”.

2. Who is it for?

One of the reasons I like productized services is because I've seen boatloads of entrepreneurs utilize them to grow and move their service businesses to an entirely new level while at the same time building an asset beyond themselves.

Productizing creates leverage and provides a surefire path to building an asset over the longterm.

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