My guest today is Tyler Gillespie, a remarkable entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience in building online services. Having recently left two (Contentpros.io & Applauselab.com) with a clean exit, Tyler is now looking to share, mentor and invest to help service businesses productise and build more scalable assets. Born and raised in Colorado, Tyler travels often and has bases in Meledin, Colombia and of course Colorado.Why productising your service offering is vital for all service businesses
Robin Waite · Episode #76 - Productising your Service - Tyler Gillespie
Episode 76 of the Fearless Business podcast focuses on how to productise your business and build more scalable assets. What does all this mean though? Robin chats to Tyler Gillespie, an entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience in the field. This is what was found out.
When you are a service-based business owner, it is easy to get stuck into the day-to-day work. While service businesses are great to start off with, they can be very difficult to scale, especially when you are trapped in one-to-one work and not being able to scale your time.
If you position your services as a product though, it sets you up for success. It makes your job easier and your business more valuable.
If you are setting up your own business, it is typically after you have gathered skills from elsewhere such as a job or experience from somewhere. To begin with, you probably will trade time for money, which is a great starting place, but often you can get trapped in that stage. You do everything yourself and spend all your time working, without it being represented in the money coming in. Something that business owners leave until too late is hiring out a team, which should be done sooner rather than later, and gives you more to work on your business, not just in it.
Many business owners also let the client lead them when it should be the other way around. Clients come to you for your expertise, and yet you end up stuck on an hourly fee, unable to move anywhere. When you start to look at your business and pricing from a results perspective, this is a game changer.
Pricing based on outcome is part of the productisation process in itself. When something isn’t packaged in the right way, that’s when things start to go wrong.
Charging per hour can be a safety zone when it comes to pricing your offerings. The thought of upping your prices and charging on a package-based and outcome-led basis starts to bring in mindset blocks. Working on your mindset and confidence is an important aspect of the productisation process.
Shifting your mindset is a gradual process and people will be at different stages. First of all, you need to be aware of mindset blocks that exist, and recognise the benefits of charging on a results-based approach. You’ve then got other things to introduce including outsourcing, building a successful product and service.
It seems overwhelming, but if you do it steps then you can start small and then grow from there. Podcast guest Tyler recommends outsourcing the mechanisms of your business, or the processes which take place in your business to lead the customer on a journey and deliver a result.
As a service-based business owner, you get caught up in doing things in your business. You lose track of your time and lose what it means to be intentional with your time. By being intentional and focusing on the design of the business, which productisation is a part of, you are further setting yourself up for success.
When you give yourself time and focus on the intention of your business, this really changes the trajectory of your business. You want to know what you are doing and why you are doing it. When you don’t have that intention, there are no goals or no end vision. When Tyler works with clients, they start off setting a financial goal, to then discover the real intention behind the business. Goal setting and digging deep on that ‘why’ is important for getting clarity on where you want to take your business.
On a final note, what key growth strategies does Tyler recommend for service-based businesses?
Naturally, there are many avenues you can cover when it comes to growing your business.
The first one is to outsource that mechanism. You want to disconnect yourself from doing the work, and have more time to work on the intention and the bigger picture.
The second step is ensuring you have at least a minimum 60% gross profit margin. This is often overlooked, especially if you are just trading on a time basis. You are not actually taking into account what your service is and what it needs to be priced at to make it profitable.
Last, but certainly not least, it is the intention and design of your business. You need to think about what you want and how you want your business to be designed. More importantly, do you have the ability to control that. This is where productising your services really comes into play.
Tyler has so many resources on how to make that happen, so do go and have a look at what he is working on right now.
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