Hello there
Another WGMI newsletter, another million-dollar idea. Here’s what we’ll be talking about today:
- Productized Services 101: The one-person business killing freelancers (employees are next) ☠️
- Quickfire AI headlines and resources 🔥
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Productized Services 101: The Business Model Killing Freelancers
Why is it that the average graphic designer makes $40k per year, but Brett from Designjoy makes $120k every month with zero employees?
Why do most video editors struggle to balance more than 1-2 clients, but Hunter from Hey Friends is on track to reach 8-figures in 12 months?
The answer is simple, but very concerning for anyone that sells their skills for a living.
They are using a new and improved services business model that is hoovering up work from freelancers, traditional agencies, and even employees.
I’m talking about Productized Services.
In the next few minutes, you’ll learn 1) what a Productized Service is; 2) why it is vaporizing every freelancer and employee in its path; and 3) how to use the model yourself to make more money than you thought was possible.
Part 1: What is the Productized Services model?
A Productized Service is selling your skill as an off-the-shelf product.
You charge a fixed price. It’s accessible immediately.
The customer knows exactly what they are going to get, and at what price. For example:
- At Designjoy, you pay $4,995 every month. In return, you receive a senior graphic designer who will design anything and deliver requests in 2 days.
- At Punchline, you pay $2,497 for a landing page.
- At Hey Friends, you pay $10,000 every month. In return, you get 6 YouTube videos edited and optimized.
This business model is so simple, it’s painful that we didn’t think of it earlier.
Part 2: Why the Productized Services model is killing freelancers (and soon employees)
The market favors fast and efficient business models.
You don’t go to a store to rent one video at a time anymore… you get a Netflix subscription (RIP Blockbusters).
The Productized Services model has 5 key features that freelancers, traditional agencies and employees simply can’t compete with.
- Cancel and pause anytime: Work ebbs and flows. With Designjoy, if you don’t need any more designs, you can pause your monthly subscription and resume when it’s busy again.
- Cheaper than hiring an employee: No recruitment fees. No benefits. No office space. No equipment. No comprehensive onboarding process.
- Predictable pricing: The Productized Subscription Services model is the same price every single month. There are never any rude surprises waiting for you in the monthly invoice.
- Immediate time to value: To hire a freelancer, you need to find them, discuss the brief, and negotiate the price before they even begin the project. With Productized Services, you pay and the process begins immediately.
- Speedy service delivery: The Productized Services model is highly optimized to deliver a specific service rapidly. In Part 3 of this newsletter, you’ll learn how.
If you want to learn more about how the productized model is far superior, I go a lot deeper in the full article here.
Part 3: How to provide services infinitely quicker with the productized model
The productized model enables you to work quicker and more efficiently.
By delivering services quickly, you’ll have the time and capacity to bring on more and more clients.
Here are 4 steps to get more clients than you can imagine:
- Productize a specific service: Turn your services into one, specific service with clearly defined parameters. The key here is to play to your strengths. By choosing one specific service to productize, it will be easier to create templates, formulas, and processes to deliver that one service rapidly. Check out the full article for examples.
- Eliminate meetings: This is one of the key reasons Brett can make $100k+ per month serving 10-20 clients. No. More. Meetings. Everything will be dealt with in your client management tool.
- Create a client management tool: When a client signs up to Designjoy, they are sent a link to a Trello board. It’s split into several columns that represent the workflow. All communication is dealt with in this tool. Check out the full article here to see what it looks like.
- Provide “assumption-based services”: If the client’s brief isn’t clear or detailed, make assumptions and do your best job with the information provided. After all, you’re the expert.
To pull this off as a solopreneur, you need to be very good at what you do.
If you don’t have the skills, you have two options:
- Learn a skill
- Create a ‘Productized Services Agency’
If you want to start your own Productized Services Agency, we have prepared free training for everyone who reads the WGMI newsletter. It will guide you step by step to get started and take advantage of this new opportunity.
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Quickfire AI headlines
- Tesla unveiled its upgraded Optimus robot 🤖
- ICYMI: This man can make anyone go viral… how he got 2.1 BILLION views in 10 months 🤯
- ICYMI: The Justin Welsh Solo-Business System (he made $2.5m with 0 employees) ✍️
- ChatGPT Plus subscriptions have been re-enabled! 🎉
- Midjourney releases Alpha, which lets you generate images over a website (rather than Discord) 🎨
- Channel 1 launched a 21-minute news clip… all news anchors are AI-generated 🗞
