You're charging $150/hour, but your revenue disappears the moment you stop working.

Your Instagram feed is full of entrepreneurs enjoying their “passive income” while you're trapped in what's basically the world's most expensive job. Your options:

I choose option 3. And 1, if I had a bad day.

Instead of selling hours, successful service providers productize. AKA, package their expertise into repeatable systems, which can generate revenue without needing to be “on” all the time.

In this newsletter:

Shifting gears for a second. (get it? 😏)

Web browsers all kinda look the same. They started standardizing in the late 2000s, with the advent of things like HTML5 and CSS3.

This is fine… but sometimes, you want to change things.

You're an entrepreneur, for crying out loud. You're basically allergic to status quo. So why are you stuck with a browser that treats you like everyone else?

Enter Shift. Instead of forcing you into their vision of how the internet should work, they flip the script. 

This isn't just another “customizable” browser with three preset themes. Shift gives you flawless app integration and the kind of UX flexibility that makes you wonder why every browser doesn't work this way. 

It's preconfigured, not pre-built, so you can focus on making it yours.

You don't use the internet like everyone else. Don't settle for a browser that pretends you do.

This week, I’m skipping the featured story. If you’re still here, I figured it’s because you want to productize a service offering of yours. So let’s get right to it.

Productization sounds fancy, but it's simple. Take the stuff you do repeatedly and package it, so it doesn't require you to reinvent the process every time you court a client.

Rather than billing $150/hour for whatever the client needs, you create fixed-price packages with clear deliverables, timelines and outcomes.

Think “Website Speed Audit — $2,500, delivered in 5 days” instead of “I'll look at your site, bill you for however long it takes, then tell you what all needs to be done.”

John Warrillow calls these Standard Service Offerings (SSOs), and says they need to meet three criteria:

Teachable, valuable, repeatable.

You're moving from selling time to selling outcomes, and banking on systematic delivery to get the job done.

If you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ll know the kinds of things your customers tend to care about. What gets them excited, vs what they should care about but just… don’t.

While this is a good basis for creating your productized offering, it can get messy when you keep it all up in your head. 

So, use a model!

Rate each potentially-productized service on a scale of 1–5 for each of these factors:

Services need to score at least 3 in the first three categories (urgent problem, repeatable process, scalable delivery) to be viable. 

Then look for your highest total scores among the viable options.

I created an automated scoring tool to help make this a bit simpler to understand and execute. Hope it helps. :)

Or, if you’re allergic to spreadsheets, try this instead:

Plot your services based on complexity versus frequency.

You've picked your service. Now here's how to package it without losing your sanity… or your current clients.

Record yourself completing your next project and write down every step. Don't try to improve it yet, just capture what you're already doing.

Break it into its main stages, then detail the sub-steps for each. Think of it like a recipe that you’ll be getting a total stranger to follow; you want to enable them without ever picking up the phone.

Here’s the format that I’ve found most helpful:

The email you send to kick off projects? Template. The report format you deliver? Template. The checklist you run through? Template.

Build standardized deliverables: reports, presentations, assessments, client communication. If you find yourself doing the same thing twice, it needs a template.

Look at what you charged for the last 10 similar projects. The average of this is now your baseline. 

Now consider: clients typically pay a premium for predictable pricing and faster delivery. Price 10–30% above your baseline and test the market response.

Structure it in three tiers:

Time for the part that scares people. 

First tip: Don’t try to force existing clients into your new model immediately.

Instead, run both systems in parallel for 3–6 months. Keep doing custom work for existing clients while offering productized services to new prospects only. This gives you time to refine the process with lower-risk relationships.

When you're ready to transition existing clients, position it as an upgrade to a better, faster service. Use the Five Touch Rule: 

If things are working out, you can start looking at transitioning everything over, according to this (rough) timeline:

Most clients will appreciate the predictability. The ones who don't? They're probably not your ideal clients anyway, and you'll have freed up capacity for better-fit customers.

I can’t promise you that your first attempt will be The One (service) To Rule Them All. But I do know that you won’t gain anything if you don’t try.

Most service providers resist productization because they think it'll commoditize their work. It's actually the opposite. 

When you can deliver consistent results through a proven system, you become more valuable, not less.

Those annoying Instagram-preneurs might not be all talk after all. They might’ve just figured out how to package their expertise so it works without them.

When you read this, I’ll be on a neat little holiday following my wedding. Who knows what I’ll be keen to write about when I get back. Should be a fun one, though.

See you then.