Productized services were hyped a couple years ago

I made a huge mistake trying to adopt the model

In early 2022 my solo content agency was doing $30k to $45k a month (with a couple contractors helping out)

Huge margins. I was taking home 90%+

But Productized Services were considered the future of service businesses 

Much like the accounting service Bench, which raised $100m in VC money before abruptly shutting down today with zero warning to customers 

But in 2021-22, low cost, automated services like Bench were considered the gold standard 

I convinced myself I had to adopt the model too 

Automate as much as possible and make my client services an assembly line 

I’d be able to service hundreds of clients instead of 10 to 15 (I was the bottleneck since I was doing most of the client strategy and work)

This is what drove me to pursue an acquisition from a VC backed company 

Huge mistake

Business fell apart and my personal earnings fell by 60% 

Clients wanted to hire ME for my ideas and thinking. You can’s outsource and automate that. 

clients would either pay a LOT for a bespoke service rendered by someone who deeply understood the space…or they’d just pay a low fee to a copywriter to produce generic content. Felt like I had picked a middle ground that was worse than both of those. 

Trying to turn a creative endeavor into an assembly line was a bad idea 

I think Productized Services can work really well. But it’s not the silver bullet many believe it to be

clients often want to pay a premium for an expert’s time and energy. Yes, that creates a bottleneck for the expert.

But making great money with huge margins, and working with clients you genuinely enjoy…can be a much better life than pursuing the VC Growth model and trying to turn genuine expertise into a generic assembly line