609 - Pricing Your Productized Services and Working with Intention with Brian Casel

Today’s co-host is Brian Casel. Brian is a designer and full-stack developer, as well as the founder of ProcessKit and Audience Ops. While Brian started as a freelance designer, he has transitioned into a business owner by productizing his own services.

Brian is the founder of multiple productized service businesses, and in recent years has built a few products as well. Rather than ditch all his clients at once, Brian has been intentional about the process. He worked with his best clients to figure out what parts of his business could be transitioned into products, and then built those products on the side until they became self-sustainable.

Over the course of his career, Brian has worked with lots different kinds of clients. He was a generalist for many years. Once he was established, he realized he needed to focus on a specific type of customer, and specific solutions to their problems, rather than doing anything and everything.

During the last couple of years, Brian has also branched out into products (like ProcessKit) and has ideas for more in the future.

In this episode, we dive into how to transition from generalist services to productized services, and find your first client. We talk about pricing strategies during that transition and Brian shares some unexpected and counterintuitive ideas.

“At the end of the day, even though it might feel like your clients are buying you, they’re really buying the end result.” ~ Brian Casel

In this episode Brian talks about:

His background and how he got into building productized service businesses.His strategies around moving into a productized business and how that can affect your other business.How he figured out his pricing between all the different markets he was serving.

Main Takeaways

When moving into a productized business, don’t ditch your existing clients. Rather, make moves inside your current business to start working with your ideal clients.Pricing is a bit of a gut feeling mixed with some testing to see if the market will bear your prices. The busier you become, the more selective you can become toward higher margin projects. You also need to price so that your service is a good value for your target customer.Always start your productized services where you already have inroads. Breaking into a new market, looking for customers, and establishing yourself as an authority will be easier if you’re operating inside a market you know.

Important Mentions in this Episode

Brian’s Website@CasJamProcessKitAudience OpsSunrise KPI