The situation/context
I've been running Optemization as a client services company for seven months. I want to figure out how to productize the service into various DIY or off-the-shelf products. I should be "building once, selling twice"
The problem statement or frame
Client services is the hight end distribution of the value we provide as a digital operations agency. The whole notion of "productivity consulting" is rather new (or is it about framing), so the clientele volume is not big enough for me. I want to be making more faster.
Beyond that my vision is to build a big media company, not just a consultancy. To that end I should be expanding our offerings into templates, courses, community cohorts and consistent content, where all of these pieces interact with each other.
The variables that govern the situation include
- Rapidly increasing Notion user base. It will only be increasing from this point on.
- Growing monetization potential around Notion. Some well-known creators and Notion consultants are bringing a lot of income with diversified content types. More
- Notion coming up with new features that introduce new use cases and new monetization opportunities. Especially recurring.
The complications/complexities as I see them
- I don't have much experience with productization
- I lack a personal/corporate brand.
- I don't know how to figure out pricing. On @June 2, 2020 I published a template with a high premium price and got very few inputs.
Alternatives that were seriously considered and not chosen were
- Focus on client services and develop a much stronger salesforce
- Focus on buidling SaaS products related to productivity/Notion
The range of outcomes
- Successful productization: new income source and new offerings appealing to lower end of the market
- Unsuccessful: loss of focus, time and resources .
What is the opportunity cost
(by doing this what am I not doing)
I'm risking getting stuck in "hunting my game" and just
What I expect to happen and the actual probabilities are
I think #1 is highly likely to happen because I see a lot of other creators and companies succeed with this strategy. I just need to figure out how to balance clients' work with this and, at least preserve cash flow.
What happened and what I learned?
Review date: [copy from Review at with @]