Should You Avoid Customizations in Your Business?

In this video, Matt explains a little bit about productizing a service business. He then shares his thoughts on that business model versus customizations.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video: 

Here’s my best tips to you if you wanna scale. My No. 1 tip is to create an offer that is highly scalable and does not require a ton of time for you, especially long-term. What I mean by that is that you are going to have an easier time to scale if you can keep your head in your business more than someone else’s. So what I would recommend, instead of doing long-term custom work, is having something that you can turn and burn and create a lot of impact and also make a shit ton of money. Secondly, I would recommend introducing some sort of passive income into your business. So for me, I launch a website template shop. So I built out these templates that now I also utilize in my website today. So they’re full circle and I sold them for 497 and it makes it so that someone who does not have a big budget can purchase this template, get the aesthetic, and the design style that I offer as a web designer. They can implement their own stuff and like literally launch their site in 72 hours. And then you make passive income. Now my last tip to scaling is going to structure packages. So that nothing is custom and requiring your time to figure out. “What am I gonna charge for this?” “Oh, I need a do a sales call.” “I need to send them a proposal email.” Cut all of that out. Implement strategic offers that are repeatable. Give your ideal client and maybe 3 phases; low-level, mid-tier, and high-level.

Matt’s Review:

Okay. So what she’s talking about is what people generally refer to as productizing your service. So if you have a service where each time you do it it’s a little different it’s sort of custom to the person who is ordering it or buying it from you. If what you can instead figure out how to do is create a standardized package then it cuts down on a lot of the time of designing who’s gonna get what, and what is gonna include, and how long it’s gonna take, and how you’re gonna deliver it. So the concept that she’s talking about is pretty well established. If you’re a service business and there’s the opportunity to productize your service, standardize what you offer, and then offer it in different size packages or whatever it definitely can help your business grow. And having passive income is the same idea. Just being able to sell something that you don’t have to – you built once and then you can sell it again and again. If your business affords the opportunity to do that, that’s great. Definitely add that in. 

The one counterpoint I guess to this is you can grow a large – well two counterpoints – you can grow a large business doing all custom work, you just have to set up the systems to enable that. And make sure you’re charging enough to have a sales call and a product, you know, design call and a scope and everything else. You can do custom work with, you know, good margins and make good money. But you have to set it up so that you are not the only one that can do that. And then on the flip side, her whole argument is trying to get away from anything custom which is a way to go but also limits you then. There’s a lot of clients out there who don’t wanna take your – one of your pre-set templates or one of your pre-built packages. They want custom work, and if you’re not willing to offer that, they’re gonna go somewhere else. But those customers could be very good paying, long term customers. They just, they’re usually the bigger ones that aren’t going to be settling for a standard template, but they have the money to spend to get the design or whatever it is custom that they want. So you’re making it an intentional decision if you’re walking away from those clients. And I think you’re missing the point if you think somehow you can’t build a good business that’s systematized and something you can run without being the only person that can do it just because you’re doing custom work. You just have to plan to build a large business around custom work instead of planning to build a large business around productized services. So it’s not either or. It just depends on what you’re going for and how you plan to grow it. But it can be done either way. Both can be very lucrative, both can be very successful. You just have to build it accordingly.