Why trying to productize your business might ruin your business

Jul 13

I was just doing what everybody suggested.

I’d built a business to six figures, just like all the online business coaches had told me I could. My 1:1 roster was approaching full. So everybody suggested I start think about “productizing.” Package the offer I’d been delivering manually, personally, 1:1 and instead turn it into courses or digital products that I could deliver at scale.

It would allow me to make more and work less, they said. So I decided to do it.

Within a year, by revenue had dropped precipitously and I was lucky if I made a couple hundred dollars in a month trying to sell these “productized” offers.

I don’t share this to scare you. And I also don’t think that productizing can’t work - in fact, I personally know many service-based business owners who have found brilliant ways to convert their high-touch, personalized offers into offers that allow them more scale. But it’s not for everybody, and not every business is ready for it.

So I wanted to share more about what I’ve seen in terms of the downside of productizing and how to tell if it’s right for your business right now.

Prefer to watch? Here's the video!

The risks of productizing your service business (and what to build first)‍ ‍

Productizing means turning a service you already deliver into something repeatable enough to triple, or even multiply by ten, the number of people you can serve in a given month, quarter, or year. Think of it as something a client could buy off the shelf, without much customization. It's a real path to more revenue and less of your direct time.

But in order for that less customized, less personal offer to be both compelling to a client to buy and actually deliver anywhere close to as much value as the customized version, it has to be really spot on.

This is what a lot of the internet advice about scaling your business is missing: the nuances for service-based business owners, whether you’re a coach, graphic designer, therapist, marketing consultant or interior designer. Sometimes the delivery of what your clients love about you isn't as easy to standardize as the gurus make it sound. I know because I've been on both sides of it. I lived the mistake, and now at Exhale I watch other business owners walk toward the same one.

In my situation, I hadn't put in enough reps with my own one to one clients yet to know what was repeatable. I didn’t have a volume enough of outcomes to talk about in this more “productized” offer, the type that earns you credibility when somebody’s trying to figure out whether to buy a course from you. And, similarly, my methods inside my 1:1 offer hadn’t been standardized enough yet where I was truly clear on what pieces made the different.

In short, “productizing” wasn’t really the problem, I was. I just wasn’t ready. And by spending all that time trying to make the productized offers work, I took my eye off the ball of what was really making me money and my revenue suffered as a result.

There are three specific situations where going all in on productizing your business is the wrong call, and if any of them are true for you right now, I want you to avoid making these mistakes.

Reason 1: You won't enjoy running a high volume, low connection business

This is the piece most of the "make more money" advice isn’t thinking about: what it actually feels like to run your business. If connection with your clients is the most fulfilling part of your work, a high-volume, low-touch model will drain that out of the business almost immediately.

These types of answers aren’t as clean as running some basic spreadsheets of what a lower price point but higher scale product could do for your business. It requires self-reflection, patience and clarity about your vision for the future.

Looking back when I made this productizing mistake, I had a lot of pieces unclear in my own life, business and otherwise, so I can see how I missed some of the signs. Which is why as I’ve built Exhale, I’ve been a whole lot more purposeful in deciding on marketing strategies, offer suites and internal operations because I want to build a business that feels as good as it looks.

But it’s certainly easier said than done.

If you already know deep down that the close relationships are the best part of your work, it might be better to consider how you could get to a more premium price point as a lever to scale before looking at volume. You could also look at zeroing in on the types of clients you work with to reduce the hours required, because you’re so dialed in, so that each dollar you make feels like it goes a bit further.

The other major lever you can pull is trying to reduce the time you have to spend doing anything other than that work. Build systems that eliminate the admin and busy work eating your time, so more of your week goes toward the one to one work that gives you energy.

It’s okay to decide that you don’t need to scale to eight figures or become a billionaire if you’ve built a thriving business that makes great money and feels good to you. That’s fulfilling.

Reason 2: You don't have a repeatable system yet

The second scenario where I wouldn't recommend going all in on productizing is when you don't have a consistent system in your service yet. This was a part of my mistake because while each engagement went through a similar flow, there was a lot of my judgement built in. I had guesses of what was repeatable across my 1:1 clients, but it wasn’t tested, so the courses and digital products I built weren't effective.

This is where the biggest risk is in productizing - you can spend months building these offers (that was certainly the case for me) and the results might not replicate the way you think.

And that’s before we think about the fact that it takes a different marketing strategy entirely. But that’s a whole other can of worms.

If you don’t have dialed in, repeatable systems for how you run you 1:1 offer, you might be too early to build productized offers. This isn't a never. It's a not yet.

If this is you, the better use of your time right now is refining your signature offer or service until it's genuinely repeatable. That might mean bringing in outside help. (At Exhale, this is a common point where we end up having conversations with people, to see if we can accelerate the process so they can add scalable products sooner! If you’re curious about working with us, book a call!)

Reason 3: You offer a broad range of services

The third scenario where I wouldn’t recommend productizing is a close cousin to the second: you offer a wide range of services.

Turning a single service into a product already takes months, sometimes years, of consistent focus. If you're doing that across two or three different service lines at once, the time investment multiplies, and so does the risk. You can end up cannibalizing the parts of your business that are making you money right now, in service of a product that isn't done yet.

If you're committed to productizing anyway, focus on one service first, the one that already has the most systems built around it and feels the most repeatable. But if a broad range of services is your situation, there's a good chance the real issue is Reason 2: you need more reps running one specific service before you're realistically ready to turn it into a product.

Productizing isn't the only way to get your time back

All is not lost if what you want is to run your business in less time, or if you're working toward a productized business eventually. Productizing is not the only way to grow your revenue, or even the first way we recommend.

When people talk about productizing, they usually mean turning the services you already offer into something like a product, a fixed thing a client can buy without much customization. But there's another approach: building systems in the parts of your business that have nothing to do with how you deliver services to clients.

As a business owner, you already know there's a lot more to running a business than the client-facing work. Most of the clients we work with at Exhale come to us wanting one of two things: more time back, or the ability to run their business more effectively in the same amount of time, which usually means more revenue without more hours. For almost everyone, the highest impact place to start isn't a new product. It's the admin work quietly dragging on your time so you have less of it for marketing, business development, or the clients you already have.

Five places to look for systems before you productize anything

There are usually five to ten easy ways to build processes, and eventually systems, in a business that free up time you can redirect anywhere that grows the business, including, eventually, toward productizing a service if that's still the goal. The ones we see most often when we start working with a new client:

Bookkeeping and financial reporting. I have a Zapier automation that catches every transaction from my email notifications and logs it to a spreadsheet before I've even looked at my inbox. It saves me an hour or two a week I'd otherwise spend on bookkeeping.
Inbox management. Email is one of the biggest time sucks there is. I'm an inbox zero person, not because it's a productivity hack, but because an unread inbox feels like unfinished business to me. But even if you’re not - inbox filters, automated inbox scans or some strategic folders can reduce the mental drain that the inbox puts on most of us.
Testimonials and results collection, more broadly, an offboarding process. This is one of the most commonly overlooked systems in service based businesses. There's rarely a defined moment where you ask for the result, the testimonial, the referral, so it just doesn't happen consistently.
Content planning. Almost all of us want to do more marketing and get in front of more people. But content is an amorphous, overwhelming topic if you don't come from a marketing background, and without a system it stays a good intention instead of a habit.
Project kickoffs, the process from when someone signs to when you start work. It has more steps than it seems like it should, and when it's manual and ad hoc, it sets the tone for the whole client engagement, for better or worse.

Systems now, product later (maybe!)

None of this means you'll never productize your business, or that you should give up on the idea of running it in less time. But the order of operations matters. Most people try to build the product before they've built the systems underneath their existing service, and that's usually why it doesn't work the way the advice promised.

Get the systems in place first. Then decide, from a business that's actually working, whether a product is still worth building.

If you'd rather hand this off entirely because you genuinely don't have the time to build it yourself, this is exactly the kind of work we do inside a Bottleneck Breakthrough, our signature engagement for business owners who've become the bottleneck in their own business. Book a call and let's talk about it!

Frequently asked questions‍ ‍

What does it mean to productize a service business?

Productizing means turning a service you already deliver into something repeatable enough to sell to many more people without much customization, closer to something a client buys off the shelf than something built around them individually. The goal is usually to triple or multiply the number of people you can serve in a given month, quarter, or year without adding proportional hours. Courses, templates, and fixed scope packages are common examples. It's a legitimate way to grow, but it works best once the underlying service is already consistent and repeatable in practice, not just in theory.

Is productizing my business always a bad idea?

No. Part of the standard advice to productize is true and useful, it's a real way to serve more people in less time and make more money doing it. The problem isn't the strategy itself, it's applying it before your business is ready for it, or applying it when a low connection, high volume model isn't what you want out of running your business. I productized my own coaching business too early and watched my revenue crater as a result, which is exactly why I recommend checking readiness first.

How do I know if my service business is ready to productize?

Look for a service you've delivered enough times to know exactly what's repeatable and what isn't, one clear signature offer rather than a broad range of services, and genuine excitement about running a higher volume, lower touch version of your business. If any of those are missing, you're probably in the "not yet" category rather than the "never" category, and the better use of your time is refining what you already have.

What should I focus on instead of productizing right away?

Start with the systems running underneath your business that have nothing to do with how you deliver your service: bookkeeping and financial reporting, inbox management, testimonials and offboarding, content planning, and project kickoffs are five of the most common gaps we find with new clients at Exhale. Fixing these usually frees up more time, faster, than building a product would, and it doesn't put your existing revenue at risk in the process.