#15 - Tyler Gillespie of productized.services
#15 - Tyler Gillespie on customer confidence, powerful pivots, and fierce focus.
On this episode of The First 10 Podcast, I talk to Tyler Gillespie, founder of Content Pros and Applause Labs, both of which he started, grew and sold, and who is now focused on Productised Mentor, a mentorship program to help people create scalable, high-margin service businesses.
Key Points
Getting over one of the biggest hurdles of "No one else can write or design as good as me"
"When you productize you provide the customer with a lot of confidence in the purchase.
"There is no one way to productize your service. In a perfect world, it would move close to the experience of purchasing from Amazon "
"Customers, once they trust you with one thing, are potentially going to ask you to do many other things. But that’s where a lot of service businesses can get into trouble"
Have clarity on your core avatar
Show Notes
https://mentor.productized.services/
Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes
Contact Details
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerdgillespie/
Transcription
SPEAKERS Conor McCarthy, Tyler Gillespie
Tyler Gillespie 00:01
If you can figure out who your core avatar is, who you maybe want to target that gives you kind of the starting point because now you want to go to where they're hanging out, I like to take the angle of like your dream 100 partners, and why I go after partners is because partners are the places where your audience hang out. So that's kind of how I think about it.
Conor McCarthy 00:23
Hello, Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the first 10 podcast where I interview Business Builders have their first 10 customers who they were, and offend them, as they talked to them, and what effect they had on their business so that you can learn what worked and what didn't. My guest today is Tyler Gillespie. Tyler is the founder of content pros and applause labs, both of which he started, grew and then sold, and who is now focused on productizing mentor mentorship programme to help people create scalable high margin service businesses. productized services are a relatively recent business model. And Tyler has figured out a lot of the best practices which he shares with us here. We talk about the importance of positioning and finding product market fit and being prepared to pivot to do so. We discuss pricing, and Tyler offers some really great suggestions to figure out how to price a product a service, as well as talking about understanding the often intangible value of what you actually do for your customers is really brilliant method of quickly growing your network of potential clients called the beta growth hack formula. We also talk about reaching out to your network, which I still think is a hugely undervalued asset that we all have. Tyler is a true entrepreneur, he repeatedly leans into the hard work of spotting opportunities, taking leaps, swiftly iterating on his ideas, and building and selling successful companies. I really learned a tonne In this episode, and I think you will, too. So that further ado, Tyler Gillespie. Hey, there first 10 podcast listeners. I'm here today with Tyler Gillespie. Tyler, first of all, thank you very, very much for taking the time to be with us here today. Thank you. Do you want to tell us a little bit of your business story so far on what you're working on right now?
Tyler Gillespie 02:04
Yeah, I mean, a lot to a lot to unpack. I'll give you the short version. But it originally from Colorado started, you know, in the kind of the service business industry, mainly, like in person services. Early days, so really kind of just family had like a property management service company vacation rentals. You know, those types of kind of service businesses. So I kind of got my hands dirty with just learning the ins and outs and helping family growing up and the eventually started, you know, dabbling and launched a few of my own businesses, naturally, within the service industry as well, ran a vacation rental company for a while in Colorado, and then realised, you know, at the time, which was a little while ago, I wanted to travel. And so that's when I kind of transitioned to the online world, and started doing services online. I think if we fast forward a little bit, because I know we want to cover a couple of the two previous businesses. Yeah, just really focused on I launched a content writing service. And then, most recently, a video testimonial service, which I both sold. But it all kind of stayed in that lane of you know, service businesses, starting offline, and then eventually coming online and just kind o building and focusing kind of on that kind of business model.
Conor McCarthy 03:31
So it's a it's a really interesting business model where you are like, productized services, do you just want to just talk a little bit about what exactly they are?
Tyler Gillespie 03:38
Yeah, so obviously, a client service business, you're typically, you know, trading your time for money, I think a lot of your audience, you know, especially if they're just starting out and getting the first 10 customers, they might already have a certain skill set, right. You know, they might be offering, you know, design services or doing paid media campaigns or their writers. So, a product I service is really, it's, it's just kind of adjusting the way you look at a traditional service model or agency or consultancy.And kind of understanding, you know, a typical agency and a typical consultant and service business, just they don't scale very well, because you're typically trading your time for money. And then even after you outsource it, you know, you're going to hit a lot of growth ceilings. So when you productize your service or your product as yourself in a consulting aspect, you're essentially just positioning yourself like a product. Let's say a product sold off Amazon, then that helps kind of systematise and position what you're doing in a way that actually has the ability to scale beyond yourself. Because you kind of trapped yourself in this in create kind of a growth ceiling. And when you can productize yourself and create systems around what you do then then you're able to actually kind of scale beyond yourself. So in the in the shortest, simplest description that is kind of an essence what what it is that a product or service is why I like them. And and I think it's kind of a preferred model eventually, you know, and you can start thinking about very early on, as well, when you're when you're running a service business. Yeah, I think it's fascinating, and kudos to you for for starting and selling a couple of businesses so far that have done this successfully. Because I think to a lot of freelancers, who would listen to this show, who are trying to get their first 10, or maybe just how they are maxing out at 10 customers at a time, let's say, this sounds like the dream to be able to package up what you do into something that has a set price, set deliverable set timeframe, what was the hardest part in going from the kind of Freelancer paid for your time? to the to the productized? services? What was the main thing to get over? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a transition, especially if you're doing a lot of work yourself, which is natural, because you're typically you're bringing a skill or your superpower to a business, right, you may have developed skills. Let's say you were a writer, you worked for a company, and now you want to do your own thing you're naturally going to start writing. And I think one of the biggest hurdles is not doing that, or, you know, getting to a point where you're going to transfer and have someone else do the writing. So that's typically one of the biggest hurdles is because you know, you'll probably hear this a lot, I've no one can else, no one else can write as good as me or no one else can design as good as me. So that's a very common one. I mean, that's a big hurdle. I think for me since I was was never really a writer, to be honest, we started a writing company, because we kind of saw a need in the market. So I was in a very unique case where I kind of skipped over that maybe initial hurdle initially. So when we started content pros, which was the previous business, the first job we ended up getting, we immediately outsourced it to our writer, where in most cases, someone might actually just do the writing themselves, right. So that kind of created restraints, because my partner and I, we weren't right, like writers necessarily. So we just had no choice but to outsource that element of the project. So I think that's definitely a hurdle for a lot of people. And the sooner you can kind of, you know, and you may enjoy writing, you may want to do the writing, again, it's kind of what are you trying to optimise for, but to build a business, it doesn't rely on you, you want to, these are things you probably want to also think about, and I actually encourage people to do some of the work initially, because you learn so much by actually doing some of the writing etc, before you outsource it. Because you do want to kind of know the the inner workings of the process, you're going to build out and get to know your customers and do the research, etc. So I think in context of the first 10 you know that that's also important to kind of consider as well. So that's probably one of the biggest hurdles people kind of face initially.
Conor McCarthy 08:29
Yes, it's, it's well, because we're talking about writing, it is like, kill your darlings. It's how do you move from being so attached to the thing that you're known for, to almost zooming out to 30,000 feet and kind of going, Well, this is a this, I want this to be a business that's bigger than me? And how can I put in place as well as the systems and the processes? Where writing is just one part of that, instead of writing is everything I do? Exactly, yeah. So it's, it's, you know, everyone's heard it, you know, working on verse in your business, if you're writing you're working in and if you've have someone writing for you, you're more working on. So it's, it's, you know, it's kind of just having that mindset and just kind of realising kind of how you might build, you know, whatever service business that you're working on.
Conor McCarthy 09:18
So it's really interesting how so with content pros, then so you, you, you didn't do any of the jobs initially, which is kind of a smart way to think about it, because you just jump straight in and you hired people to do the writing for you. How did you how did you find people or how did you vet people? I guess?
Tyler Gillespie 09:35
Yeah, so the first few customers we got that was definitely one of the harder parts and and I think we lucked out initially. But we quickly learned as we brought on more and more customers that the writing team was going to be a very important asset and it was also very hard to find really high quality writers. So I think we were hiring like 1% of applicants. So, you know, which, which was a lot, you know, because if we needed five, six new riders or 10, new riders, you know, we have to interview quite a few people to get there. So I think the tactical part of like, where we actually found them, we, you know, and I think this is still a great answer today, but like, we found a good handful of them on Upwork. At the time was oDesk. Before oDesk and Elance, before they emerged top work, but Upwork has some great writing talent, I actually still found writers recently for things I need for projects that I'm working on now. We also used I think, freelancer.com, freelance writing, gigs, calm, and then also pro blogger. So these were places that were able to kind of source and then filter and find some, some good writers and at least initially to kind of build, build the foundation of the team out.
Conor McCarthy 11:04
That's Yeah, that's, there's, there's places to look, I guess, and but it's narrowing down and filtering the best ones is that's the tricky part, when it came to customers. How did you go about filling the pipeline of business?
Tyler Gillespie 11:18
Yes. So I think for that business, when we look at content pros, when we first started, where we actually got the customers was actually on Upwork. And the way we stood out, which I still have, you know, people that have helped with recently, getting, it's a great place to find customers, because they're, they're posting for specific solutions they need solved. And I think a lot of people aren't great at selling themselves on Upwork. So the trick that we did that made us really stand out is and now you have tools like loom calm, and etc, that we would just record custom videos for every single customer. So whenever we would, we'd find someone who was looking for some writing, or needed writing help on Upwork. And then we would as a freelancer a profile, within Upwork, as a freelancer, we would actually pitch you know, pretty personalised message, but then also include a customised video, and of us kind of explaining what we could do, how we can help them, etc. Here's the work we've done. And it was essentially those video pitches, you know, helped us secure I think, I mean, majority of all of our, you know, first 1520 customers. So that, so that was that was definitely interesting. And I think it's still, you know, a great, great tool to leverage today, just because most people are just really shy, they won't make videos. And for us, that was a way to kind of stand out. Hmm.
Conor McCarthy 12:47
And is it what was the, I suppose the, the lifetime value, but like did many of those early customers stick with you once they saw the quality of your work?
Tyler Gillespie 12:56
Yeah, definitely. So with that business, I mean, the way we structured as well as it was a monthly recurring writing service. So majority of people once they came on, he had stayed on with us for, I mean, quite a while he, our LTV for that business was well over, I think, 1314 months. From what I remember, last, but it was still growing, as well. But we had a lot of people they stayed on for a while. And
Conor McCarthy 13:28
it's so interesting that you're able to kind of package up something that I suppose a lot of people would would consider something writing, like, it can take time. I think a lot of people listening to this have written something, even if it's a blog post, and you know, you can do there and you can take time and you know, think that the deadlines can extend, let's say, you know, is there anything you can share with us about your internal systems for doing this type of work for for delivering with a client?
Tyler Gillespie 13:57
Yeah, I think, you know, obviously, there's a lot of different types of writing you can do. We did I think initially we started we were doing some autoresponder emails, and then we moved to like blog content. And I think we had a somewhat of a structure for the content. So we had like a template, we had a training for new writers that came in, but it was really kind of, you know, because each customer that we were writing for, had their own unique kind of preferences and length of posts, etc. So for the writers, we, you know, we paid them in somewhat of a fixed rate per word. So that made it you know, very predictable on you know, what we were going to pay writers, so that's really important. And then, other than that, we kind of had guidelines and and kind of quality assurances throughout the process, but the actual writing they did was was pretty, you know, we left that creative element up to them based on kind of the customer's preferences, and then they would ensure they included x things Before they turned it in. So I think for stuff like this and writing, and if there's any creative elements, some assemblance of a process or checklist for quality works really well, but then having those creative people working inside, like a framework helps quite a bit. So you're not kind of robbing them of their creative output, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Conor McCarthy 15:29
yeah. And when it comes to, to the customers, and how they view, the productized service of writing, let's say, in this case, initially, or at any point, did you have to kind of convince any customers that this was a real thing that you can, you know, send in a request on the other end pops this quality piece of writing? And that's, that's the way it's done now? Yeah, I think it's becoming more popular now. Right? Like, yeah, I think you'll you'll see a lot more services. I think, when we started, that wasn't the case. I think, when you think about the alternative, it's like, maybe you would hire a writer, they charge you by the hour, maybe they charge you by the word, they probably put a custom proposal together, you know, it probably take a decent amount of time. So anyways, so like, when you look at that, compared to like a productized model, where it's like, cool, you go to content pro site, you're like, cool, I want 1000 1200 word blog post on this topic, I'll get an industry writer, and it'll be back to me in three days. Like, when you productize, essentially you have, you're promising the customer, they know exactly what they're getting, they're not guessing. So it provides them a lot of confidence in the purchase. So I think that's like one of the biggest things people can think about when they're looking or thinking about productizing is it not only makes your life easier, because now you have a process and something that's more fixed that you're offering, but it also adds a lot of confidence on the buyer side, because, you know, they know exactly what what they're buying, and when they're going to get it back. And so that really helps just make it really easy to buy. It's the same reason for example, like if you go online now and you want to hire a freelancer, you know, if you want to Upwork it's very custom, right? You're You're drafting a proposal, or a job ad you're filtering through people looking at examples. But then if you head over to Fiverr, As another example, Fiverr Is there a productize marketplace, you if you type in I will need a somebody to do graphic design, they fibre has pretty much prepackaged everyone's offer into a fixed price. And you can see, look at the reviews. And you can just buy with one click. So it makes it a lot easier from the buyers perspective. So it'll be interesting to see, I think they're a great example of just we're looking at, you know, how that actually looks in real life. From a positioning standpoint, that's, that's just Yeah, something I think about.
Conor McCarthy 17:59
And so moving on to the video testimonial service, this is applause labs, what were the learnings that you took from content pros, moving over to applause labs? Yeah. So
Tyler Gillespie 18:08
it took us a little while to productize and fully dial in content pros. And I think applause lab, it was definitely more of like from day one. So I think like with anything, the second or third time you're doing something, you're a lot faster. You take those learnings? Yeah. So for me, it was like, cool, I knew exactly what I wanted to do from a positioning standpoint, how I want to price the service, etc. So I was able to move very, very quickly. And to kind of validating and, and getting that service. You know, to its Yeah, its first 10 plus customers. So I mean, I'm happy to dive in and kind of break down more of kind of knew what that looks like as well, or what that looks like.
Conor McCarthy 18:50
Yeah, totally. I mean, I don't think I don't think firsthand to be even to start with positioning, because that's something that we talk about from time to time on the website. Oh, sorry, on the podcast, and it's, it can be tricky to get right. It can take a little bit of evolution to to get right
Tyler Gillespie 19:06
100% Yeah, no, I think even with all the previous past experience, and I helped a lot of service business owners do this. I think product market fit is is extremely difficult to nail no matter, you know, how many times you've done it unless you have some really kind of insider trading kind of information when you go into a new market. But for me, like I understood, like, most people understand the value prop of video testimonials It was me like trying to find like, Who is this going to best serve, especially in like the product is model. So positioning was a huge thing. So I looked at like a lot of the competitors in the market to kind of see where everyone kind of played, how they were positioning. Also, I looked at like what, what kind of unfair advantages Could I bring to this business? Like I looked at my network and you know, where, you know, out of everyone that I know like what type of businesses do they have? where they could benefit from this. So initially I went after and I reached out to like a lot of like software companies. So SAS companies, which was kind of my initial test. Because I had a lot of people in my network and I think it was the first 10 or 12 people I emailed, just kind of playing the seat of the service. And if they'd be interested, I got two or three customers from there. I also posted a post in a SAS Facebook group. And I got a lot of interest from there as well. But even after all that it I mean, fast forward three, four months, I ended up pivoting to ecommerce, because it was a much better product, back to the product market fit thing. So I learned a lot working with these different sass companies. And that's how I got I got a lot of initial traction, got some great testimonials. And then I started to get some interest from some e commerce companies. And after working with them and comparing kind of the, the, just the experience from mine and operations of working with both those kind of different avatars, the e commerce was a clear winner. So we kind of repositioned after that, and just focused on on working with e commerce companies, as far as like the positioning and getting new customers. But that's kind of it was an interesting journey.
Conor McCarthy 21:28
Yeah. That is the stories there. Was it? Was there any one factor that was very telling that made you pivot to e commerce?
Tyler Gillespie 21:37
Yes. So it was mainly, and you may have heard that this term, like a lot, sometimes you're, you're like one to one, right? So when I signed up an e commerce company, they would hand pick out, you know, let's say five or 10 customers, if that, for me to interview, right? For the video testimonials, it was very one to one, they would intro me we would set up the interview, or we would send them a link to submit their interview. But with an e commerce company, they have a list of 1000 5000 customers. It's a very different relationship. So it was, you know, one, the SAS side, and the tech side, they would send me one to one to five or six people, but on the e commerce side, they would just send an email to their list. And I mean, we would get you know, there was one ecommerce company, they were struggling to get video testimonials. And I think in the first two weeks working with us, we captured 80 video testimonials in like 10 days. Wow. So it was like, you know, so that's kind of different, you have like this, the ability to scale. So that was just a small nuance I didn't think of, and I just had to learn why we were when I was working with SAS companies and realised, wow, you know, working with an e commerce company, we have access to all their customer base. And, you know, we could just create endless video testimonials that they can use for marketing and etc. So and they put a little bit more weight, you know, they call it like user generated content, in that in kind of the SAS space or the e commerce world. And that's like gold for them. Because you know, if you have your customers screaming from the rooftops about a product they bought, you know, that's something that's really valuable for an e commerce company to use in their marketing.
Conor McCarthy 23:25
Yeah, yeah, completely. I mean, that's, it's something that I don't realise how much I kind of rely on it. Now I assume that there's going to be an existing customer, that I could watch a video and they're, they're talking about the product, and of course, it's hand picked, etc. But it makes a difference when it's a real person speaking the words, versus the usual kind of quoted testimonial. 100% Yeah. And what else about the the video testimonial service? I mean, how did you I suppose How did your understanding of productized services grow in relation to finding new customers? And that that part of the of the process Yeah, so
Tyler Gillespie 24:04
I think I mean, there's, there's no one way to kind of productize your service and I always try to kind of share that I think there's like this ideal way where it's like, the closer we can move to, to positioning and selling your service like a product, like you're just buying something on Amazon like that's like the perfect in a perfect world. And I think for me, I realised, you know, sometimes you don't want to force a certain type of business into a certain box, you know, that saying you want to put it shove a peg down a square hole, or vice versa, just you know, it's just not not going to be a great fit. So for me, it was, you know, realising with applause lab that, you know, I tried to initially immediately put the business into like a monthly recurring option, because ideally, that's what I would want, right? Like I would want someone pay me monthly, but it turns out people that need video testimonials, or want to be charged every single month for video testimonials, as well, there's like there was a lead up time to capture these. So what worked better was, you know, after realising that, you know, switching to a yearly subscription, which is what we ended up eventually doing, which worked a lot better where someone could pay for for a year, and then they would have that whole year to capture them and use them, etc. So it was a lot more flexible. But yeah, I think it's, you know, just trying to best understand, you know, I think a lot of people see, you know, maybe if you do, even if you weren't familiar with products or services before this interview, you might look, look up the model or do some googling, and there's some really popular unlimited services. One that's one in particular is called design pickle. And they do unlimited graphic design for, like 500 bucks a month. But a lot of people getting into productized services might be like, Oh, that's awesome. I want to do an unlimited service. Yeah, it might, it might not be the best fit in any, you know, in most cases, it's not just because they have there's a lot of different things under the hood that they're, they're doing and leveraging. And I think so that's important as well, as you know, there's a lot of different ways you can productize your service. Yeah. So just kind of, you'll have to kind of play and all of it kind of comes down to one kind of the model you've chosen, and the type of business and service you're offering. And then as well, kind of what the ideal type of business you want to build personally. Yeah, those are things to think about.
Conor McCarthy 26:45
You mentioned, they're like, design pickle of 500. Dead dollars a month. It's pretty incredible for unlimited design, when it comes to pricing. I mean, Freelancer or processors, etc. Pricing is something that I must have had more conversations about how to price things than anything else. How do you think about pricing?
Tyler Gillespie 27:03
Yeah, this is a huge one. And I think I'll definitely I'll share some thoughts on kind of how I think about it, I'd love to hear your thoughts do counter. But I think when Yeah, the pricing side of things, most people underpriced themselves when they start very common. I think when you're looking at pricing, whether you're going to do the work yourself or not to start, you want to make sure you at least have a 50 to 60% gross margin is what I shoot for personally. And if you can do more awesome, but you want, especially at the beginning, when you're, you know, getting those first 10 customers, I mean, that's where a lot of things go wrong, and you'll get stuck in this legacy pricing, or just you might be losing money, if you don't price yourself, right. But so yeah, that's what I shoot for, it's like, can you get Can you Hi, if I was going to hire out the service, could I pay someone to do it for 30% of what I'm charging, or for 30 to 40% of what I'm charging, you know, so that's another way to kind of look at it as well. And if you can do that, then that really sets you up for a little bit more longer term success. Because what happens, you really backed yourself into a corner if you don't think about some of those margins, because now all of a sudden, as you grow, you're going to want to hire someone else. And you want to have some money for marketing and you know, the operations of the business, if you don't at least have you know, that 50 60% plus margin built in then you're you're just you're gonna you're gonna be a tough spot. So yeah, that's kind of at least how I think about it. How about yourself?
Conor McCarthy 28:40
Well, it's, it's, it's an ongoing thought process for me, because I mean, price, it's so interesting, because you think about the customer sees that the money figure, because we all have a story about money. And, and money is connected to value, even though they're not the same thing, obviously. So depending on who you're talking to, like, if it's a, if it's a giant company, and you quote, some small amount of money, kind of laugh it off, even though it might be a relatively big amount of money for you. But similarly, you know, if it's a if it's a one person operation, you know, you kind of have to be careful with how they might value the amount of money that you're asking for. So it's a it's a bit of a dance. And that's why I'm so curious about it, and I suppose the freelancers and all the freelancing I've done has been on the the one to one, high touch end of things. So I've had to price more based based on that fact. But you're going down this different road where there are systems in place that I suppose could streamline the process which cuts costs on both sides, so you can offer a way more competitive rate for the same service. I mean, when it comes to writing, you know that the output would be the same to content pros as it might be through a one off freelance gig, but you're doing it at a at a much more compressed timeframe, which is obviously very valuable.
Tyler Gillespie 30:05
Yeah. And I think to when you're thinking about productizing, your service, there's a lot of great examples and people I work with that, that do charge fairly high ticket pricing as well. I mean, you can productize at any scale that you're trying to offer, as well. So it's not just, you know, these lower ticket type of service offerings, you know, there's a lot of consultants that I work with are just products or services that maybe, you know, one gentleman who sells like webinar consulting, where he does, he builds webinars for SaaS companies. He's completely productize it, but it's, you know, no, it's still in that, you know, four to six k range. There's also another gentleman that does these, like, really in depth blog posts, with data science, like backed by data and science, and they do all these data driven surveys, and they're, they're charging like eight to 15. k. So I think, yeah, so there's definitely some good examples of, of, you know, some higher ticket ways to position. I think that what's productize is maybe the package of what you offer, the the processes, but I think to your point as well, because I think it's important to think about, you know, especially when you're trying to not trade time for money, and you're, you're trying to essentially deliver on an outcome, right, and the value is based on that outcome. Yeah, and not how many hours you've worked. I think that is potentially a downside of the product I service model, which I definitely like I portray with people because especially if you're going up market, you're selling enterprise, you're selling your you know, these bigger ticket things, you you potentially are losing out on some of that huge upside the value you could sell. You know, so there's a little bit of a trade off. And hopefully, in my mind, I've seen it worth it because you can, you can scale and you're building something that's bigger than yourself, rather than maybe a custom value based proposal to a big enterprise that you can charge 50 Grand 100 grand for, but you're doing you're doing the work, and it's project based and proposal based. So So I think there's different ways to look at it. I think, again, what it's what what are you trying to optimise for, as well, but that's definitely one of the downsides is you are leaving some potential money on the table. Because when you productize you're also saying no, to potentially a lot of things as well, to stay in that in that lane. So there's definitely like a bridge for people as they, as they move towards that path, if that's what they want.
Conor McCarthy 32:40
I was gonna ask that I was gonna ask that it says does a product that service eventually become almost like a funnel for for bigger and bigger? jobs that people kind of go, Oh, you can do this? Maybe you can do 10 x this? And do you have to say no, to a certain point?
Tyler Gillespie 32:57
Yeah, no, I think initially, yes. It depends how fast you can move to building that that machine, of which is your business, right? Because eventually, customers, once they trust you with one thing, they're going to ask you to do many other things, potentially, which is normal. And I think that's where a lot of service businesses get in trouble. They just continue to say yes to everything. And now they're, you know, a traditional full service agency, and they're doing a lot of things, but they're not great at one thing in particular. So I think when you're productizing, you're really focused on one thing, and you get really great at that. And then the main goal is to listen to your customers. And you can always add on additional productize offerings, that maybe continue up the value ladder. And I've seen this happen, for example, my one friend who runs the half.com, they started with one product, and which is an SEO service. And they've they've perfected that, and got it really down before they even and then they launched their second product, and so on, to continue to sell it to their customer base because it was continuing to expand. And now I think they have almost 18 to 20 products. But complete everyone is productize systematised, but they continue to add on to that. So that's a good example of like, the evolution of maybe the different offerings you could have kind of on that on that journey. As you as you build and grow the business.
Conor McCarthy 34:29
I love that. Yeah. Just watching. Yes. Just, I suppose listening and watching what your customer needs and then spotting the patterns and then let's build a product around that. That's smart. And do you want to talk at all about your your current, your current work, because I know that they were bad content pros and applause lab, we're kind of past projects that you've exited.
Tyler Gillespie 34:49
From. Exactly, yeah, so those were great. I mean, I'm definitely I'm kind of itching to start another product, you know, eventually, but I think naturally after that, about been able to help quite a few people. So right now I'm focused on essentially a productized Consulting in a way or mentoring. And, you know, right now I'm just focused on kind of giving back and helping service businesses kind of, you know, go from that 10 to 80 k a month mark, kind of in that kind of window a little bit and get to, you know, six, six figures a month as kind of an ultimate goal. So, really just helping people with that that's called productize. mentor, and it's essentially like a, an asynchronous mentorship programme, if that makes sense. So, I think you took a brief look at it, but essentially, it's, I have several of these playbooks that built up with by running all these businesses over the years. So essentially, you get access to those, and then you have access to message me on WhatsApp. Anytime you want, and then I respond back twice a week. So it's kind of a cool way to, to kind of work with me in a one to one aspect. And, you know, as questions come up, you know, that's, that's kind of how I've been working with people. So that's been a lot of fun.
Conor McCarthy 36:09
Yeah, that's quite different from, I suppose the kind of the pipeline model, if you like, of productized services, where you're putting yourself back into the game a little bit more, you're putting yourself you're making yourself more available to your customers.
Tyler Gillespie 36:24
Exactly, yes, this is more of a yes or more one to one offer. I didn't didn't have plans to kind of outsource or or build that in that way. I think the structure is very productized. But I'm still the one in this case, as kind of a product as consulting offer doing the doing the work. But it's also like something I've I've kind of chosen and I love the love the you know, the aspect of working with people giving back and and we're working with just really cool entrepreneurs as well building building service businesses and meant productizing. So that aspects been really fun. And it's a great bridge as well. In the meantime, I look for the next product or service to start, hopefully.
Conor McCarthy 37:07
Yeah, that's great. And cool. Just one one last question. What would you say to someone who is just starting out to find their first 10? customers?
Tyler Gillespie 37:15
Yes. So I was thinking about this. And I think I've got two answers, I'd love to share with you. One answer one idea of actually how to do it. Someone is like, you got to have, I guess some clarity on who maybe that core avatar is. And I think, you know, initially, you're also trying to figure that out. But typically how I've done it is, you know, like for me when I talked about applause lab was like, cool. I want to go after SAS companies. I think you heard my example is cool. Who am I network, potentially is connected to the SAS industry or runs a sass company. Okay, great, what Facebook groups have SAS companies in them, or what SAS Facebook groups are just, that's all they are. There's there's hundreds, but there's all these different segments and groups. And so essentially, the the core of what I'm explaining is, if you can figure out who your core avatar is, who you maybe want to target. That gives you kind of the starting point, because now it's now you want to go to where they're hanging out. So initially start with your network. That's the best place. Initially, through all my examples of all the businesses have started, like the network initially, has been kind of the quickest from like zero to one. And then after that going into whether it's groups or forums or blogs, essentially, there's this great book, and I'll recommend it's called the ultimate sales machine by Chet Holmes. And he talks about a concept called the dream 100. And it's essentially it's, you know, making a list of your dream 100 customers, but I like to take the angle of like, your dream, 100 partners, and why I go after partners is because partners are the places where your audience hang out. So that's kind of how I think about it. And I think that's a lot more powerful, because then you can go into if you're going after SAS companies, now you go into a Facebook group with 1000, SAS companies, and then you can start networking and connecting with people, or you go to a SAS blog, and their readers are all SAS companies. So different ways to think about it, but that's kind of on how I would go about it, how I've thought about it, how I approached it with applause lab. And even now with the productized mentor, programme, doing the same exact thing, and how I work with a lot of people as well and it works you know, because you go in and go where your ideal customers actually are. And you're going to learn a lot and if it ends up not being your ideal customer then
Conor McCarthy 40:00
You can kind of change and pivot. That's really, really great. Like the the idea of going to your network, I think is, is timeless as well. Because, yeah, I think a lot of people forget that they're their first customers are probably closer than they think. And I just reaching out and asking people, and you know, this is this is what I'm doing. Who do you know? Or who could you connect with you that might be of interest for this is exactly is not a bad way to start at all?
Tyler Gillespie 40:27
Yeah, no, I'll share one last thing, actually, if you have got a few minutes, sure. that I think would be helpful, especially for this first 10. So I think one one way that, and I've done this multiple times, and the people I've worked with as well, it's called the beta hack, beta growth hack formula. And essentially, what what that looks like is once you've kind of have your core audience, define who you want to go after, and you're looking for those first 10 customers, like a big part of like getting that is, is momentum and talking to people. So pending, you kind of have an offering of what you want to do. What this actually looks like is, let's say you're going after, like SAS companies just to continue on that example. But whoever your core avatar is, you would just approach three SAS companies and offer them to provide your service for free for them. It's typically I don't, typically, I wouldn't, like recommend always offering free work. But initially, you kind of need some people into your into your funnel. So essentially, you could you convince these three people that you know, I'll do free work for you. But in exchange, pending you like it, what you'll do for me, is you'll leave me a video testimonial. And you'll intro me to three other colleagues or SAS colleagues that you think could also benefit from the service. So what's going to happen when you do that is, you know, it's going to be much easier than you think, to get people to agree because they're like, great, you're going to write, you know, x, or you're going to design x, or whatever the offering is you have for free. There's nothing, no cost to me, except, you know, if I like it, I'll give you a test a video testimonial and intro you to a few people. So you'll get those three people in, they'll go through your process, you'll be able to actually test your processes and systems actually get do do the work that you've promised. And then you'll get three video testimonials. And then get intro to nine people. So it's a quick way, and I've seen it work over and over again, very successfully. And I think that's that's kind of a cool way to look at it and get it helps you build a lot of momentum. Because once you have your processes dialled through video testimonials and nine more leads in the pipeline, you've now created some momentum to, you know, kind of blow past the first 10
Conor McCarthy 42:56
Oh, I love that. That is a, that's brilliant. And you've also got the the trust factor because the people who introduced you to those nine, have seen your work and they felt they could recommend you. And so those nine are immediately coming from a warmer place.
Tyler Gillespie 43:11
That's exactly,
Conor McCarthy 43:13
I love that. That's a that's a brilliant piece of advice to wrap up the episode. Thank you very much for I've got so many notes. Thank you so so much for this, I'll obviously include all your details and everything you've worked on are working on in the show notes to help spread the word. And I just want to say thank you very much for taking the time and sharing all the expertise you've gained over the years.
Tyler Gillespie 43:20
Hey, thanks so much, Conor. It was great.
Conor McCarthy 43:22
That's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that there was something in there that was actionable and insightful for your business. Do check out the show notes for more information on what we discussed, as well as ways to contact my guest. And it would really make by year if you could help me grow the podcast by leaving a rating or even a review. Helping you identify and create those first 10 customers is what I do. So if you like what you hear on this podcast and want more information, including a bunch of free resources on how to find your first customers and grow your business, do check out www.first10podcast.com, or find me on Twitter @TheFirst10Pod.