The 7-Figure Playbook: Productize & Scale Your Genius w/ Josh Neckes

The biggest myth in consulting? That every engagement has to be bespoke.

In this episode of The 7-Figure Playbook, Sam Lee (IndeCollective, Founder & CEO) sits down with productization expert and longtime IndeCollective Expert Josh Neckes to unpack how independent consultants and coaches can turn their brilliance into scalable, repeatable offerings -- without sacrificing client results or personal freedom.

You’ll learn:

• Why productization isn’t about rigidity -- it’s about leverage
• The Fourfold Path of productizing: Codify → Standardize → Modularize → Productize
• How to turn your IP into products clients want to buy and you love to deliver
• Why starting with clarity around your Ideal Client and painkiller problem is key
• The trap of over-customization -- and how to build guardrails that protect your time and profit margins
• How to use productized offers to build credibility, demand, and a waitlist
• Real-world examples from IndeCollective members who’ve gone from custom work to signature programs, playbooks, and diagnostic frameworks

Whether you’re trying to move from freelance to founder -- or ready to build a 7-figure firm that runs without you -- this conversation is your blueprint.

Your time is valuable. Productization makes sure it stays that way.

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Chapters

• 0:50 Welcome to the Seven-Figure Playbook
• 3:36 What Is Productization?
• 7:21 Josh's Journey to Productization
• 15:04 Finding Product-Market Fit
• 22:48 The Threefold Path to Success
• 32:28 Value-Based Pricing and Productization
• 43:15 Leveraging AI for Independent Success
• 56:42 Key Takeaways and Episode Closing

Transcript

Sam Lee: 0:00

Welcome to the Modern Independent, a podcast dedicated to inspiring, equipping and empowering top independent workers to supercharge their careers and build more balanced lives. As you probably already know, we have three flavors of the modern independent, and today you're joining us for an episode of the Seven-Figure Playbook, a series where I, sam Lee, the founder and CEO of Indie Collective, interview distinguished independent business builders, folks who are here to share with you the practical playbooks that have helped them to build more successful businesses while living more balanced lives. Today, I'm excited to be joined by Josh Nekes. Josh is a marketing leader and company builder, somebody who's built his own seven-figure consultancy, as well as two high-growth venture-backed startups. Today, josh and I are going to talk about productization, and that's because most consultants and coaches are caught in a pernicious trap they're trading their time for money. I say that this is a pernicious trap because if you're trading your time for money, you're necessarily capping your potential, that's, your potential, income, impact and flexibility, because there are only so many hours in the day and week, and if you're trading those hours to work harder and not smarter because you haven't productized your work, you'll eventually plateau in your income and impact, while trading away the valuable time you could otherwise spend pursuing the people and passion projects that matter most to you. This trade of time for money is a terrible equation, so we're here today to inspire you and to think and act differently, so that you can build a productized business of your own.

Sam Lee: 1:33

Josh's first brush with productization began years ago, when he founded his own independent marketing consultancy, pxp. Like most of us, josh began his direct consulting work by trading his time for money, but then quickly turned to productization to achieve even greater impact, income and flexibility in his life. Within a year of productizing PXP's offering, josh's consultancy crossed the seven-figure revenue mark, and then, within just two years, josh founded his second company, simon Data, a marketing technology platform that now employs north of 100 people and drives tens of millions in annual revenue. By taking a methodical approach to productization, josh was able to shift from offering his clients bespoke marketing engagements to developing repeatable processes and product offerings, things that have enabled him to do more of the work he loves, while freeing up the time to develop the technology that has delivered an exponential return on his effort.

Sam Lee: 2:28

In today's episode, josh and I are going to unpack what it means to productize and how you can do it. We'll get specific about the threefold path that he's helped hundreds of our Indie Collective grads to walk to build their own productized consulting and coaching practices. And then we're going to get specific about things you can be doing this year to shift away from trading time for money and building a scalable business that you're going to love. So with that, let's get into it. Josh, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, sam, it's great to be here. It's always great to be in conversation with you. Let's just start with the basics what exactly is productization? And tell us a little bit about the benefits of pursuing this path.

Josh: 3:10

Yeah, well, look, I mean, I think everybody has a slightly different definition of what productization is, but at the end of the day, what we're talking about is taking, whatever it is, the work, whatever you're doing, whatever you are functionally producing as a consultant or a coach or you know whatever type of sole proprietor you are, and you know, turning that into an easily repeatable effort so that I'm, at the end of the day, doing the same thing over and over for clients who look the same, charging the same amount, running into the same problems and accruing the benefits that that provides. I think often, when we embark on the journey to be consultants or to sort of hang out our own shingle, the first thing that we do is just operate from a position of total fear and anxiety, where we're just like, oh God, I need to replace the income that I've lost and secure X number of retainers, doing any work that people will pay me for. And there's some period of time after that where we pick our heads up and we're like man, I feel like I'm working really hard all the time for not enough money. And it also feels like I'm constantly reinventing the wheel and selling a new thing and, like you know, prototype after prototype of engagement prototype and prototype after client type.

Josh: 4:30

You know, and I think you know, for me there was just an aha moment when I ran into some you know a couple of folks in a row when I was living in New York and in my twenties and they just had these services businesses that looked like mine, but they were super efficient and exactly who they were selling to. They sold the same engagement over and over again, made it really easy for them to market what they did, made it really easy for them to get referred, made it really easy for them to build out their teams and know what skill sets they would want to hire and scale around. It gave them a real pathway to insights that allowed them to grow their business in ways that were organic and natural with their existing clients, expanding those revenue footprints, doing more business with their best clients, and at the end of the day, they were just suffering less than I was and their upside was a lot higher. And so I got a lot of passion for that work and I think in services, the great joy of productization is that it can be whatever you want. You're only limited by what your imagination and then the work that you're capable of performing. So, yeah, that's how I think about it and those are the benefits that seem really clear.

Josh: 5:34

And I think most folks who aren't productizing will say things about their business like I feel like I'm working too hard, I feel like I'm not making enough money, I feel like I should be charging more, but I don't know how. So, the too hard I feel like I'm not making enough money, I feel like I should be charging more, but I don't know how. So, like the problems of not productizing often show up in slow sales and having challenge, finding, you know, new leads in all stages of getting clients, retaining them, charging them what feels like a fair rate. It truly is a prism, you know, through which to look at your business. And often when people come to me with a problem in one of those domains like oh, I'm having trouble selling or I'm having trouble charging or whatever it ends up actually being a problem upstream of that, in the way that they think about and conceptualize selling their services.

Sam Lee: 6:15

Beautiful, beautiful. I mean that is a beautiful destination. I know all of us on this podcast today are intrigued to learn more. And, before we get into the how-to, how do you get to that place where you can build once and sell again and again and again? So less effort to drive, more impact and income? Let's just unpack your journey right. You said it was in your mid twenties, when you were starting to do the consulting, when you found yourself doing these bespoke market engagements, things that were trading time for money, things that were frankly depleting you, not energizing you and getting you to your best results, that you began to walk the path. So tell us a little bit about how you walked that path from a bespoke place to ultimately finding a really strong, productized offering for PXP. Sure.

Josh: 7:01

Yeah, I mean, look like I sort of fell into being a sole proprietor for many of the reasons that other folks do. I do extremely poorly when I have a boss, so I don't like people telling me what to do, and I wanted some flexibility. I wanted to choose the people I worked with. I wanted to have some upside. That was all mine. You know, I wanted to be able to go out and you know feel the thrill of victory and the wind in my hair, you know, sailing my little pirate ship around, and so the way that I started was just basically by doing what I was saying, which was like, hey, I'm here, I'm a marketer, you know, letting all the people in my network know I'm available for contract work. You know, as I would get to know people, you know, I sort of would like push on areas that I was comfortable in. So, like I knew that there were lots of people who were consulting around things like buying ads on the internet or what we called performance marketing, and so I would just talk to people, get some interest, see if people were looking, look, look at companies where people were hiring performance marketers and offer consulting services to them, and then I would just charge on an hourly basis. I'd be like you're going to buy a bucket of you know it's 20 hours for me, for you know $200 an hour or whatever it was, and usually it's going to. I'm going to deliver you some outcomes. I'm going to improve your performance margins Very hand wavy. Or I would do retainers. Oh, it's, you know, like we're going to work on it together and I'm going to figure it out and like that was fine, but you know it suffered from a lot of the problems that I mentioned.

Josh: 8:31

I had clients that were all over the place in terms of what they expected. So, you're working on my performance marketing, you're going to make it better. What does that mean? What outcomes can I expect? How should I measure you? Can I expect? How should I measure you? Some clients would have really conservative expectations oh, you're just going to make it a little better. Others would have very lofty, unreasonable goals, neither of which I was managing well.

Josh: 8:51

And then they were across all sorts of different industries. I had B2C companies, I had B2B companies. I had companies that were really big. I had companies that were really small. All of them had different problems. So I was constantly being asked to like come up with new solutions or new frameworks or you know we need this type of report. No, that type of report doesn't work for us, even though it works for your other client. We need this type of report. So just the cognitive overhead of managing this was crazy.

Josh: 9:17

And then it's a services business. So your clients are constantly having crises, there's constantly issues, there's constantly problems, and when those problems are asymmetric, when they're different, you know, client to client, you're just having to do even more work than you're already doing, just putting out the fire. It's like now it's not only two in the morning and I've just put out one fire and I'm moving on to the second one. It's like now I have to like totally shift how I'm thinking about the problem. I can't reuse any of the work that I've done. So I was just like man, this sucks and I started looking at my clients. Somebody once gave me the piece of advice like who are your best clients and what makes them?

Sam Lee: 9:52

similar.

Josh: 9:52

That was sort of my starting point.

Josh: 9:54

And then being inspired, as mentioned, by other folks who are productizing, and I found that I had this really sort of specific group of e-commerce startups that were, you know, midsize a couple hundred employees scaling, had raised a bunch of venture funding and were trying to figure out how to deploy it efficiently. I liked them because they moved fast, they wanted results, they were reasonable, they were data-driven. So that was the first thing is I was like, okay, I'm just going to focus on my storytelling to these folks, you know, and that really helped me, kind of, just like all right, I'm solving the same problem, it feels like, with these folks again and again. I didn't have a ton of structure around my engagements, but at least I was focused in on a client type which was like I was hitting, you know, like crises with clients, but it was kind of like I didn't know what the crisis was going to be until I got in there, you know. So it's like it's like when performance marketing engagements go sideways. They go sideways because the client's like, oh, you know, you're going to improve my performance marketing by x percent. You're like, yeah, that seems reasonable. And then you get in there. And you're like that seems reasonable, and then you get in there and you're like this is an absolute shit show. You know, I there's. You don't have the right materials, you don't have the right collateral, you don't have the right offers, you don't have the right willingness to extend discount whatever. So, like, the quality of your clients varies wildly, even you know, but you only find that out once you start working with them.

Josh: 11:18

So, like when I looked at my client base, I was like you know, I had like half of my clients I loved working with, half I hated working with, but there was no way to tell them apart up front. So this really gave me a lot of conviction around the first real product that I created, which was performance marketing audits. So I would go in and I was like, all right, instead of me trying to sell you a six month engagement up front or like a big bucket of hours, instead I'm going to come in and I'm just going to charge you 20 grand to give you this really professional looking readout that works for all e-commerce startups that have raised a bunch of money and it was great for them because they got to see how I worked and I got to find the problems up front. That would substantiate a bigger engagement, and I also got to look under the hood. So it was like, okay, what's really going on under here? Oh, maybe not. Like, let's not sign up for this one. Help me protect my brand, help just have a happy breakup moment. And so that, really those two things. It was like Sam, I use a lot of language like front end and back end. Right, I'm going to do an audit up front on the front end and that's going to substantiate back end revenue growth For me. I kind audit, make it easier to say yes to some sort of relationship with me. Front end, and let me do a check on the quality of this client to make sure they're not crazy or their expectations aren't unreasonable or they don't have what it takes for me to be successful, so that every engagement feels good. If I'm hitting a crisis, it's something that I feel like I can solve or is of my own making, versus just like I'm working with an unreasonable client that, like, doesn't have the tools they need to win. So that was like, okay, that was phase two.

Josh: 12:47

And then from there, I just continued to refine. Right. It was like, okay, these types of e-commerce companies backed by these VCs, and I eventually created products, like you know, a Series B e-commerce growth plan. Like you, raise that big round, your investors are breathing down your neck. You're the CMO. You're scared. I'm going to get you there. I'm going to deploy that $50 million with you and get you the return that you need to see, give you the readouts that the board is expecting, and all of your CMO friends have already worked with me, so it's just like easy, easy, easy. And then I'm hiring people out of those companies that know what it looks like to do that performance marketing work under me. That was how we scaled the agency. On the back of that. Then it was what are the products that are missing?

Josh: 13:28

as we look to tell that story, you know and that's what led me ultimately towards creating an actual technology company, which was all about using data to market more effectively. So you know, and again, like that was my personal journey, but I think it really ties back to and cleaves to what we were talking about before, which is like step one get in there, understand the clients you like, working with the problems that they have, the ones you're passionate about, where you think you can win, where the money is, where you're differentiated. Figure out, then, how to like winnow that down and make it easy to start working with you in a replicable way that lets you also sanity check the client. Then double down on that. Build products that make sense from like a services perspective, that are easy for your client to buy.

Josh: 14:10

That deliver outcomes and make it easy for you to scale. So that was sort of my journey and I know there's a lot in there and we'll tease out the themes. But, like, ultimately that's how it was for me.

Sam Lee: 14:21

Beautiful, and what you just heard from Josh about his own path of productization closely follows the threefold path that we, through Indie Collective, help our members to diagnostically walk. So you're not meandering, but instead deliberately walking step-by-step, in an iterative process, of course, to get to first, greater focus on your ideal clients and their painkiller problems, the problems that they will answer the phone about, sign a value-based contract around and, of course, be referring you to the next set of ideal clients to solve the problems. For Second, it's about continuously and iteratively developing those repeatable solutions, solutions that are going to come into focus quickly and that you can continue to iterate over time and build upon. So, like Josh said, you have a front end how you start your engagements that layers into a middle or a back end so that you have longer lasting, more enduring engagements, engagements that drive more impact and income but also turn into a great basis for referrals. And as you do this process getting focused on the clients and problems, building the repeatable solutions that solve those problems you can begin to really productize right. Put in place the processes, the systems, the kit that's going to help you to scale the work without trading away your time linearly.

Sam Lee: 15:41

So those are the three key steps that I'm hearing from Josh. Those are the same steps that we help our members to diagnostically walk through Indie Collective. Josh, let's kind of get into for each of those steps, starting with just getting focused on ideal clients and painkiller problems. Let's talk about some tips right, where do people start People that want to do this themselves or kind of walk this path? What would you recommend that?

Josh: 16:04

want to do this themselves or kind of walk this path. What would you recommend? Yeah, I mean, you know. So, in general, there's like that Venn diagram, the tripartite Venn diagram, that goes around, which is like things I'm good at, things that people will pay me for, you know, and things I'm passionate about, right, and it's like the thing that we should be focused on is at the center of those three things. And so, you know, I think you know, we're not all that fortunate sometimes, you know, two out of three ain't bad, right, you know.

Josh: 16:34

But in general, you do need to be focused on something. Um, you know that you have an interest in um, that, uh, you know, and that can be a professional interest, doesn't have to be like my heart is moved by performance marketing. It's like it's interesting, you know, uh, there's interesting trends happening here. And then stuff that you know people are willing to pay for, um, you know, is really critical as well. Um, and stuff you're good at, because that's you know. So I think, generally, when we are moved to become sole proprietors or consultants or to start our own companies, we're sort of already operating in that zone, right, like, we're sort of like all right, this is the thing I'm called to do.

Josh: 17:10

You know, for one reason or another, I'm interested in this market and I'm good at serving it, and I have some conviction that I don't need the tent, the big tent, of some company or some infrastructure around me to create value. In fact, I might create more value unencumbered by that artifice. And then it's really focusing on what I was saying before, which is look for problems that are consistent, they show up consistently and whose solutions are consistent, so that it's like I'm creating replicability and predictability on both sides. Unpredictability is the enemy of scale. It's like if I am, you know, constantly solving a new problem, or the solution to the same problem is constantly different, I'm thinking too much, I'm not moving quickly, so we want to get out of. Obviously some amount of thinking is interesting and like that's fine, but like you want to be the one who's choosing, when you're applying that cognitive load, not being reactive to these things. So, consistent problems, consistent solutions. It can be really helpful to look around the market and see who's doing that.

Josh: 18:14

You know like who is getting paid for you know work that you want to do and what are their solutions look?

Josh: 18:20

like and how do they frame the problems that they solve? And I think the final tip I would give is, like you know well, there's two. One is look where you can provide differentiated value, like what's the thing that you're good at, because that's just going to make your life easier, you know. And then the last one is pick a thing where it's easy to quantify that you had an impact. You know, performance marketing wasn't my favorite thing. My favorite thing was messaging. But if I write some new words for you and we both agree that they're better, that's fine. How much better are they? 20% better, 30% better, 50% better. Maybe somebody else doesn't like them as much. Now we've created this like weird subjective landscape of value where, like, I have to convince you that it's this much better and you're going to pay me that amount.

Josh: 19:02

It always felt very squishy doing these messaging engagements, even though I really enjoyed them. Performance marketing it's like look, the line went up and to the right, okay, and it went up 200%, so it's 200% better. You just can't argue with it. And that made it really easy to build case studies, to tell the story of why working with me made sense, and then it also allowed me to have a really strong argument about why whatever it was that they wanted me to do, that I didn't think was valuable and not scalable, wasn't worth focusing on. Right, it's like, hey, like I don't want, yeah, I want you to build this custom report. That report doesn't matter because it's not gonna help me drive 200% return, which is why you hired me.

Josh: 19:40

So you know, versus when you're operating in a place where value is more subjective, as designers well know, an opinion is worth an opinion is worth an opinion, and nobody's opinion is more important than the client's opinion, even if it's wrong, and I think that's okay. You know we can operate in those spaces and build differentiated products in those spaces and there are ways to do that, but it's just more challenging. So, anyway, that's how I think about it. Those are tips that, like you know, when I think, just starting out, talking to friends who are like leaving jobs or starting consultancies, it's like those are great ways to just start to get in there and kind of understand where you might have a product that could work.

Sam Lee: 20:16

Yeah, beautiful, and I think you know when I was listening to you talk about, you know your ideal client. You know 10 years ago that series B startup who's just raised the big round, who needs the been there, done that experience to deploy the capital to effectively grow. You know there's a hierarchy of problems that that CMO faces and, as you just outlined, there are probably branding and messaging things that they need to work on. There are also, you know, performance based ad spend and growth things that they need to work on. They're also performance-based ad spend and growth engine that they need to build.

Sam Lee: 20:50

And when you think about the litany of things that that CMO needs to do, from deploying the ad dollars to upgrading the messaging, there's a hierarchy. There's painkiller problems, stuff that if they don't resolve them and don't do it effectively, are going to break the business, and then there are nice to solve problems at the top to the bottom of that hierarchy. And I think what you described and certainly what we help people to do through Indie Collective is make sure you're diagnostically looking at the things you could be doing, from deploying those ad dollars effectively to upgrading the messaging and making sure you're living in a space that is worth solving. That CMO is, of course, going to pick up the call, of course sign the value-based contract, of course be referring you to the next CMO, because you're solving a problem that's going to create outsized value for them and, of course, you too, something that you can really charge for.

Josh: 21:41

Totally. I mean, it's like it's one of those things where, just to add onto that, it's like I've become even more a believer. You know in my, in my advancing age, that if you're not solving one of the top two problems somebody's thinking about, you're just gonna have a bad time. Like it doesn't mean you can't be successful, it doesn't mean you can't grow a business, but like it's gonna be a lot harder.

Sam Lee: 22:01

You know, it's like when I talk to you, I wanna be like.

Josh: 22:03

What are the two things you're worried about? And one of them is gonna be the problem I'm focused on and my sales pitch to you is way for every client, because my strategy works. Doesn't mean I don't customize it for your needs, doesn't mean I don't suit it for your business, but like I have the playbook you want to buy the outcome. That's what I have to sell you. Let's go, you know yeah I couldn't agree more.

Sam Lee: 22:25

In this economic environment, which is choppy, but in any economic environment there is not time or treasure. There is just no budget for people that are solving nights to solve problems. Nobody wants to talk about those, nobody has the time or the money to do that work. So you want to be living in that painkiller problem or in the outsized opportunity space. So that's where you need to be focusing and you need to make sure you've validated that through this path of productization. Let's talk a little bit about product market fit.

Sam Lee: 22:54

I think that is another term that means different things to different people. In the context of what we're doing here as consultants and coaches, for me it really is the center of a Venn diagram where you've found your ideal client, that client for whom you're excited, for whom you can show up as an expert. You've focused on a painkiller problem or problems of theirs which they need to solve urgently and therefore are willing to deploy budget and time to solve. And, of course, you've figured out that solution, the solution that you can uniquely deliver. That's going to create outsized value for them and, of course, be something you can be charging outsized value for yourself and your business. Tell us, how do you find the product market fit right, like what's that process of getting there and how do you know you found it right? What's the signal that you found your product market fit as a consultant or coach?

Josh: 23:47

Totally. Well, I'll start with the second part first, which is how do you know you have product market fit? You know, a good friend of mine likes to say there's a sucking sound which is, you know, it's just the demand outstripping your ability to meet it. Right, that is product market fit, it's a feeling, it's an I know it when I see it to some degree. And you know, product market fit is not a Boolean thing, right, it's not yes or no, I have product market fit or I don't. There's degrees of fit, I think, and there's like thresholds past which things really become outsized and you know, and favorable to you. But yeah, it's a thing where you start to feel a tailwind, right, you start to feel, you know, a lot of times, I like in the act of starting a business, it just feels like you're rushing into a headwind, you know, and it feels like nothing is helping or supporting what you're doing. Every win is hard fought, you know, slashing through the jungle with a machete, trying to find the next pot of gold, and you know, there's just no sense of efficiency or ease to it. And I think you know this. First, signals of product market fit tend to be the experience of like entering a fallow clearing and feeling, ah yes, like, maybe what we're doing here, you know is is going to go somewhere and and that's something that you know is a special feeling and getting there, the process of getting from getting to product market fit, you know, it's just all about designing a solution to your point that does exactly how you defined it. We're solving a real problem for a market. It is super valuable, there's an outsized willingness and ability to pay for it and it's happening in a way that feels replicable, that you're doing well and in a way that's differentiated to some degree. And how do you get to that place? What is the process for getting to product market fit? Well, step one is ideating around products. Right, it's like, and of it as like, start by just being inspired, like, look at people who are doing the work, figure out what's cool about it. You know, and sort of understand, like, what the trends are in your industry and which ones you want to be attached to. Hypothesize, right, come up with solutions that you feel like are replicable, that are interesting, and then work in the market. You know, do that consulting work as you're starting to get your hypotheses together. After that it's like great, I've got some options.

Josh: 26:19

For me it was like was series a too early to do for e-commerce companies? Was series c too late? What I found was series a budgets were too small and the ceos were too involved, so I didn't get enough freedom. Series c they already had a big ass team and they'd been deploying capital for a while. So like my marginal ability to to drive, you know value was like kind of smaller. So like I deploying the same playbook. They're like, yeah, this is good, but like we can already do a lot of this. Series b was kind of the sweet spot right. So I sort of worked through a bunch of different models before I landed on that sweet part, uh, that sweet spot.

Josh: 26:50

And then it was, you know, following the signal and refining your pitch and refining you know what it is that you're doing. Um, you know, and then once you kind of find that signal, it's all about, you know, sort of just like doubling down on it, so competing in the market, figuring out who's buying these things, saying no to engagements that don't map to what you're trying to focus on, which is always the hardest part. It's like, hey, now I'm a series b, series B e-commerce performance marketer with this approach. Oh, my buddy has a B2B healthcare company that has a big budget for performance marketing. Do you want me to introduce you? I mean, yeah, I do.

Josh: 27:27

But there's a real opportunity cost to losing focus and sometimes you do it and that's okay. That's part of the joy of being a sole proprietor is making exceptions for yourself. But all the best businesses I know at some point or another have a real gut check moment where they have to say no to something and it's painful and that's how you know you're on the right path. It's like the demand and the possibilities are so great I'm going to turn down this short termterm gain for a longer-term benefit and then you scale it. You know it's. Look, we've got this e-commerce series B thing People want to buy it.

Josh: 28:01

I've got a list of clients that are working with that want to work with me. That's longer than I can serve. Let me hire some people. Okay, I feel good about that. I'm going to sell these engagements. Let me raise my prices, you know. Let me delegate 20 things and really try to figure out where I can get some additional margin, where I can get some additional throughput. How can I use my time best? What are the things that only I can do versus things that I can hire people to do? You know, that's like. That's how you know you're getting there. I mean, this is how the great you know services companies of the world have been built. It's one client at a time. It is one engagement at a time. It it is that incremental replicability, that ability to scale up impact, because what you found is such a great solution for what the market requires.

Sam Lee: 28:43

Yeah, I love that. I think as you hear Josh speak, you're probably thinking gosh, this is a really smart guy. He's one of the smartest guys that I know, which is why I brought him into the fold at Indie Collective, and, without anybody else's support, he was able to build a seven-figure consultancy, a productized business, in 18 months. But that's not most people's outcome, right? If you are meandering on this path, if you're trialing and erroring, without the right diagnostic approach, coaching and accountability partnership, this path can be a lot of tinkering without a lot of great results.

Sam Lee: 29:18

So when I say you need to be more diagnostic, what I mean, very simply, is that you need to start with hypothesizing. You need to throw spaghetti on the wall. Take what's in your brain and what you've experienced over the course of your professional career, go out and see what's happening in the world and think big. Next, you need to make sure that you're validating the hypotheses, and you can do this through a combination of user research, so getting in front of those ideal clients, confirming they have the painkiller problems and validating that the solutions and the results that you can repeatably deliver are going to be worth their time and money. And then, last but not least you need to iterate right. That means just doing the work and, as you get the results for your business and your clients, really perfecting that offering so that you get to a place where you want to scale. So that's what it means to take a diagnostic path and that's kind of what we try to help you to deliberately do through Indie Collective.

Josh: 30:14

Well, and I think I mean it's very nice of you to say nice things about me, sam, I appreciate that and I promised, you know, that I didn't pay too much for those compliments, but in reality, like that's what happened to me, it just took a lot longer. You know, and this is like the thing is. Like you know, I was on my own or working at consulting firms and being frustrated. And look, when you're in your mid-20s you can afford to not make that much money for a year or two or three. You can afford to have some failures because at the end of the day, I was just trying to have enough money to pay my rent and go out to get a nice beer. But it's like for many people who are looking to make this leap, there's no reason to get beat up in the market first and learn all the hard lessons the hard way, because ultimately you're going to figure out all this stuff.

Josh: 31:02

The benefit of a program like the one that you run is just a shortcut. It's a shortcut to a lot of those hard-won lessons. I like to joke when I'm training people to sell. I'm like I have all these scars all over my you know my sort of metaphorical body. Let me spare you the pain of getting hit in the face with a spiked bat a bunch of times, you know, by people who are difficult to deal with in sales by following these rules, you know, and so I think that's the that's the beauty of this is like anyone out there can learn these lessons. It's just a lot more pleasant to learn them over 10 weeks versus over 10 years.

Sam Lee: 31:38

Yeah, 100% At this point. We've now talked about the first two steps of that threefold path to productizing an offering. We've talked about getting focused on ideal clients that have painkiller problems. We've talked about how you develop those repeatable solutions, ones that create outsized value for yourself and also the clients you serve. The third key step is about building something scalable around that solution putting in place process, systems, tools, things that allow you to attract great clients, close great business, charge value rates and save time while doing it. I'd love to kind of unpack how you do those other things right and why this path of productization, doing this upfront work to get focused and build the repeatable solutions is so critical to unlocking all these other benefits of a more scalable consulting or coaching practice.

Josh: 32:35

Yeah, I mean, I think, sort of like I was saying before, I think there's, you know, a lot of value in just sort of first, like you know, we've got our product set, we've defined it, you know. So we're sort of assuming that we've like hypothesized and tested and got something that we like. There's a few things that I think are really important that I often see people miss. Number one is like tell people what you're doing Explicitly, right On your website. I solve problems for clients like this. This is the solution that I provide. This is the impact, you know. Let everybody you work with know this is a product that I currently am really excited about. Let your prospects and current clients know this is something that we've been developing for a while and it's really cool. I'd love to take you through it and get your feedback. So it's like, yes, we've been doing.

Josh: 33:28

I've been running my consulting firm and my practice for however long. I have a network of people, however large or small, and there's a new thing that I'm doing and it's really cool. It's the apotheosis of all of the experience I've gleaned. It's focused on people like you. It's a thing for you. I'm doing this right now, by the way, at my current business, where I'm like launching a new product, going to all of our clients and prospects. It's hey, this is a new thing. It's really exciting. It's made based on the fact that I've been working with clients like you in market for three years. You know let's, do you have time to to hear about it? And the answer is always yes, you know.

Josh: 34:00

And then, um, really pressure testing all of your assumptions, pricing, willingness to pay, scope of engagement, where are the rough edges? When we deploy, you know with our clients, like, where is it breaking? You know, um, you know, what do we need to change? And so it's like that whole process of scaling starts from, like pressure testing the product and market, really getting feedback on every step of the process, not just deploying the solution but selling it how do we package it, how do we market it, how does it get referred. And then, you know you start looking for ways to pour fuel on the fire. You know, like I was sort of saying which is okay within this repeatable process of diagnosing this problem, getting in there, executing whatever our proprietary solution is. What parts of that could I hire a smart 25-year-old to do? Or, as we're going to talk about later.

Josh: 34:51

Use ChatGPT more, but minimally. It's like where can I realize efficiencies? How many clients can I hold right now? Well, can it be five, can it be 10? Okay, what would need to happen for me to get to 20? What would need to happen for me to get to 30? Alternately, currently I charge $10,000 per client per month. What would I have to be doing to get to 20? Is it a value perception issue? Is there more work I can take on that's adjacent? Can I expand these products while keeping them replicable? These are the sorts of things that are the problems that come on the back of good design, good implementation of an initial solution.

Sam Lee: 35:29

Great, and another workshop that you teach through Indie Collective is value-based pricing. I'm curious to hear you speak a little bit about how productization and value-based pricing. I'm curious to hear you speak a little bit about how productization and value-based pricing go hand in glove.

Josh: 35:41

Totally. I mean, I think at the end of the day, the thing that I believe the most in business is perceived value of whatever you're doing is the most important thing, right? It's like people get so wrapped up in how we do a thing this is my biggest complaint. It's like, oh, so wrapped up in how we do a thing, this is my biggest complaint. It's like, oh, here's our methodology, here's our secret sauce. No one cares. Literally the only reason why people do care is either intellectual curiosity or because they don't have anything better to talk about. But at the end of the day, we're all here. We're getting paid as business owners, as decision makers, to solve problems. I care about my problem, I don't care about your solution, except to the extent that it solves my problem.

Josh: 36:22

When that problem is solved, value is created. So when I think about productization and pricing, it's like what is the virtuous loop? The virtuous loop is hello, prospect. You have a problem yes, yes, I do no-transcript for you with my product. Yes, great, here is how much it costs, right, and how much it costs is a direct output of how much value is being created. So the linkage between productization and pricing is repeatable value creation and market yields repeatable pricing that is defensible and has price integrity. Ie, negotiating doesn't feel bad when there's not clear value being created. It's much more challenging to put a price on something and it feels a lot squishier.

Josh: 37:29

So it's like, hey, we're $10,000 a month to improve your performance marketing. Why? Well, because that's the amount that I need to pay my rent. That's not a good answer. Or that's the amount that it feels like it should cost Not a good answer. A good answer is we estimate we're going to make you, based on your ad spend and current rate of return, an additional $100,000 a month, and 10% of that feels really generous.

Josh: 37:50

How does that feel to you? A 10x return on your investment with us is great. Wow, that feels great. Can you do it for cheaper? No, I can't. That's how much I charge. You're lucky, it's not 20%. So it's like the feeling of productization leads to the. A good feeling around productization leads to a good feeling around pricing, because good products create reliable and replicable value. They do so in a way that's measurable and that leads us to a place where it's very easy for us to price. We know we've productized well when pricing is not hard and when pricing feels defensible and when we're excited to say what the price is, not worried about it or feeling like we're constantly getting underpaid. You know, the number one thing that people say in Indie Collective when they're starting out is you know we do that poll right.

Sam Lee: 38:39

Which is like, do you?

Josh: 38:39

feel like you're charging too much or charging too little, and inevitably, greater than 85 of people are like I'm charging too little, but I don't know what to do about it. And the answer is what we talked about, which is well, you probably have a product problem first, and that product problem might be replicability. It might be the way you're measuring value, whatever it is, but you got to start there. Cool, I do this reliably, I do it repeatably. I create value. That value is measurable. Now I can come up with a price that makes a ton of sense.

Josh: 38:56

There's a thousand ways to skin that cat, but that linkage is super important and it leads to a sales process that is repeatable. That doesn't require Alec Baldwin from Glenn Gary, glenn Ross to execute. It can be anyone. People are often like I don't like sales. Well, sales isn't fun when you have to kind of pull the wool over somebody's eyes or convince them to say yes to something that, like, doesn't make sense. Sales is really fun and anyone can do it when it's here's a big bag of money, will you give me a smaller bag of money in an exchange?

Sam Lee: 39:33

And that's ultimately, the formula that we're trying to get to, you know, with clear measurement, repeatability, you know, and pricing that maps to that Beautiful. And this kind of relationship between productization and value-based pricing two sides of the same coin is not specific to performance marketing, which is where Josh has kind of elaborated. He did it. We've done this two-sided coin with people from more than two dozen different disciplinary backgrounds and it really is fundamentally about helping you, as a consultant or coach, to set up your fair value exchange right. Just like josh said, you want to be coming as an expert who has an ideal client with a painful problem, saying hey, client, I've worked with people just like you and in solving this problem, I consistently create a giant bag of money for you and your organization and in exchange for that, because it's a fair exchange, I'm going to ask for a smaller and commensurate bag of money or value for me. And if you can do that, you're always going to be able to charge at the most premium end of what your market read your client, your industry, the company or organization is able to bear. And that is why, at 10 weeks of graduating from Indie Collective 500 plus graduates strong we see our members on average raise their rates by 25 to 50% on things they're already selling, because they're just getting clear about how to communicate that value exchange. And when you peel back the onion, how do you do that? Well, when you're clearing your client and you get under the hood of the problems that you're solving, what we do is help you to, using our value quadrant to really get crisp on the value you're creating, both qualitatively and quantitatively, and we're going to help you to express that in terms that will be viscerally understood by your ideal client. So Josh has already kind of taken us in this direction. We're going to continue in this direction.

Sam Lee: 41:21

Productization and value-based pricing the rubber meets the road when it comes to your sales right. And this is the piece of building a great business that frankly feels foreign to so many of us that have come from corporate or come from agencies or done other things in career, because we've got expertise in some disciplinary background but haven't had to do the selling ourselves. And the sales piece is probably the most important part but also is people's least favorite part and, frankly, not super effective if you're not doing it right. So let's kind of double click on the sales piece, josh, when you get clear on your productization. When you get clear on your value-based pricing, how does it make your sales process that much more effective and also fun?

Josh: 42:06

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, I think all problems in sales are most profoundly experienced in doing cold outbound. So I'm sending notes to people that you know I want to have meetings with because I think they should buy the thing that I'm selling. And when you send those notes, you know any limitations in your products. Your value proposition, you know your testimony are laid bare because you're literally given one sentence to a stranger to say this is why we should be working together and I think doing outbound and outbound type selling for products that have product market fit, that are priced well, that are replicable, feels really simple. It's like, hey, I know that as product market fit that are priced well, that are replicable, feels really simple. It's like, hey, I know that as a marketer, you're thinking about how to deploy ad spend because we're getting to the holiday season and, like you, are on the hook for like a big goal that's probably set by finance that you probably didn't agree to and your whole bonus and you know promotion path is contingent upon hitting that number and you're not sure how you're gonna do it and we have this product. You know that we show this return for clients, just like you in your space. Here's a couple examples. You know, do you have 15 minutes to chat with me about how that would look? Um, because I I just feel like you're a great fit for what we're doing, like being able to just say, to assert, like I know you have this problem. You know you have this problem. We both know you don't have a strategy for getting to that problem reliably and if you do well, that's great. You know you're in the minority by far, you know, and who doesn't want to blow past their goal anyway. You know, and at least see what somebody else is offering. And when I meet you, I have such a clear story about how I do it. It's the same. You know, I've case studies. I've done it this way for other people like you. This is what they did. This is the investment they made. This is the return that they saw. Call them and talk to them. It's going to be great.

Josh: 44:11

Everything that you see about me, about my company, about my story, is that same thing, talking about that same thing. All the thought leadership I do, all the LinkedIn posting my website it's all echo effect around. This is the problem you're thinking about. You are in this role. You are this persona at this type of company tasked with this problem, this much value is created if that problem is solved. Here's how we do it.

Josh: 44:34

It works every time, and maybe it doesn't works every time, you know, and, and maybe it doesn't work every time and maybe there's nuance and whatever, but like that's you know when you, when it gets to selling what it feels like what it should be like, is super crisp understanding of everything that you mentioned before icp market you know um budget. You know problem set, total confidence in how your product fits into that stack, um, and and when you're in that place, it's a beautiful thing. You know selling to people something that they want to solve, a problem that they're existentially terrified of not getting fixed is, you know it's, it's a high, unlike any other, you know so it's. I think that that's the joy that awaits on the other side of this. That's what's fun about building a business and, believe me, I've been a part of enough businesses that have that before and after where it's like, man, we're selling something that the market just does not want and like, yeah, you can get meetings and yeah, you can scratch and claw your way to clients, but this is just not a killer set of of solutions.

Josh: 45:35

It's not creating value. It's a. It's a third problem. It's a. It's a. It's a second tier problem. It's a. You know, you know, whatever. And then that shift to oh wait, we've cracked it. Now we have the thing that everybody wants. Now everybody's taking meetings. Now we're getting deals progressing. Now we're not feeling pushback on pricing. It just is a different thing.

Sam Lee: 45:55

Yeah, and I'll say just of my own experience. I've been consulting more than 10 years. In the last five, I've personally worked with more than 500 graduates of Indie Collective, helping them to tighten up how they are doing sales. The number one problem that I see consistently, even among the best consultants and coaches, is that when they show up for a sales conversation, they grab at short straws. It's, I think, in some part about fear, not knowing how to lead the conversation like an expert. It's also, frankly, in another part, just wanting to help right, grab a short straw and get started so they can begin delivering great work, but that's just the wrong way to lead a sales conversation. Instead, once you've done the work we've described, you've gotten clear on the client and their problems, you've gotten clear on the types of repeatable solutions that create outsized value for them, you can really show up as an expert, and what we help you to do is ask the smart questions, questions that will establish your expertise and why this decision maker should be not just talking to you but working with you and follow on. Questions that will allow you to help to uncover the value that you can create by working with this decision maker and and driving an engagement through their organization.

Sam Lee: 47:15

Um, and it's when you take the information that you garner as an expert, leading an expert-led sales conversation, and you run it through a value-based proposal that you cannot just be thinking about the value or communicating the value create, but you can be consistently charging for it and not getting negotiated out of the rate that you deserve.

Sam Lee: 47:33

So it's all these pieces starting with thinking about the client and their painkiller problems, fashioning the right repeatable solutions, understanding your differentiation as an expert, knowing how to articulate the value you create through value-based pricing, and then running an expert-led sales process that culminates with a value-based proposal. These are all things that we kind of believe in, that are part of our better business building playbook at Indie Collective, that allow you to translate the productized service into something that's repeatable and that's going to allow you to build a business that's going to maximize the impact, income and the flexibility that you deserve at this stage of your career. I want to wrap up on a buzzy topic. Everyone's talking about ChatGPT. Everyone's trying to think about AI tools and how they can leverage them. Josh, how do you think consultants and coaches can be using these types of tools both, as they are thinking about building their own next level businesses, but also in delivering the work for their clients.

Josh: 48:33

Totally. I mean, it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart Running a venture backed startup. Let's be efficient. Let's embrace what's new in technology, experiencing future. Shock right now about AI. You're not paying attention Like truly. What is possible already is remarkable compared to where we were a year or two ago. It should be unsettling and I think a lot of people, because of how unsettling it is, are turning away from it or not spending as much time with it, which is fine. I think you're just leaving a lot of opportunity on the table to become more efficient. My company, my current company, the one that I founded most recently we're 30 people and businesses raise 30 million bucks. We're trying to be efficient with that capital. We're trying to grow quickly.

Josh: 49:22

The number of AI-driven workflows in our business has increased probably, you know, just an order of magnitude, if not more, over the last three to six months, and you know we use it for everything from you know inviting a bot to every meeting that transcribes, you know sort of the key action items, summarizes them. So the key action items summarizes them If it's a sales meeting, puts them into our CRM, loads them into Slack, makes sure that we're following up on the associated tasks reaches out to the individuals, to do all of that For a sole proprietor. It should be the same thing. It's like hey, every time I have a sales meeting, every time I have a discovery session, every time I meet with a new prospect, every time I meet with an advisor, I have this thing on the call that's just going to do what a really smart 25-year-old would do for you summarize these things. Make sure you don't drop action items. Make sure you have an ongoing log of everything you're doing, talk about selling. Record every conversation that you have.

Josh: 50:20

Don't lose the details. Hey, this isn't a great time for me. Follow up with me in six months. Don't forget to do that. So AI is just so good already at catching the details, and there's so many tools that you can explore here. Just a few that we use Lindy, chorus, chatgpt, obviously, when it comes to generating imagery. When it comes to we use Notion for all of our internal docs, which has an amazing AI co-pilot for completing ideas, completing documents, project plans, these sorts of things. Like my wife works in entertainment totally different industry she has to generate treatments, memos, summaries of situations. What is possible with these tools is really incredible and I think, if you're not, there's a lot of good stuff out there, whether it's on YouTube or whether you know there's other places to find it.

Josh: 51:31

But just be curious about and try some of these tools, because the top 10% of engineers are really going to be the ones you know, who remain, you know, and who create just outsized impact because of how much acceleration they can get from these tools. Engineers that aren't as good are just going to be replaced, and I think one of the interesting things about being a sole proprietor is, typically you are in the top 10%, like the people who raise their hands and say I want to do my own thing typically are the most qualified, the smartest and therefore the most likely to benefit from the outsized impact that these tools give you. You know, if you're at a big agency or you're at a big consultancy, like, okay, like you know, I don't think that the you know the net impact, there is just going to be margin for the top. But if you're a sole proprietor, this allows you to have a scale that is far greater than you might have been able to previously, while keeping your costs really low.

Josh: 52:23

So I think everybody needs be asking how can I use these tools to get more, to do more, to move faster, how can I partner with folks that can do the same? You know, and it's just, it's an exciting time, as you know, arresting as it can be existentially for us. You know, this is a great time to be a sole proprietor. For all those reasons is there is disruption. People are aware that they're paying too much for things that have become commodities due to AI, and you're in a position to radically transform your recommendation, set things that you do as a consequence. So yeah, Great.

Sam Lee: 53:00

Well, I mean, as Josh said, if you're doing this independent consulting and you're finding your own success, chances are you're in that top decile, even that top 5% of people that do what you do. So no one, josh or I or anybody else, is going to say turn off that big brain. Ai is not here to replace you, but whether it's thinking about the next chapter of your business and building a business that will drive more impact, income and flexibility, or whether it's in delivering the work right, once you've got that repeatable solution, delivering more of the work with less of your time, ai is so powerful and you really can't afford to neglect it or not learn it and use it in ways that are going to assist you in thought partnership right, thinking bigger and clarifying your thinking around the direction of your business and delivery, making sure you're efficiently delivering the work so you're maximizing the impact, income and flexibility that you should be achieving in your own consulting or coaching practice.

Josh: 53:58

One other thing I would just add too, is like so, guests, we talk about everybody's top two priorities. I can tell you that almost every executive out there is being asked you know what's your plan?

Sam Lee: 54:08

for AI and how are you?

Josh: 54:09

bringing AI into the organization around X. If I'm a sales leader, how are you using AI to make your sales team more performant or efficient? If you're a marketing leader, how are you using AI to generate content or whatever? So you?

Josh: 54:20

are in a position to as a sole proprietor or as a consultant running a small firm or whatever it is that you're doing, have products around that right. Be the one who comes up with solutions for companies on how to implement these changes and to take advantage of all of this stuff, because there's so much money there now, across any domain you know, and that's you know, that may be your front end is, you know, an. Ai readiness assessment of some form or an.

Josh: 54:47

AI, you know readiness assessment of some form or an AI opportunity analysis of some form. That then leads to more of the work that you're used to, because that stuff matters, but it's a great time to have the flexibility to pivot as a sole proprietor.

Sam Lee: 55:00

Amazing. Well, josh, thank you so much for taking the time today. I hope everybody that's tuned in really is thinking bigger and maybe differently about what's possible for you and building your consulting or coaching practice, if you choose, to productize. I also hope that you feel equipped and empowered to get on this path from the tips you've learned today. If you're interested in learning more about this path of productization or even getting involved in an upcoming Indie Collective cohort so you can access the coaching, the accountability and our tried and true playbooks to get on this path, check out IndieCollectiveco. That's IndieCollectiveco, and you can apply for upcoming cohort and download additional great resources that we make available. Thank you so much, josh, and we'll see everybody on the next episode of the Modern Independent. Thanks, sam.