What to Productise? Only What Makes You Awesome

There’s a certain type of business owner—maybe you—that sees the word “productise” and immediately breaks into a sweat. “Do I need to package myself in a box? Do I become an app now? Are my clients going to expect me to send them a link instead of showing up?”

Let’s take a deep breath.

Productisation isn’t about cloning yourself, bottling your magic, or surrendering to a cold, automated future. It’s about scaling the best bits of your brilliance... the parts your clients love most, the services that make your margins sing, and the expertise you shouldn’t be repeating manually ever again.

And here’s the kicker: not everything you do should be productised. In fact, most of it shouldn’t

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The Myth of "Productise Everything"

There’s a dangerous myth floating around LinkedIn and late-night YouTube guru land that you can and should turn your entire service business into a product.

“Just build a course!” they shout. “Automate your strategy sessions,” they chirp. “Slap it in a dashboard with a subscription fee and watch the dollars roll in!”

But real businesses (the kind that survive recessions, win long-term clients, and pay salaries) know better.

If you try to productise your entire service offering, you end up building a rigid, one-size-fits-none experience. You alienate the very clients who came to you for your smarts, and worse, you waste time systematising things that don’t actually scale.

What You Should Productise

Here’s a more honest take: you should only productise the parts of your business that make you awesome.

Let’s unpack that.

These are the things that:

• You do repeatedly, for many clients.

• You’ve refined into a process that’s better than most.

• Deliver high value without needing hours of your time.

• Clients regularly say, “Wow, this part was worth it alone.”

  
  

It could be your client onboarding process. Your signature diagnostic. The recurring reports you build in spreadsheets every month. Your deep industry insight turned into a clever workflow or rules engine. Maybe even a tool you built internally to save your team time, but clients would happily pay for.

These are gold.

They’re the 20% of your service that drives 80% of the results. They’re your unfair advantage, and they’re exactly what deserves to be turned into software, dashboards, platforms, or subscription tools.

What You Should Leave Alone

Not everything wants to be a product. Some things are meant to stay human, bespoke, and gloriously unscalable.

Examples?

• Your big-picture strategy work.

• The high-touch advisory that depends on experience and empathy.

• The “talking a client off a cliff” calls.

• The creative ideation you do in a room full of post-its and coffee.

  
  

These are the bits that keep clients loyal, keep margins strong, and keep your work from becoming soulless.

Trying to force them into a platform usually results in disappointed users and a refund request that includes the phrase “this isn’t what I thought it would be.”

Productisation ≠ Passive Income

Here’s another truth bomb: productising doesn’t mean set-and-forget. It means systematising what works so you can deliver it more consistently, more profitably, and often, more enjoyably.

You might still have to sell it. Support it. Update it. But now you’re no longer burning billable hours on repeatable tasks. You’re adding leverage. That’s where the magic is.

The goal isn’t to disappear from your business. The goal is to scale your brilliance without cloning yourself into oblivion.

So… How Do You Start?

Start small. Identify one high-value, repeatable process. Document it. Refine it. Then, if it keeps proving itself... build a product around it.

Not sure what that might look like? Ask:

• What do I explain to every single client, every single time?

• What steps do I take that feel like déjà vu on loop?

• What tool or template do I keep wishing I could white-label and charge for?

  
  

When your answer starts to look like a process, a workflow, a client-facing system, or a digital interaction, you’re on the right track.

TL;DR: Keep the Magic, Scale the Method

Productise your genius, not your humanity.

Turn your proven methods, systems, and frameworks into repeatable, scalable products. Keep the rest bespoke. That balance (that blend of platform and people) is where modern service businesses thrive.

And if you need help building it?

That’s where GraniteStack comes in. We help service-based businesses like yours turn their expertise into scalable, standalone software platforms without needing to hire a dev team or become one. The stuff that makes you awesome? We make it product-shaped.

Let’s turn your unfair advantage into your next revenue stream.