This is the 4th article in a series on productising service businesses. If you haven’t already, check out Part One, Part Two and Part Three. The big payoff that comes as a result of creating a fully productised business is the ability to sell it for more money. When I...

I’ve been posting some pretty strategic content about business policies and procedures, and recently received a message from VideoFruit’s Bryan Harris on Twitter wanting to see something a bit more “tactical”: @procedurepeople blog post idea: would love to see your...

In the first 2 installments in this series (Separating Products from Capabilities and Systemising the Sales Process), we have looked at some strategies that will help you turn your services into products. From this post onwards, we’re going to be looking at some...

In the last article Productising a service business part one: separating capabilities from products, we discussed the difference between capabilities and products. The first step was to start by writing down some of the existing processes for delivering your services....

Here is my basic framework for getting someone off the endless treadmill of operational responsibility: Find something you do every day that is very simple to write down. Even if it only takes you 15 minutes to do. Start small. Start simple. Next time you do it, write...

This is a quick but valuable post. For many small business owners, the prospect of outsourcing sensitive tasks to people overseas is a daunting and intimidating prospect. If an employee does something wrong in your own country you can report them to the police. How...

I have long heard the mantra that service businesses don’t scale. People who are running consultancies often cite their frustrations with growth and trouble hiring as reasons behind wanting to build a product business. But there are two fantastic examples of massively...

For many first time entrepreneurs, buying a franchise is a popular choice when starting their business. The popularity of franchises has been growing steadily in Australia over the years, as more and more people – from new entrepreneurs to seasoned business owners –...

Selling your business is an exciting prospect, but all exits are not created equal. It’s not uncommon to see headlines that tout acquisitions as an exciting end to an exciting journey, but how many of these represent the best possible outcome for the founder of the...

This is a response to Rand Fishkin's blog post "24 things I know now that I wish I knew then" which is itself a response to Rae Hoffman's "Entrepreneurial Lessons: 48 Things I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then" "Premature optimisation" applies to nearly everything...

There has been spirited debate on Hacker News this morning following Jeff Atwood's post "Please don't learn to code". Let me start by saying that fundamentally I agree with Jeff - the whole "everyone must code" and comparing creating software with literacy and...