Sell the thing, not the hours
Why your rate has a ceiling, where the repeatable part of your work is hiding, and what a product costs you after the sale.
What this course is
The arithmetic behind a decision most technical people make on vibes: keep selling your time, or turn part of the work into something you sell repeatedly.
Both are legitimate. This course is not an argument for products — services have better margins per hour, faster feedback, and no support tail. It is the arithmetic that tells you which one your specific work supports, and it frequently says stay a service business.
Before you start
You need a run-cost floor. If you cannot yet say what a delivered system costs you monthly, the margin arithmetic here has nothing to stand on.
What you'll leave with
- Your billable fraction, measured from a real fortnight rather than assumed.
- A repeatability audit of your last three jobs — what genuinely recurred and what only felt familiar.
- A support-load estimate at ten and at fifty customers, which is where most productisation dies.
The arithmetic
Three numbers decide it, and two of them you have never measured.
- Where your hours actually go — Measure a real fortnight. The billable fraction is the number that explains why growing felt like standing still. (25 min)
- Find the genuinely repeatable part — Your last three jobs felt similar. Audit them properly and find out how much actually was. (30 min, paid)
- What it costs you after the sale — Support load per customer, projected to ten and fifty. This is where productisation usually dies. (30 min, paid)
Related writing
- Work out the cost per run before you quote the job — The arithmetic that stops a fixed-price automation from quietly costing you money every month it keeps running. One formula, four inputs, done on the back of an envelope.
- The 48-hour test that beats asking people if they'd use it — Enthusiasm is free, so it means nothing. Four validation tests that cost the other person something, ranked by how much signal they carry.