Your path to product: how to build a sustainable business by productizing what you know by @matteoc

After giving up my addiction to salary and two and a half years into my adventure as a freelancer I have encountered the following problem: how to extract the most value from my time?
I invite you on a journey to explore how ideas acquire value, what is the value chain of bestselling authors and what are the traits that are needed to solve the value/time problem. So you know beforehand, I have found those traits to be openness, service and design.

Transcript

1. Your Path to Product How to build a sustainable business by productizing what you know @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
2. This is me. I don’t have a boss anymore. I’m a consultant. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
3. Products have eluded me for a long time. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com I get startups. I get entrepreneurship. But products?
4. So I started a journey to explore how products are born, where they come from, how I can learn to develop my own. You’re invited! @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Share on Twitter! Follow me on a journey to understand how products are born and how to develop your own http://fbbr.co/prd via @matteoc
5. As a consultant I wonder: what is the best way to extract value from my time, how should I transform my ideas and skills into work? @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
6. Is it by selling the highest amount of billable hours and filling my agenda with clients ? @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
7. With every client you begin a unique adventure. And usually it's lots of fun! But not all adventures have a happy end. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
8. So you're back to writing proposals. You work on many proposals before getting approved. And aer you have done your job, you're not needed anymore. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
9. There must be a better WAY @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
10. A super smart CEO like Mike McDerment of Freshbooks would suggest to stop selling time. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
11. How? By evaluating how much value your work is generating in the clients business over - let's say - one year and pricing your service at - maybe - 10% of that li. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
12. This is excellent advice. But doesn't solve the core problem: you still need more clients, more proposals and so on. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
13. A super smart CEO like Mike McDermen of Freshbooks would suggest to stop selling time. Let's head to San Francisco to meet Tim Ferriss. When it comes to product he's the man. He's the one that is suggesting since many years to build a product startup and live off of that. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
14. Tim’s Product = Tim’s Ideas And the best way to share ideas in the internet era is still... to write a book. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
15. The 4-hour SERIES In return for sharing his ideas, his books have put him in an ideal position: he invests in startups and advises them at the same time, maximising his chances of returns. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
16. How does sharing your ideas in books generate business? Let’s see an example from a few years back. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com In his case writing a book makes sense.
17. David Allen is the best selling author of Getting Things Done. Instead of keeping his productivity workshop secret, he decided to give it to the world in the form of a book. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
18. In this way he has grown his consulting business incredibly. So he teaches us that, as a consultant, if you share your techniques you get a lot in return. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
19. But this is not the only way. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
20. Alex Osterwalder is also a consultant, he also shared his most important insight in a book. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
21. In the meantime The Internet happened. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Same as David Allen. But with one big difference:
22. Not only does he share his “Business Model Canvas” in a book. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com He’s also developing websites, apps, soware services that go together with his methods.
23. Like a subscription soware-as-a-service platform centered around the business model canvas. www.lafabbricadellarealta.com @matteoc
24. Why? Because it's more sustainable to sell cheaply priced soware solutions to many than to consult at stellar rates for few customers. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
25. So should we all get into soware then ? @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
26. Let's go to Berlin and meet André Pankratz. He’s a soware developer & entrepreneur. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
27. In a few years and a few clients later Vidibus - a soware as a service hosted video platform - was born. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Aer years of selling one offs he has started to design an open source solution tailored to his clients.
28. What happens when you sell great soware? Well. You need to consult your clients in order to help them make the most of it. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
29. Soware is a great way to make your ideas available. But sometimes not even that is enough. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
30. Let's go to Chicago to meet Jason Fried, co-founder of 37signals, the successful soware firm responsible, among many other things, for open sourcing Ruby on Rails. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
31. 37signals relies on the revenue stream of hosted, subscription based soware-as-a-service products like Basecamp and Campfire. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
32. But that was not enough, there is so much culture inside the company that it had to find a way out not only in the form of products, but also as a New York Times bestseller. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
33. Important connections emerge. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
34. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Share on Twitter! Ideas, books, software and consulting are all connected on the path to product http://fbbr.co/prd via @matteoc
35. A pattern emerges. Three key values contribute to productization. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
36. Service Openness Design @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Share on Twitter! Openness & Design are key to value generation, Service is a driver to sustainability http://fbbr.co/prd via @matteoc
37. Openness Openness is a key to value generation: by being open, accessible, by sharing your ideas you can increase the value of what you do. To multiply your value you can choose the way of books, free seminars and talks or open source soware. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
38. Service @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Service is a driver to sustainability: begin of service, being more useful today than yesterday, generating your value month by month, increasing your value as your soware and your ideas are being shared more.
39. Design @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Design is a key to product: Design is about making something complex easier to grasp. Being a designer is a way of thinking about the world without taking anything for granted and is a key to value creation.
40. This is just a small part of the discourse... @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
41. @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com Click here to find more examples, more testimonials and to read the full story of my personal path to product. Click here to get in touch and share your own path to product. Share this presentation with a tweet. Share on Twitter! Your path to product: how to build a sustainable business by productizing what you know http:// fbbr.co/prd via @matteoc
42. Go to my blog to read the full POST! @matteoc www.lafabbricadellarealta.com
43. Matteo Cassese La Fabbrica della Realtà matteoc@matteoc.com on twitter: @matteoc lafabbricadellarealta.com Presentation credits: David Allen photo by Robert Scoble - Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:David_Allen.jpg Jason Fried photo by Randy Stewart - Source: http:// blog.stewtopia.com Alex Osterwalder photo by Heisenberg Media - Source: http:// www.flickr.com/photos/heisenbergmedia/8190821158 Icons from The Noun Project. Berlin, September 2013 Share on Twitter! Your path to product: how to build a sustainable business by productizing what you know http:// fbbr.co/prd via @matteoc