#21 Stop custom scoping

Today, we're talking about the spectrum of scopes and why most solopreneurs are making their lives unnecessarily complicated by staying in custom scope land.

This conversation started because we keep seeing the same pattern: solos think they need to reinvent the wheel for every single client. They're building bespoke solutions from scratch every time, which creates massive constraints on marketing, sales, and delivery.

We break down three key points on the scope spectrum: custom, standardized, and productized. Custom scoping sits on one end where every project is totally different. On the other end, you have completely productized services where every decision has already been made.

Most people think custom is more valuable for clients, but we'd argue the opposite. When you're constantly rebuilding from scratch, you're essentially asking clients to pay you to figure it out with them every time. That's not doing them any favors.

The magic happens when you move toward standardization. You develop operational consistency, which means better results for clients and easier operations for you. You can start pattern matching across engagements and actually give clients the benefit of everything you've learned from previous work.

We also dive deep into how projects can create highly contextual problems on the backend. Our marketing operations consultant client is a perfect example of this. He starts with an audit project that identifies all the broken integrations and workflows. That creates a bigger, more contextual project to fix everything. Then, once it's all fixed, there's an ongoing monitoring service to catch problems before they become disasters.

The key insight: problems beget problems, but in a good way. Solving one problem often reveals more specific, valuable problems you can solve.

Cheers,
Nick and Erica

(00:00) Intro
(02:30) Different types of business scopes
(04:14) Recurring vs. one-time business problems
(06:47) Benefits of a project-based model
(13:40) Scaling with operational consistency
(22:26) Custom vs. standardized service scopes
(32:43) Why standardizing processes is essential
(33:48) Challenges in delivering custom solutions
(34:31) Managing client expectations and deliverables
(35:36) Boosting efficiency in content creation
(37:33) Comparing standardized and custom scopes
(42:28) Benefits of embracing standardization
(45:31) Productized services and retainers explained
(52:01) Navigating offer ladders and pricing

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