On February 14, 2014 I announced on Twitter, “Hello, my name is Erich Stauffer. I create products out of services. For the next week I’ll turn every service request I get into a product.”
I run a service business on the side and work a full-time job doing IT work during the day. Every time someone would ask me to do something throughout the day, I would record it as a product.
By “product” I mean I will codify the service with a product name. I’m not building automation at this point, I’m just recording what I’m doing. I’m doing things that don’t scale as a product:
Productized Services
- Trello Tasks to Google Spreadsheet Tool – I setup Zapier to pull Trello tasks into a Google Spreadsheet for reporting purposes.
- View Other People’s Email App – I had to grant access to a co-workers email via Office 365 and Outlook. Later that same day I had to grant access to a Google Apps email account.
- Email Contact and Attachment Organization App – I have a client that forwards me documentation and contact information that I then have to parse, store, and organize. I’m like a human-powered CRM.
- Access Someone Else’s Computer Account App – I get asked to help someone login to someone else’s Window’s login at least twice a week. Later that same day I got asked for a password to an iCloud account.
- Automatic Website Demo Creator App – I got asked to create a demo of a web site feature for the Sales team.
- Automatic Web Design Reviewer and Suggestion App – I got asked to review and compare a website to another site, then make suggestions.