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

1. Trello Tasks to Google Spreadsheet Tool – I setup Zapier to pull Trello tasks into a Google Spreadsheet for reporting purposes.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Automatic Website Demo Creator App – I got asked to create a demo of a web site feature for the Sales team.
6. Automatic Web Design Reviewer and Suggestion App – I got asked to review and compare a website to another site, then make suggestions.