Daily Lab: Are you selling hours or insight?

If you’re a service provider or consultant, write down your average project cost. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say it’s $10,000.

Now, take out a piece of paper and write down, in 5 bullets or less, an outline for a single-page document.

This page will contain information, procedures, processes, or insights that are unique to your business, and worth $10,000 to somebody.

Not the promise of implementing the procedure, not a proposal for a project—no, the page itself, with just your insights and writing, must be worth $10,000 to somebody.

(For this exercise, you’re not actually writing the full page. You’re just writing down some bullets about what it could contain)

Because here’s the thing: If you’re a service provider or consultant and you aren't able to think of a single page of insight someone would pay for, what are your clients paying for?

If it’s not your expertise, it’s your hours.

Which means to grow your profit, you’d need to scale your effort. Which is the fastest way to end up busy, but broke.

Or, you can decide to scale your expertise.

You can grow your insights, refine your process, and articulate your procedures.

And you can sell that.

So, which would you rather do? Increase your effort or your insight?

It’s not that you'll have to choose one day, it’s that you've already chosen.

But it’s never too late to change your mind.