Short excerpt from a YouTube video by Ryan Deiss debating why service businesses don’t scale. SPEAKER B argues service providers should reframe as “solution designers” (chefs vs cooks analogy) to command premium prices; SPEAKER A counters that the real barrier is owners still doing all the work and failing to systemize and delegate.
The biggest reason why service businesses don't scale is because they're called.
Service businesses.
My mission is to help people transition from being service providers to becoming solution designers. There's a big difference, because service providers, they're like cooks taking orders in the kitchen. They just solve immediate problems and they're always on all the time. But solution designers, they're like chefs creating the menu. They solve problems on their own terms and they provide actual solutions. And people pay premium for that.
I get what he's saying, it's cute. But what am I really supposed to do with this advice? Am I supposed to go to my client and say, no, no, no, you don't get it. I'm not merely a services company, I'm a solutions designer. And at this point, they just fall on their knees and beg to give me more money. The reason that your service business isn't scaling has nothing to do with what you call it. It has nothing to do with your positioning, your category design. The reason your service business isn't scaling is because you are still doing everything. And until you can put systems in place that enable other people to help you attract, convert, onboard and fulfill clients as good or ideally better than you can, your service won't scale. It's as simple as that. Because it's limited by you. So forget these navel gazing positioning exercises and just figure out which aspects of the value creation process can be systemized and hand it off to someone else. Then repeat that process until each and every step is systemized and and hand it off to someone other than you. Once that's done, congrats, your business can scale. And I don't really care what you call it.
