Episode 051 – Productizing Business Services For a Clear Scope, Price & Niche

Narrator 0:01
This is the digital agency insiders podcast. Inside you’ll learn how to build, grow and scale your digital marketing agency all from the comfort of your favorite coffee shop. Let’s get started with the Show.

Tabitha Thomas 0:16
Hey everybody, and welcome back to another episode of digital agency insiders podcast, the podcast that gives you an inside look into how entrepreneurs built and grew their digital marketing agencies. I am Tabitha Thomas your host, and we release new episodes each and every Tuesday. So if you like learning about how digital marketing agencies make their business work, hit that subscribe button. So let’s jump into today’s episode. Today. I have with me Tyler Gillespie, Tyler helps productize service businesses via consulting and co-investing. He has been involved in business building and growing service businesses for over 15 years. He recently built and sold a productized service business content proz.io and is currently sharing his journey of buying and building 300 editors.com on his blog. He is also the host of a brand new podcast called productized snacks. He’s been an owner, a president, founder, co founder, CEO, COO, and currently something he likes to call thinking time, Chief Tyler, welcome to the show.

Tyler Gillespie 1:20
Hey, how are you glad to be here.

Tabitha Thomas 1:22
Super excited to have you with us. So uh, so you’ve been at this for a while for several years. So what made you want to become an entrepreneur in the first place? And what in the world is Thinking Time Chief?

Tyler Gillespie 1:39
Yeah, so I think I’ve originally kind of got pulled into the entrepreneurship kind of game or lifestyle, per se, just family was involved. Growing up, grandparents had businesses, my dad had a business, so always helping them. And traditionally that all their businesses were more service based. That’s really how I kind of got pulled into more offline services. With property management, vacation rentals, this is the type of business my dad ran. So that really kind of set the foundation to Yeah, customer service, sales, customer experience, a lot of these things that actually translated really nicely into, you know, as I worked and brought them online over the years, so that was kind of Yeah, they extend and early on. I just ran with that, and also started a few offline businesses and at a pretty young age. And that’s kind of what kicked off the journey. Yeah.

Tabitha Thomas 2:40
Sounds very similar to my, my, both my grandparents and my parents, and all of my siblings all have businesses. So it’s kind of, that’s the only thing you ever see, you know, it’s a possibility. So,

Tyler Gillespie 2:52
Exactly, yeah. And that’s your environment. That’s your surrounding. so natural. That’s where you go.

Tabitha Thomas 2:58
Yeah, that is totally right. So So tell me about Thinking Time Chief, and what is that all about? Because that’s an unusual way to, to classify yourself? What’s that all about?

Tyler Gillespie 3:09
Yeah, I think, Well, for me, it’s, I mean, titles can mean all sorts of things. And that, for me, is really my way of prioritizing, pausing thinking, and pushing myself to just ask better questions. And specifically, really trying to find root problems of the issues that you’re going through. In most cases, people are solving problems for just what are called symptoms, and not the real root causes and real issues. So it’s separating those two in in many cases. So yeah, I mean, that originally stemmed from reading a book called The Road Less stupid, by gentleman named Keith Cunningham, an amazing book, definitely recommend picking it up. Just a really all around just great book full of ton ton of good questions, etc. So he’s been kind of my mentor from afar. And he has a process in the book called thinking time. And he has a five step process that he kind of kind of teaches and walks you through, and you read the first part of the book. And I just kind of ran with that and been using that trying to consistently do a thinking time session every every two weeks, you know, gosh, so however, that twice a week.

Tabitha Thomas 4:26
Okay, so how long is those sessions?

Tyler Gillespie 4:29
Yeah, I mean, they’re meant to be anywhere from like, 45 minutes to an hour and you kind of run through a series of questions. And I can get, a say, could go through those kind of briefly, but the first is like, you know, maybe you’re you go into with intention and you have an issue or problem or something you’re trying to solve. So, you know, the first part is checking your assumptions. And he has kind of a process to go through and you know, is what you’re assuming actually true. The next part is kind of properly Evaluating like second order consequences. So if you do X, there’s potentially an upside, which most of us always see. But then there’s potentially a downside as well. So you want to evaluate that. And then can you actually live with the downside. So that’s a good one. And then the third one is separating problems for symptoms, which I kind of alluded to just a second ago. Because oftentimes, what we think are the real problems are just symptoms. And then the fourth one is creating a machine. So taking all those and actually creating a solution. And the fifth one man, it’s kind of skipped in my mind here, but I’ll pull it up here. But yeah, that’s essentially you kind of go through these, these these processes, and you just sit there, do you think you journal on it. It’s just a dedicated time to run through and, and solve problems with kind of a little bit of a structure to it.

Tabitha Thomas 6:02
So it’s living with intention, basically, you sitting down intentionally thinking through things and finding solutions for those?

Tyler Gillespie 6:11
Exactly.

Tabitha Thomas 6:12
I like it. I like it. So productize, my service, what is that? And how did it come about? Like you said, You, family had a service based business? So how did this one come about?

Tyler Gillespie 6:25
Yeah, so I think since that first one with the family, it started a couple offline businesses, and then transition online and was doing a lot of digital marketing start an agency originally. And I think, when I came across kind of the idea of productizing, your service, I think it was originally built to sell, which is a great book, if you’ve read that, and he kind of alludes to productizing the service of the story in the book of the gentleman, he’s kind of walking through, and kind of just hit me and just made me realize, you know, I mean, I think a lot of agencies and a lot of service businesses, you know, don’t have a clear scope, clear price. And they say yes to everything, you know, all these comments, service business traps, which can be great, if you just you know, for cash flow and getting a lot of customers in, but then you almost are creating this chaos, and a machine, you really don’t want, it’s very hard to scale and very hard to scale without you. So the idea of productizing is really just kind of the opposite of all that and, you know, clear scope, clear price, very niche. Imagine selling a service that someone can just come on your site and purchase just like they’re buying something off Amazon. So it’s kind of the core idea doesn’t fit exactly to every type of business. But I think if you can approach and look at your service business, or agency or freelance business or consultancy, in kind of that way, it can really help you kind of build the systems and operations and structure positioning in a way that actually can help you scale, whatever that looks like for you. And, you know, your your goals for your business. So that’s essentially what we did with our last business, the content writing service. And we were able to kind of build that up scale it to a point where my partner and I were only working about an hour a month. Oh wow. Um, so it was very nice. And we didn’t have any intentions of selling it. Honestly, it was running at a great team in place and growing month over month. And, you know, we built it with the intention of just putting the systems in place where we could sell it if we wanted to, but, and then just so happened, my partner wanted to do some different things. And we explored selling it and they were able to do that very quickly. So since then, I’ve kind of transitioned, like you said and practices my service to my colleagues, essentially sharing a lot of this, these ideas with service businesses and helping them kind of go on that path of taking their service business as is and transitioning into more of a productized kind of model. If that makes sense. Yeah, well,

Tabitha Thomas 9:25
It makes total sense and working like one hour a month. I thought you’re about to say week one, you said month my job kind of hit the ground. I could see why you didn’t want to sell that if you’ve got a profitable business or you’re only working one hour a month. That’s pretty successful in my eyes. Yeah It’s fun. But yeah, I can imagine so what makes because you said it’s not necessarily for every type of business. So what makes an ideal client for productizing their services?

Tyler Gillespie 9:56
Yeah, I think everyone in some aspects can productize Their service or apply some of the principles to their business, I think it really depends. I mean, there’s there’s, it depends really on your goals of, you know, what you’re trying to do with with your business. You know, some people are very creative, and they want that kind of creative element, like, depending on some types of agencies, etc. I think when you’re productizing, it, you are kind of creating these bumpers or lanes, you’re staying within, in many ways. So that might not fit kind of some people’s goals in some ways. And they may really just enjoy, I’ve also worked with a lot of people where they just, they enjoy doing all the work themselves, and they don’t want to build a team and scale and scale it, but they can still productize you know, part of their offer their pricing their structure. So I think that’s where it kind of depends on kind of what you want to what your kind of end goals are for the business you call want to build. But in any case, I’ve always seen like, you can still you’re still able to apply a lot of these principles to your business, that’s going to help in many ways.

Tabitha Thomas 11:06
Yeah. So what are some of the first steps when you’re when you’re working with somebody? And you’re teaching them how to productize their service? What is some of the first first things that you do with them?

Tyler Gillespie 11:17
Yeah, so we’ve got what we call kind of a productize audit, we kind of walk people through to kind of get an idea of, of where some of the glaring holes are in their business. And there’s a lot of like common things that kind of come up over and over again, that most people and we’ve alluded to some of them, I mean, you have, you know, you know, scaling issues, they’re saying yes to everything, they’ve got a ton of different price points, they might be sending proposals, you know, so they’re, they’re kind of customizing things. So essentially, we’re auditing and finding these areas as well, do you have recurring revenue, or you sending invoices, you know, so things like this, we can have some really easy wins by, you know, leveraging some technology and just kind of revamping how they’re looking at doing doing certain things. And then as well, their offering needs to be very consistent across the board, and what they’re offering. And, you know, when we look at it, I’m trying to see how can we offer what you’re doing for a fixed price, and a fixed scope and a fixed timeline. And those are, those are some of the initial things, I really try to work with a service business, I’m also trying to get them to think like a SaaS company, you know, and also position their, their service, like an ecom company, so someone combined your site, just like Amazon, but then you have, you’re taking a lot of aspects that make a SaaS company, so valuable, you know, with recurring revenue and subscription based model, and your thinking and, you know, lifetime value and all these different things that are, you know, baseline things, if you’re running a software company, and now it kind of changes the way you look at your, your service business. So those are some things that we kind of, you know, try to tackle, not all at once, but you know, we’re, you know, first audit, we find kind of the glaring holes in the armor, and then we can kind of like chip away at, at ironing those out.

Tabitha Thomas 13:18
Gotcha. So how long does the process take from, you know, initially talking to somebody and walking them through, walking them through everything to where they actually end up with something? Like, I mean, it’s got to be a process, and it’s gonna take some time, because I’m assuming, if most of them are like most agency owners, it’s gonna be a little bit of a battle to have them let go of certain things. So how does that go?

Tyler Gillespie 13:44
Yeah, I mean, well, I mean, the short answer is it’s, I mean, there, there is a little bit of a timeline. But really, everyone’s coming in at different points of the process, you know. So I think for us, typically, since I’m mainly working with people who aren’t starting from scratch, they typically have something that found some product market fit, they’ve gotten some traction, typically, maybe doing at least three to 5000 a month at MRR, and you know, then we can kind of help mold some of their service. So, we kind of, we have this checklist, and we kind of work through and you know, it might take Yeah, three, six months, 12 months, to fully iron this out, we really push to kind of, you know, get them out of the business as much as possible as the ultimate goal. You know, if that aligns with where they want to be, but yeah, finding that out, and then we’re just kind of implementing all these things. Because when you start doing this, you’re actually the business is going to be a much more enjoyable business, and it’s going to be worth a lot more. And we’ve seen a lot of businesses that we work with, they’ll start and, you know, if we were to evaluate their business, it might be a one to one and a half x multiple You know, we kind of look at, we’re like, Hey, if you’re going to sell this business today, like, what is the point you would get, because you don’t have any of this in place. And, you know, by the time we’re done working with them, you know, it could be anywhere from a three to four x multiple, you know, which is a great place to be because now business is just worth a lot more and has a lot of systems and processes in place. So if I think six to 12 months is pretty reasonable, they implement a lot of to turn around a lot of bad habits and implement some good things to start putting yourself on the path. It also depends on entrepreneur, how fast there the resources available. Yeah. How willing are they to get out of their own way? In most cases.

Tabitha Thomas 15:43
That’s got to be the hardest part right there.

Tyler Gillespie 15:45
Yeah, yeah. Some people just run with it. They know what they want. And other people, it’s it’s a little harder, but everyone’s in there on their own journey, you know?

Tabitha Thomas 15:55
Yeah, yeah. So yeah. So what’s the what’s the story behind applause lab?

Tyler Gillespie 16:03
Yeah, so that is, so when I sold my last business, it’s funny because you think this is amazing. You go from doing I mean, I was working, not much, but you build this thing. And your identity is kind of attached, and then you go to nothing.

Tabitha Thomas 16:19
Yeah, it’s like you sold your baby.

Tyler Gillespie 16:22
Exactly. And I think that’s not talked about good problems to have not not complaining at all. But it was just kind of like I went through a phase where I was like, trying to work and figure out kind of what what to do next. And so this was kind of if you could say, a playground to just work on a project. So applause lab is essentially a video testimonial service for e commerce companies, where we help help them capture video testimonials and produce them kind of on autopilot. So yeah, it’s part technology part service, kind of a tech enabled service is probably more correct term. But they Yeah, I mean, it’s a really fun business. And what’s cool is, I’m pretty much running that applying a lot of things that we’re talking about teaching and, and, you know, productizing, and then I can use that as a case study an example to, you know, people that I’m working with are in our private group, etc. So that’s been that’s been really fun as well. And, and it’s a cool little business. I’m excited to, you know, keep keep growing that.

Tabitha Thomas 17:28
That was awesome. So that leads to the next question, which is, do you ever have clients crossover between the companies like they use multiple different ones?

Tyler Gillespie 17:37
Oh, we have had more of like, people who are in our group that I work with, though a couple of them have signed up for applause lab. And I’ll give them like a special rate, because we’re working together. But yeah, there has there has been a little bit of crossover there for sure.

Tabitha Thomas 17:54
Oh, it’s gotta be nice. Gotta be nice. So what is the process for figuring out rates, or pricing for clients for determining? You know, that set price so that it is productized?

Tyler Gillespie 18:08
Yeah. That’s a question a great question.

Tabitha Thomas 18:14
I’m sure it’s different for every single

Tyler Gillespie 18:16
Yeah, that’s a different angle at it. Yeah, I think the pricing is going to really depend on what you’re offering, I think the way I look at it is how I always am trying to shoot for, you know, a 65% gross margin. Okay. And that’s what we kind of recommend that a service business kind of hits. So that kind of helps you back into pricing in some in many ways, right. Because if you want to hire, you know, really good contractors or team, or wherever you have your business set up, you need to make sure that you have the proper margins, and you can kind of, you know, structure the pricing based on that. So that knowing that that can kind of help you back into what your pricing could be. And a lot of people that start with us, their, their margins are in like 40 to, you know, 40 to 50% could be less like something that they think of, so we’re chipping away and trying to work on increasing the the gross margin that they have on their, their services, or overall across, you know, many services. So, and that helps us back into like practicing and how to structure as well. So that’s where I start.

Tabitha Thomas 19:34
That’s good, good advice to have a good number good percentage to start with. So, um, so how are you finding clients for your productize business? Where are you finding people and agencies that are looking for that type of service?

Tyler Gillespie 19:51
Yeah, so we just launched the podcast, so we’re doing some like content content creation. I also helped co run a Facebook group called productize community that kind of helped co run for about a good year with my buddy Robin. And he’s kind of fully running that now. But we I post a lot in there and and share share contents of Facebook group was definitely good as well. So those are really the only those core places that are driving, you know, potential people interested is to do podcast interviews kind of like this. And those have been some great kind of avenues to generate interest and connect with people as well. We haven’t done any paid media or anything like that. And I also have a, an Instagram account as well, where I post thinking time graphics, okay, which which you might like as well. And it’s kind of taking concepts and ideas and visualizing them in graphic form. So they’re kind of like mini little business lessons, as well. So we’ve been growing, growing that Instagram channel as well. So that’s been kind of fun. But those are kind of the main areas that we’re marketing to build kind of a an audience.

Tabitha Thomas 21:15
Gotcha. So tell me about the podcast is since you mentioned that there, then it’s brand new, what made you want to do the podcast and when it was being new, when does it release?

Tyler Gillespie 21:27
Yeah, so talking about getting out of my own way, it took a while to get that off the ground cheese. I got the idea of it like eight months ago, and I actually recorded a few episodes, and I just didn’t have it. I think timing just wasn’t didn’t have some good processes in place. So I actually have like 30 backlogged episodes currently, and we just released the first one a week ago. Oh, yeah. Okay good, so it is live, and it will be kind of rolling out every, my goal is to do an episode a week, we might previewed, really some of them. Because if we did that, we’d have about seven months of content, which is a great runway, but I want to get some of them out there a little sooner. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the idea was just I mean, one, I, it’s a great way to connect with people. And I, I also do these, I do these breakdowns, which is kind of interesting. So in my group I have every month or every two weeks, I do a productize breakdown, where I’ll actually sign up for another productize service as a customer, and I’ll break down their entire business and look at their funnel and their follow up emails and how their service worked and what they’re doing for marketing and etc, and put it into like a report. So a lot of some people that I interview as well, you know, that’s part of the process is including their interview and the breakdown. So that’s kind of cool. But I think overall, this is great, because I can connect with so many other service businesses that are working on really cool things. And I think that was the big kind of driver for me. Well as that I know, it’s kind of more of a long term play. And yeah, but I think that in the interim, it has so many great benefits that was really the core driver behind launching a podcast as well. I loved it, I’ve never done one before, either.

Tabitha Thomas 23:24
Oh, yeah. So see. So you’re, you’re going in, you’re breaking down other people’s products, or they, they’re not paying you to do this, this is just something you’re doing for content purposes.

Tyler Gillespie 23:35
Exactly, yeah.

Tabitha Thomas 23:35
That’s incredible. So how do you determine which ones you’re going to go in? and review? I mean, do you get suggestions? Or is this stuff that you just find interesting?

Tyler Gillespie 23:44
Yeah. So right now the driver for my decisions is two things one, like I’ll post in my group, and ask them, you know, like, peers I’m considering as well, like, this month, for example, there’s a lot of people that are, you know, really trying to grow with, like, with lead gen and in getting traffic and doing maybe outbound marketing, LinkedIn, cold email, etc. So my breakdown this month is going to be focused on that. And then I also try to see what correlates What can I actually use for applause lab? Yeah, so it’s not some not just signing up for something that I can’t use. So I’ll usually use applause lab as a company signing up, and then I can actually use the service. So we did a great breakdown on ad zombies. If you’re familiar with that business, I’m not um, which was really, really cool. So we have a full breakdown on their business. They there they do about 800 k a month. Wow. They do is write copy for Facebook ads for other agencies. So that was a really interesting, wow, yeah, business and then the one I’m doing this month is on cleverly.co, which is a LinkedIn outbound kind of lead gen service. And they’re doing anywhere from a 300 to 500,000 a month, just doing LinkedIn messages for different different businesses.

Tabitha Thomas 25:12
I was about to say that sounds so familiar. Wheredo I see that? It was one of your links. I was like, I’ve seen that name somewhere. I think you sent me a link over when we were signings. Talking about doing those podcasts.

Tyler Gillespie 25:25
Okay, cool, yeah, maybe I did mention it. Yeah, so those have been really fun. I think those will, you know, I’ve really been enjoying it. Plus, it’s awesome to just connect with those people, see how they’re running their business, see what is working, what isn’t. And then I can share that content as well with the group and the breakdowns have been really, really cool. So

Tabitha Thomas 25:45
So what do you cover in the breakdowns?

Tyler Gillespie 25:49
Um, well, we’re looking at the overall business. And I’ll send you one after this, if you’d like to just check that out.

Tabitha Thomas 25:54
I would love to link it into our podcast notes for sure.

Tyler Gillespie 25:57
Yes, typically, yeah, we’re covering their business and overview, of course, the actual interview with the owner. And then below, we’re also breaking down some other operations. So like from the customer side, so I don’t have access to their business. But from an outsider, I can kind of see, like, what are their systems from signing up to going through? Do they have an onboard? What kind of their onboarding flow they have an onboarding call? What are the email follow ups they send? How to actually sign up and pay? So all those are documented screen recorded? And then what else? We’re also looking at the technology they’re using, so we use built with and some other tools to actually see what are they actually using? What are they running their website on? What tools are they using for project management, etc. So we’re breaking down now those that were also looking at a running paid media. So via like Facebook ad library and LinkedIn ad library, you can look and see what ads are they running right now? Where are they those ads going? So we can get a pretty good idea. You know, I don’t have full access, obviously, because I’m just

Tabitha Thomas 27:07
Well, I think it’s neat that you don’t have full access. You’re just a consumer that’s coming in and just dissecting things. And I think as a business owner, that’s got to be very, it’s got to be really good information for them. Because when you’re in it yourself all you see it from your point of view. Yeah. And sometimes it’s hard to see it from the customer’s point of view. So that’s got to be incredible. So do you reach out to these business owners and say, hey, I want to dissect your business, and then talk about it? Do they? How does that conversation go?

Tyler Gillespie 27:39
Yeah, well, some of them are totally, I mean, like, Ken from add zombies. We just had a great interview, and just really transparent. I mean, he had told me all these numbers like, so some people are just, you know, an open book, which is really, really cool. And they’ll share customer numbers, revenue numbers. And so that aspect is really awesome. You know, because I think all of us can learn so much. And from that side of things, so typically, I’m doing, you know, working with people doing breakdowns where they where they are very transparent. If someone is really closed off and doesn’t want to do any of that, then, you know, I can move on to the next company as well.

Tabitha Thomas 28:19
Yeah. So in any of these interviews is stuff that you found? Was it things that they could come in? They took your information and changed what they were doing in their in their business and change the business for them?

Tyler Gillespie 28:33
That I do not know. not know yet. Yeah. You know, I yeah, be interesting to see if they did or not, you know, a lot of it too, isn’t none of these breakdowns aren’t even. I mean, it’s not, they’re not negative or anything. It’s more of like, you know, my opinion and seeing what they’re doing oftentimes, what they’re doing really well. Yeah. And then things they could improve, you know, as well, but I don’t know if they, if they actually ran with implementing or changing anything.

Tabitha Thomas 29:00
Yeah. It’d be interesting to know. Yeah,

Tyler Gillespie 29:03
They do more and more of these, maybe, you know,

Tabitha Thomas 29:05
They’ll reach out, circle back around. Yeah, yeah. That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. So if you could give some advice to your younger self, you know, somebody is just starting out as an entrepreneur, what advice would you give yourself?

Tyler Gillespie 29:19
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think the first thing that kind of comes to mind is just yeah, try more stuff and and not worry about what what other people think. Hmm. You know, I think that is when you’re younger, that’s definitely a hurdle to overcome in many areas that maybe took me longer to kind of, you know, push through. So I think

Tabitha Thomas 29:46
I think we all have to get to a certain age before that hits where you just don’t care anymore. Nothing, you don’t care. We don’t care what other people think of you just like I’m just gonna just, I’m going to be me and it’s gonna be okay.

Tyler Gillespie 29:59
Exactly, yeah. So I think, yeah, that would be, that would be kind of I think the first thing, you know, maybe give him a copy of the road road stupid and, you know, just, you know, be on my way.

Tabitha Thomas 30:11
Yeah. Good. Good advice. So, so do you have any other projects or companies that you can tell us about anything you got going on are coming up besides the podcast?

Tyler Gillespie 30:22
Yeah, no, I mean, the main thing is, you know, I’m running productize, my service and the group that I have there, which has been a lot of fun to kind of help all these different service businesses is called productize mentor. Um, it’s just a closed group that we we kind of collaborate and and have bi weekly calls and share these breakdowns and resources and etc. And, and then applause lab is really kind of the kind of the testing ground of businesses, for me that those are those are the core projects, I’m really enjoying both of those. And I think the only other thing is, I mean, the ultimate goal for me, as well as obviously helping people in the meantime, service businesses related. But I’m also looking, as you’ve mentioned in my intro, to invest in some of these businesses, as well, like, I really want to find these different service businesses that have potential great entrepreneurs running them and then make small investments into their businesses as well. So we’ve done a couple investments already, but I definitely like want to keep keep an eye out and finding cool businesses like that to partner up with.

Tabitha Thomas 31:31
Yeah, so that’s one thing we didn’t dig into is the 300 editors. com on your blog. So tell me a little bit more about that.

Tyler Gillespie 31:39
Yes, so that is, this will actually go the opposite direction. That was a business we bought. We rebranded it to proofreading pros dot io, and Okay, it was, it’s actually a business we closed down. Okay, so yeah, so recently, we did close it down just it. And for many reasons, it just wasn’t the priority. And performance wise, just wasn’t doing it. So we just allocated resources in smarter ways. But it was that it was a cool service, but it just didn’t get the traction we wanted.

Tabitha Thomas 32:18
Gotcha. So you, were you being very transparent. I’m putting it on your blog and letting people watch you along the process? Is that what that was all about?

Tyler Gillespie 32:26
Yeah, exactly. So during the time that we had that business, it was definitely very much that. And that’s what I tried to do with applause lab, as well as sharing, you know, we’re building out some outbound systems for, you know, LinkedIn and cold email right now and trying to share all that in our group. Because I think everyone’s at some point, doing some aspect of these terms. So yeah,

Tabitha Thomas 32:51
I love that you’re transparent. I love that you’re transparent, because people can learn. I mean, that’s one of the reasons we do the podcast, or I do this podcast is that you learn so much from listening to other people and seeing what they’ve gone through. And it either encouraged you, encourages you to do it, or keeps you from doing something stupid. So

Tyler Gillespie 33:10
Exactly

Tabitha Thomas 33:10
Yes, yes. So one of the last questions that I always ask, Is there anything that you’re currently reading, watching or listening to that is helping you grow as a as a person as a human being as a leader? Besides the road less stupid?

Tyler Gillespie 33:27
Yeah, um, let’s see, I’ve got you know, honestly, I, this year has been really about creating over consuming. So that’s been kind of the motto this year. So I literally have the road less stupid, like, marked out, you can see it here. Actually.

Tabitha Thomas 33:47
It’s probably right in front of you.

Tyler Gillespie 33:49
It’s just, you know, really kind of falling apart here. And I reference that a lot for just different things and how I’m helping different people, but not consuming a ton to be honest. Yeah, it’s it’s not a bad thing. Yeah, I mean, there’s some little things here and there. I mean, I’m loving it. If you ever listened to a navall podcast, the volleys a kind of a philosopher investor in Silicon Valley. But he has a podcast that’s like, one to three minutes an episode. Like they’re just short snippets of him just talking, and just gems of wisdom.

Tabitha Thomas 34:31
In one minute. That’s incredible.

Tyler Gillespie 34:34
Yeah, yeah. So definitely check it out. It’s just an NA v al L. And he’s got some good stuff. And so that one’s like, it was like little bite size snacks. You know, it’s, it’snothing crazy. But yeah, those are really the only things I’m kind of consuming at the moment and reading and just really focusing I set on just creating and podcasts. You know, these thinking time graphics I told you about and helping members. So that’s really kind of been the core of the focus. Gotcha.

Tabitha Thomas 35:07
Well, before we started the podcast, we were also talking about the fact that you are living in Colombia right now, which is incredible. So what do you do in Colombia? For your off time? What do you do for fun around there?

Tyler Gillespie 35:19
Oh, man, well, non quarantine days.

Tabitha Thomas 35:24
Yeah. So before.

Tyler Gillespie 35:26
Yeah, depending when you’re listening to this. It’s a very outdoor city. So very mountainous, very green when it’s on the equator, but also at 8000 feet. So it’s in this weird kind of place where it’s very cool. rains a lot. But I have two dogs. So I, you know, trek around the city with my dogs. I also love to salsa dance. So great place to be for that. Yeah, there’s a great Nomad community here as well, just entrepreneurs building other businesses here, which is really cool. But yeah, those are the main things I play a lot of chess. Yeah, so try to do as much outdoor stuff as possible. Yeah. So right now it’s kind of killing me a little bit, you know, getting outside as much as I want.

Tabitha Thomas 36:14
Yeah. I think it’s killing all of us right now. No matter where you live.

Tyler Gillespie 36:19
Right. Yeah, exactly.

Tabitha Thomas 36:20
So where can people find more information about you? Where can they go to find more?

Tyler Gillespie 36:27
Yeah, I think productize my service com is a great place. Or you can follow me on Instagram, which I’m on any of the socials. That’s probably where I’m most active and Match us at productized mentor.

Tabitha Thomas 36:41
Okay. All right. Well, thank you so very much for being on the show. Tyler. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you. And I’m a teeny bit jealous that you’re in Colombia and not stuck here in the States but super excited to have you and thanks for sharing your business insights with us.

Tyler Gillespie 37:02
Thanks so much.

Tabitha Thomas 37:03
Alright guys, we’ll see you next Tuesday.

Narrator 37:07
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