Brian Casel has built a productized agency that only requires 2-3 hours of his work each week. In this interview you’ll learn how he transitioned from a traditional agency into a productized service and ultimately built his SaaS product, ProcessKit.
Resources mentioned in the episode
- AudienceOps – blog content productized service
- ProcessKit
- Process automation for service companies – free course
- Productize and Scale – community & course
- Restaurant Engine
Connect with Brian
About Brian
I’m growing ProcessKit, a software product that I designed, built, and launched in 2019. It’s a process-driven project management tool aimed at helping client services businesses scale their operation. This year, we’re continuing to grow the customer base and continuously expand the feature-set, with a focus on automating teams’ repeatable processes.
Here’s the quick backstory on ProcessKit: After years of trial-and-error with hiring developers to build my software product ideas, in 2018, I finally decided to expand on my front-end design skills and learn back-end development with Ruby on Rails (and now I’m in love with being a full stack product designer!). I spent the year of 2018 learning and hacking on small projects (including a small SaaS product called Sunrise KPI), until I felt ready to break ground on ProcessKit. I continue to learn and grow my dev skills, while collaborating with a small, talented dev team and some mentors.
My community
Ever since I’ve been in client services myself (since 2008), I have shared my experiences and lessons with others in the same boat. Today, this community lives on Productize & Scale.
That’s a library of guides and podcast interviews focused primarily on productized services. Since 2013 through today, I’ve run Productize, a private online community and course for those interested in scaling their client services with the productized service model.
My productized services
In 2020, I started my newest productized service called Ops Upgrade. This is for businesses looking to upgrade their systems, processes, and team roles to enable their next phase of growth. We work together on your processes, and optionally, we’ll help you recruit and train your in-house team members to carry them out.
Since 2015, my company Audience Ops has provided a done-for-you blogging, podcasting, and customer case studies content for B2B businesses. Today, this productized service business continues to hum along with an amazing team and management. My involvement is minimal, but includes coaching my team and optimizing our systems.
Side projects
I co-host the Bootstrapped Web with my buddy Jordan Gal. In our weekly-ish episodes we rant and ramble about the realtime goings on in our businesses.
Every winter since 2014, I co-organize the original Big Snow Tiny Conf with my friend Brad Touesnard. It’s part ski/snowboarding trip, part business mastermind in Vermont. It has since been expanded by our friends who host similar trips in Colorado and Europe. Here’s my guide to running a Tiny Conference.
Before all that…
Back in 2011 I started a little side project called Restaurant Engine, a hosted website design service for the hospitality industry. I bootstrapped and grew it until 2015 when I sold this business for a six-figure exit.
In 2008 I quit my job at a web agency to become a freelance web designer. As a web design consultant I worked for clients small and large, collaborated with a great group of fellow web pros, and learned a ton about client services, design, development, and WordPress. I phased out this client work as my products ramped up, but I’m still very hands on in the design of all my web properties.