5 min read · Written by Grant Rayner on 01 Nov 2023
Share by emailOver the past weeks, I’ve focused on designing services.
In this article, I’ll transition away from services to focus on products.
Why develop products as an independent security professional? The primary reason for developing products is to overcome some of the challenges you’ll face scaling your business delivering services. As I’ve noted in earlier articles, your capacity to scale a services business is limited by your available time and the rates you’re able to charge. Products provide an effective way to break through this revenue ceiling.
In the context of security, products could include e-books, templates, packaged services, online training and applications. You could also develop physical products.
In this article, I’ll start the discussion on products by focusing on the advantages of products in relation to services.
Developing and selling products as an independent security professional can offer several benefits that can elevate your business. In the sections below, I’ll outline several reasons why you might consider investing time developing products in addition to services.
Products can provide an additional revenue stream. This additional revenue stream will help to reduce your reliance on revenue from services and will help to make your income more stable overall.
Revenue diversification is the key to the long-term health of your business as an independent security professional, and is something you should be carefully considering as you design your products and services.
As noted in the introduction, services don’t scale well. Delivering services will require a significant investment of your time and energy. You can only deliver so many projects in a given month, and the more you try to do, the more likely that the quality of the deliverables will be impacted. Not to mention the impacts on your quality of life. The key advantage with products–particularly digital products—is that they can be sold to an unlimited number of customers without significantly increasing your workload.
Once you have developed a product, that product can continue to generate income with little to no active involvement compared to services. Your time will be freed up to continue to deliver services, providing a combined income stream. Alternatively, you could continue to develop products.
Creating a successful product can position you as an expert in your field, making clients more likely to trust your services. Books in particular provide a record of your expertise that’s available for anyone to evaluate.
Products can provide an excellent complement to your existing services. You have the option of bundling products and services to provide comprehensive solutions. You could, for example, bundle a book with a training workshop (all workshop attendees receive a copy of your book on a related topic).
In addition, some of your products could be incorporated into your services. For example, if you develop templates, you could sell these templates as products and also use them when you deliver consulting projects. A key benefit of this approach is that you can develop a template, use that template on multiple projects, and then sell the mature template as a product. In doing so, you won’t necessarily cannibalise your services. In fact, your services should be configured so that offering these types of products will have no impact on the sale of services.
Offering a unique product can differentiate you from competitors who limit themselves to only providing services, making your offering more appealing to potential clients. As an independent security professional competing with much larger security companies, you might find that the inclusion of products into your business is the key to distinguishing yourself from your competitors.
Products can serve as an entry point for clients who may later be interested in more extensive consulting services. As such, products can help to increase customer retention rates and customer lifetime value. That said, not all products provide recurring revenue, which will have the impact of limiting future revenue. If someone buys a book from you, for example, they are very unlikely to buy the same book again. For this reason, it’s important to consider products that can provide recurring revenue, such as subscriptions and software applications.
If you’re able to create an innovative physical product, you could patent the product, creating valuable intellectual property for your business. You could also develop unique frameworks and tools. While these can’t be patented, they can certainly help to differentiate you from your competitors.
One of the challenges you’ll face with services will be your reach. You’ll typically be limited to delivering services in your own country or region. In contrast, digital products, like e-books, templates and applications, can be sold globally, allowing you to reach a much larger audience compared to localised services.
A successful product can significantly boost your personal brand, opening doors to speaking engagements, partnerships, and other opportunities. It’s rare for security professionals to develop products. Doing so will help you stand out from your peers.
Overall, while investing time in product development requires resources and involves some risks, the potential benefits can make it a highly rewarding endeavour.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll focus on different types of products, including books, templates, subscription products, and applications. Before closing, I’ll share some personal perspectives on the importance of products for my own business.
Introducing products into my business has changed my business for the better. Let me share a few examples of the approaches I’ve taken to developing products.
I currently have 15 books available for sale on my website. While writing these books was a significant investment in time and money, these books have had a very positive impact on my business. Not only am I earning ongoing passive revenue from book sales, but my reputation as a specialist in these fields has increased.
Most importantly for me as a professional, the process of writing these books has helped to build my professional knowledge, encouraging me to think deeper about the aspects of security about which I’m most passionate.
I’ll discuss books in more detail next week.
In addition to the books, I’ve also sold packaged services. As an example, after the terrorist attacks in Colombo in 2019, I assessed 13 hotels in the city and put the assessments in an online workspace. I then sold access to the workspace to multiple clients. In the process, I earned significantly more revenue than I would have if I just completed these assessments for a single client. I was also able to onboard new clients in the process. Importantly, clients benefited by having access to high quality hotel security assessments at a fraction of the price than if they commissioned the work themselves. I’ve taken a similar approach for hotel security assessments in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Most recently, I’ve packaged contingency plans for Taiwan into a workspace and clients have paid to access the workspace. I’ll share more details regarding my approach to packaging and selling these services in future articles.
Related to the work I do with travel security, I’ve been selling high-specification bags for the past few years. This project has been more of a personal interest, but the bags are still sold under the company name. This year, I made the decision to expand this business. I’ve designed a range of bags and accessories and have just started large scale production of bags. Next year, I’ll be releasing the bags and accessories under a new brand name.
I’ve designed and built multiple applications over the years. I’m currently working on a new application called Incident Manager, that will go on the market early next year. This application integrates with my existing services, and builds on the IP I’ve built up around crisis team performance.
Overall, I’m not afraid to experiment with products. In future articles, I’ll be sharing what worked and what didn’t with these projects, allowing you to better evaluate different opportunities.