Hi Friends,

It’s been a minute. Maybe 5. Usually folks say that all ironic like, as if it’s been along time. But it hasn’t been a long time, really. Anyways. Today marks 2 weeks from the official, “We’re open for business” date of Capsule. Which is great! Hooray for us!

Providing services is not new to me, but doing so in this format, and in this cadence is new to me. I think over the last 2 weeks I’d give myself a 50/100 score, not bad but not great. It’s been harder to stay either, on track with my projects, or communicating at the proper cadence with customers. So I’m gonna make some adjustments.

Tracking my time.

Firstly, I’m gonna start tracking my time, which client I’m working for and when. This seems obvious, but this model is all about doing as much as possible as fast as possible. Tracking time is more about measuring progress and ensuring I update folks at a good cadence, than for billing. I mean it’s a subscription everything is included, I’m not charging hourly. But I AM human, and have limited hours. This means that I can’t just load up on 100 clients and expect to deliver anything of value to each one.

So I’m setting minimums and maximums. Minimums for the time I spend on a client’s work in a 30 day cycle, and a maximum for how much time I spend working.

minimum hours: 20. Each client receives, at the least, 20 hours of my focused time and energy. That’s 2 solid days of work, assuming I’m working 10 hour days. If we convert this to an hourly rate that’s $25 or $50 an hour. That’s a 66% to 83% discount on my normal rates. Remember I’m doing a 50% off sale for the first 10 clients. After the sale ends My effective rate will be more like $50-$100/hour depending on the plan and the client. Which is more in line with a sustainable business.

BUT REMEMBER, we’re tracking hours to stay on track, NOT to limit delivery. That’s one thing I really really like about this model. The price is low enough that I can just do whatever it takes, and whatever is needed for a client, and billing is HANDLED.

Maximum Hours: 200. I honestly can’t deliver more than that in a month without ruining my personal life and my family. 200 hours works out to 50 hours a week, for 4 weeks. There are on Average 4.5 weeks in a month. I’m only working weekdays, So this is less than it seems. This also limits the number of clients I can realistically take on. Based on current plans, I could have up to 10 Rocket or Capsule Pro subscribers, or 3 and 1 third Capsule Pro Bell Grande subscribers. Revenue wise this works out to $5,000 - $10,000 a month. Which is just above my break even threshold for the business.

I would say that’s pretty good for this kind of service. An absolute steal of value for the service that I offer.

Communication Cadence

Messaging and communicating progress to clients is the other extremely important part of this model. From the moment a customer subscribes the clock starts ticking before it’s renewed again. There is a strong incentive to utilize as much as my services as they can. I in fact want that. But providing customers with the maximum possible service means I have to be very proactive with communicating progress, and production. This is where the key, 48 hour delivery window comes in.

I’m gauging how much time it takes to deliver a task by recording my time. Putting a 5 hour limit to any task before I report back with a deliverable, and move on to the next task. Assuming I stick to my cadence I can get 2-3 tasks done a day, and rotate all clients in 2-3 days.

This I think is ideal, but of course requires some more discipline about time, Communication, and organization around the work.

I don’t want this to be like everyone else.

The other thing about this model is that it eschews direct communication, or chats, like slack, for only asynchronous communication through comments in Trello, or loom videos. Now this is generally a good thing. Less time spent on back and forth and we can get more done. The downside is that only clients that are absolutely focused on directing the work can thrive under this model. I don’t want to leave folks hanging if they’re busy. My biggest strengths lie in helping to shape the strategy and thoughts of my clients, not just production.

In the environment of all these things I have a really good understanding of what it will take to deliver really great value. I’m very excited to do so.

I’ve still got capacity.

I still have 5 client slots available in my studio launch discount promotion ting. 50% for the life of your subscription. Or my life, whichever is cancelled first. Please tell your friends to hop on the Capsule train. Load up on medication, and start trippin’!

I’m really excited with who I’m working with right now, and some of this stuff will start to come out over the next month. I’m very excited to show off what I’ve been working on.

-kow