Bottom line, most companies would really benefit from being able to tap into the brain of an expert.

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There will always be a place for a standard project price, but there are so many opportunities for you to help others by allowing them to tap into the brain of an expert. Maybe they have a big pitch coming up and want to show their outline to someone who can offer genuine feedback. You could be that person. And the list goes on.

I wanted to offer my services to more people with an easy-to-understand set of "products." I work with freelancers, Agencies, Executives, Teams, Producers, Creative Directors, and more. It was hard to explain what I do before knowing what you do. That is why I started down this path. "You want coaching on optimizing freelance management? Totally. Go to this page, here's what to expect, etc." It puts control into the hands of the client. They can pause or cancel if they ever need to.

Things are changing in our industry. Like it or not, we will all be affected by AI somehow. The good news is that for many, the effect will be positive.

For me, it is like an idea accelerator. AI will not make decisions for you or give you good life advice. But, if you are used to doing many creative things manually, you can easily integrate time-saving techniques that allow you to get amazing results in a 10th of the time. That is where the inspiration for this article comes from.

You can checkout the landing page here: razmusmedia.com/service/unlock-potential

As a disclaimer, I don't suggest using this process for every landing page. But there are definitely elements of this approach that could help you make progress on changing or updating your service offering.

Three days ago, I had an idea, a flash of a beautiful landing page lit up in my brain, and I couldn't deny it from coming to life. So, I started working on it late on a Friday. I have a process for these types of things. I start with a simple text-only bullet list. I use this simplistic approach to visualize what I want on the page and in what order. After a few minutes, I had the plan typed out.

The plan included offering three productized versions of the services I have been offering; only this way, the barrier to entry is much lower. I have been offering coaching services to freelancers for a while, but it has been private and invite-only. Now, I can openly offer the services at a price the individual can afford (within reason). The same goes for business automation and custom solutions.

We're doing great now, feeling motivated and ready to go. This is where I start building my project plan, crafting the copywriting, creating rough drafts for art direction, etc. Yes, I write my own copy and make a lot of my own art, photography, rendering, etc.

But, this time, I wanted to try something different.

I sat there, alone in my office. I asked myself how quickly I could complete this using AI and premade Webflow components. "Would it be something you're proud of?" I asked myself. For example, "How do you feel about a piece of art you made vs. a stock photo you purchased?" To the general public, they both convey the message and look great. The only one who feels different about it is you. Right? Boom, my brain gave me the green light to give this a try.

So, where did I start? With the three products, their names, and descriptions. I used OpenAI's ChatGPT 4 to start drafting outlines for these based on my descriptions of what they are. You need to keep in mind that generative AI won't really generate new ideas for you, but it can work great by taking your ideas and reformatting them to give you multiple options and inspiration to get them to a final or acceptable state.

So there it was. I added the product names and descriptions below my bulleted list of the page structure. It felt pretty good to use AI in this way, as a creative director, crafting the input and shaping the output.

The next phase I jumped into was a bit different from my normal process. I skipped the design phase in Figma and jumped right into the CMS. I use Webflow for RazmusMedia.com. I already knew the message I wanted to convey, the page structure, and how I wanted to organize the different sections.

“Tap into the brain of an expert”

Design has begun, in real-time, in the CMS. I dropped in my logo for the header, added the hero section, and came up with the tagline, "Tap into the brain of an expert." It just felt right because that is essentially what I am offering. And, boom, there it was.  I had a flash of imagination, and I saw the image that needed to be next to that amazing tagline. I opened up Photoshop and began to sketch the idea before it faded from my brain forever. I was feeling really good about this direction now.

The first AI-generated image. I knew I wanted to use Midjourney for this one. I have used/experimented with most of the tools available. But this project was about speed and accuracy. I needed a really good looking, professional image that I could polish and publish.

The base image was generated (After a few prompts. Guiding AI to generate a specific image can take time and patience to structure the request just right), then opened in Photoshop to clean up, change the head, arms, add the bench, framing, and clean up some of the colors, bulbs, etc. I used manual art tools and Adobe's new generative fill.

At this point, I knew I was going to be proud of this landing page and excited to share it with everyone.

Generative AI is starting to feel like a collaboration with an advanced tool. It's a good relationship and just enabled this banner image to be created exactly how I imagined it. I can't take full credit for its creation. But I will take full credit for saving myself 14 hours of painting in Photoshop to create the same thing.

Now was time to do some programming. However, I wanted to experiment with using components that already exist. That's right, I simply searched for "webflow brand icons animated scrolling" and found a free template with exactly what I was picturing. Guess what I did. Clone site, copy, paste, done. Well, there were some bugs, and adjustments were needed, but within 10 minutes, I had all the brand icons smoothly moving across the screen.

The next section is proof of work. Guess what I did here. Yep, I searched for "webflow horizontal scroll portfolio" and copy/pasted a nice one and so on for all the sections. While these were time savers, they ALL required troubleshooting and tweaking to get them to work and look correct in my site's design. It also took some time to clean up styles and tweak for tablets and phones, etc. Consider this when deciding whether to make something exactly how you envision it or use a premade template. Pre-made is not always faster or better.

Then, I returned to the "Our Process" section to fill in the details and add images. I wrote this content by hand because it needs to fit our real process; AI doesn't always work great for this.

For the art, I contemplated making ink and watercolor cards for each process step, but I would easily spend a half or full day per card. And I needed nine (9) unique images. Some of the process steps share the same title across services. However, I didn't want to reuse the same image on each tab, so I planned on making slightly different versions of the same image.

For example, here are the "Service desk & tickets" process images:

This process was repeated for each of the process step images until the Our Process section looked and felt how I had imagined it.

At this point, it was Monday afternoon. I had less than a full workday into the project. I went from a flash of an idea to something tangible within, basically, one business day. I can't stop yet, though. We need to accept payments and allow the clients to manage their subscriptions.

Stripe to the rescue. I set up three products in Stripe, each with one price. Next, I created a payment link for each price and allowed the customer to change the quantity with minimum and maximum limits. I used those links on the "Get started" buttons in the pricing table, and now the circle is complete. Customers can start a subscription, change the amount they pay, pause, and cancel anytime. Super convenient.

The way the Stripe checkout page handles allowing customers to set their own price for a subscription is lacking. I am not totally happy with it in its current state, but it works for the short term, and I can set up my own backend to create a custom Stripe checkout that works exactly how I want it in the future. The great thing about this experience is that I have identified a little gap in the market, and I could make a great little product enabling freelancers and agencies to add this sales model to their websites quickly.

So, what do you think? Could you implement subscription service offerings for your freelance company?

I think offering a subscription service for at least some of your skills is worthwhile. For example, reviewing how a company handles meeting notes. Who writes them, where are they stored, and are they searchable? Most freelancers know of great platforms that could quickly be implemented, save a company a ton of time, and give visibility to important information.

Bottom line, most companies would really benefit from being able to tap into the brain of an expert.

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Want to talk more about what we're doing? Are you a freelancer with questions around operating your business, negotiating with clients, building scopes? Reach out to us at questions@razmusmedia.com or check out the landing page at razmusmedia.com/service/unlock-potential