From $4,000 to $250,000 with a "productized" consultancy

When I wrote my first post back in early 2023, Incomparable had just crossed $4k MRR. At the time, I'd only recently gone full-time, and was mostly trying to figure out whether there was actually room for a product-focused design studio in a sea of agency subscriptions.

Two years later, we've worked with clients in 17 countries across five continents, delivered workshops to over 1,000 designers and product leaders, and crossed $250,000 in revenue.

A surprising amount has changed. Some things worked far better than I expected, while others turned out to be dead ends.

What's worked

Workshops

Workshops weren't really part of the original plan.

Initially they were something I offered to existing clients who wanted help aligning around design principles or product thinking. Over time, they became one of the strongest acquisition channels for the studio.

Spending an entire day with a product team is very different from a discovery call. By the end of it, both sides have a pretty good idea of whether we'd enjoy working together, and several workshops have naturally led to longer-term design partnerships afterwards.

Just as importantly, they've introduced us to companies we'd likely never have reached otherwise.

Writing

I mentioned LinkedIn in my original post, but I think I underestimated how valuable writing would become more generally.

Publishing articles consistently has changed the kinds of conversations I have with prospective clients. Rather than spending the first half of a call convincing someone I know what I'm talking about, they've often already read several articles and have a pretty good understanding of how I think about product design.

It turns sales conversations into fit conversations, which is a much nicer place to be.

Pricing

One thing I was worried about early on was pricing ourselves out of opportunities.

If anything, the opposite has happened.

The higher we've positioned ourselves, the more we've attracted companies looking for a partner rather than someone to simply execute tickets. That distinction has probably mattered more than any particular pricing number.

What hasn't worked

Relying on inbound

For the better part of two years, we've been almost entirely inbound.

It's a wonderful problem to have, until it isn't.

Inbound tends to come in waves. Some months are incredibly busy, others are much quieter, and you don't have a great deal of control over either.

If I were starting again today, I'd spend considerably more time building an outbound process alongside content, rather than treating the two as alternatives.

Referrals

Our referral rewards worked incredibly well in the beginning, largely because I already knew a lot of people in the industry.

The problem is that your existing network isn't infinite.

Referrals still make up a meaningful part of the business, but I've definitely come to appreciate that they're something to nurture rather than something you can rely on indefinitely.

International travel

One thing I consistently underestimated was the cost of international workshops.

Not financially. We charge separately for travel. But in terms of time.

A workshop in Japan isn't a single day of work. It's travel, arriving early enough to adjust to the time difference, the workshop itself, and then getting home again. Before you know it, most of the week has disappeared.

I still enjoy travelling, but I'm much more conscious now of making those trips worthwhile.

What's changed

Probably the biggest realization over the past couple of years is that I don't really think of Incomparable as a design studio anymore.

At its core, the business is about helping product teams make better decisions.

Sometimes that's through embedded product design. Sometimes it's through workshops. Sometimes it's simply through writing.

The medium changes, but the underlying goal has remained surprisingly consistent.

On the to-do list

Much like my original post, there's still plenty left to figure out.

• Building a proper outbound sales process.
• Working more closely with VCs and startup ecosystems.
• Continuing to invest in writing, which has become one of our strongest long-term assets.
• Figuring out whether there's a software product hidden somewhere inside everything we've learned over the last few years.

One thing I'm still not convinced of is that the goal is to become a much larger agency.

I'd much rather build a better one.