How Timmy Bauer Pivoted to a Six-Figure Productized Service

When the Original Business Model Disappeared

Before the pandemic, Timmy’s work depended heavily on traveling to schools as a children’s author. When schools stopped allowing visitors, the schedule that supported his income vanished with them.

His first response was practical: he asked a friend at Sweet Fish Media if there was writing work available. That role grew into content strategy and exposed Timmy to business authors and creators who were using books to become known for an idea.

The interruption was real, but it did not erase Timmy’s experience writing, illustrating, presenting, or understanding what makes a children’s book connect. Those skills became the raw material for the next business.

Pivot Through Adjacent Skills

During his content-strategy work, Timmy interviewed sales trainer John Barrows about a children’s book on sales. The conversation surfaced a gap: leaders in many industries wanted to make their expertise memorable and share it with families, but few services could turn that expertise into a professionally produced children’s book.

Timmy did not have to start from zero. He combined his experience as a children’s author with what he was learning about authority-building, content strategy, and B2B relationships. The new direction was adjacent to the old one—close enough to use his strongest abilities, but aimed at customers with a different problem.

Turn Expertise Into a Clear Offer

The emerging service was designed for two groups. Industry influencers could extend an idea or legacy to younger readers, while B2B companies could use a children’s book to start unusually personal conversations with the people they hoped to serve.

The deliverable was concrete: Timmy and his team would extract the client’s expertise, shape it into a story for children, develop the manuscript and illustrations, and produce the finished book. That clarity made an abstract creative capability easier to understand and buy.

The purpose mattered alongside the strategy. The best versions of these books gave parents a way to explain what they care about or do for a living while creating time together with their children.

Start With Real Customers

Timmy tested the idea with six entrepreneur friends. Rather than perfecting the service privately, he proposed the outcome, secured paying customers, and learned how difficult the delivery process actually was.

He initially priced the work at $500 because he was thinking primarily about his own time. As the offer developed, the standard price rose to $6,000 by the time of the 2022 interview. The change reflected a more complete understanding of the work, the team required to deliver it, and the value of the finished asset.

The early price was not a permanent positioning decision; it was tuition. The first customers generated the information needed to build a stronger offer.

Build a Repeatable Delivery Process

The first challenge was discovery. Timmy needed a reliable way to learn enough about a client’s expertise, audience, and goals before writing began. Better questions reduced expensive rewrites later.

The second challenge was separating roles. As the business grew, a writer could create the initial manuscript and handle revisions, while a team of illustrators moved an approved story through visual development. The complete process typically took about four months.

Timmy’s creative standard remained distinctive: the story needed “reaction triggers”—moments designed to make children laugh, gasp, recoil, worry, or wonder what came next. Productizing the service did not mean flattening the art. It meant building a process that could repeatedly protect what made the books work.

Use Content to Build Relationships

Timmy launched The Purpose-Driven Entrepreneur as a way to meet and spotlight people he genuinely wanted to know. The podcast gave a prospective guest a compelling reason to accept a conversation before any sales discussion existed.

At the time of the interview, Timmy had recorded roughly 115 episodes and said about 30 guests had become customers. The numbers are useful, but the mechanism matters more: the content itself created trust, context, and a reason to stay connected.

This was not mass lead generation disguised as a podcast. Timmy researched guests, listened to their prior interviews, and invited people whose work fit the show. The business result followed from creating something valuable with the right people.

Borrow Trust and Distribution

Events became another important channel. When existing clients discussed their books from a stage, the audience encountered Timmy’s work through someone they already trusted. At one event highlighted in the interview, that visibility produced four new clients.

The books themselves could also become relationship assets. Some clients used them as memorable business cards or gifts for target accounts. Others worked with people who already had an audience. In both cases, distribution began with a trusted relationship rather than a cold demand for attention.

Lessons for Purpose-Driven Founders

1. Look one step to the side. A disruption may require a new customer or offer without requiring an entirely new identity.
2. Sell the outcome early. Paying customers reveal delivery problems that private planning cannot.
3. Price the whole system. Account for discovery, revision, collaborators, project management, and the value of the result—not just founder hours.
4. Systematize around the value. Build a repeatable process that preserves the creative quality customers actually want.
5. Create with the people you hope to serve. Useful media can build an audience, a network, and a business relationship at the same time.
6. Build relationships before you need them. Timmy’s closing advice centered on finding successful people and beginning genuine relationships with them.