The first time Larry solves a problem for a client, he is building a service, the second time he is building a template. Once the shape of the work repeats, that shape is worth selling on its own, separate from the labor of doing it again from scratch. This is the non-literal franchise move: change one word, Harvard to Stanford, and the concept is now a franchise instead of a one-off.
Larry points to Tao going city to city, or CSI running the same premise in a new city every season, as the same idea outside of consulting. A template built this way carries no licensing fee baggage, it is closer to a proven recipe than a legal franchise agreement. The service client paid for hands-on delivery, the template client pays for the shape of the solution without the hand-holding.
Selling the template after the service works because the service already did the hard part: proving the format holds up under real conditions. A template sold too early, before it has been tested on a real paying client, is just an untested guess with a nicer cover page.
External API applies here too, since the second buyer is essentially plugging into a format that already succeeded once, not funding an experiment. Pricing the template lower than the service is fine, since the client is buying the shape, not Larry’s hours inside it.
The two products should not compete with each other, the service is for clients who want it done, the template is for clients who want to do it themselves. Every service Larry delivers twice in the same shape is a signal that a template is waiting to be extracted and sold separately.
Details: Watch Larry turn service into template
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