Most experts have a method they use with every client. It might be a sequence of questions, a scoring system, a way of planning a project or a set of templates. Clients pay for it because it works. The difficulty is that it only works when the expert is in the room.
Software can carry a method to people the expert will never meet. We have built products this way with a book coach, a franchise operations consultant, a mentoring founder and a tax adviser. The route has been the same each time, and we call it PROVE: pinpoint, research, organise, validate and expand.
Pinpoint the part worth building
Start with what clients already pay you for. Look for the part of your work that you repeat with every client and that gets a result. Repetition is a good sign: if you follow the same steps each time, software can follow them too.
Write the steps down as you would explain them to a new colleague. Lucy McCarraher’s book coaching started this way. Before an author writes a chapter, she works through who the book is for, why it matters and how the ideas fit together. That order became the order of the screens in Book Magic.
Pick one part to start with. A whole practice is too much for a first product, and the narrowest useful version teaches you the most.
Research the demand before you build
Your current clients show that the method works for people who pay you directly. They do not yet show that a wider market will pay for a product. Find that out before anyone writes code.
Talk to people who match your best clients but have never worked with you. Ask how they deal with the problem today, what it costs them and what they have tried. Look at what else they can buy. If nothing exists, check whether that is because nobody needs it.
The cheapest test is often a page that describes the product and asks people to join a waitlist. If your audience will not give an email address, they are unlikely to give a card number. Our Method Sprint runs this test over four weeks, with a live waitlist drawn from the expert’s own audience.
Organise the method into a product
A method that lives in your head has gaps you fill without noticing. A product cannot fill them. Organising the method means writing down every decision: what the user sees first, what they must answer before moving on, and what happens when an answer does not fit.
Keep your own words. The language you use with clients is part of why the method works, and it belongs in the product. Penny Hopkinson’s operations manuals follow a structure franchisees already understand, and Manual Magic keeps it.
Decide early what stays with a person. Wowment flags messages that may need a safeguarding review, and a person decides what happens next. Some judgement should not be automated, and saying so up front makes the product easier to trust.
Validate with the smallest product that works
Build the least you can that still gives someone the result. Put it in front of a small group of real users, ideally people who are paying, even a small amount.
Watch what they do. Where do they stop? What do they skip? Which part do they come back to? Fix the places where people get stuck before adding anything new.
Test the price at the same time. A product people use but will not pay for is a different problem from one they would pay for but cannot use, and you need to know which one you have.
Expand once people pay
Once people pay and keep using the product, growth becomes the work: reaching more of the right customers and improving the product for the ones you have.
This is where a subscription earns its keep. Each month starts with the customers you already have, so every new one adds to the base. It also means the product has to keep earning its place each month.
Keep the expert close. The products that work best are the ones where the expert still shapes what gets built next.
Where to start
If clients already pay for your method, write it down and test whether people outside your client list would pay for it as a product. If you would like help with that, request an invitation. Jonathan reads every request personally.