Most new software products fail for an ordinary reason: they are built before anyone checks that people will pay for them. The PROVE model is the order we work in to avoid that.
Why products fail
The usual causes are well known. A product is built without testing demand. The first version tries to do everything. Early users give feedback and nothing changes. The product sounds like every competitor, so buyers have no reason to choose it.
None of these is a technical failure. Each one is a decision taken too early, or not taken at all.
The five stages
Pinpoint
Choose the part of your expertise that clients already pay for and that you repeat with each of them.
Research
Before building anything, test whether people outside your client list want it. Talk to them, and put up a waitlist.
Organise
Write the method down as a series of decisions, in your own language, and decide what stays with a person.
Validate
Build the smallest version that gives someone the result. Put it in front of paying users and watch where they stop.
Expand
Once people pay and keep using it, grow the customer base and keep improving the product with the expert involved.
What this looks like in practice
Book Magic began with one part of Lucy McCarraher’s book coaching: the thinking an author does before writing. It is now a subscription product with paying authors. Manual Magic began as Penny Hopkinson’s prototype for drafting operations manuals and was monetised in 2025.
Starting with the first stage
Write down the steps you take with every client. Then talk to ten people who match your best clients but have never worked with you, and ask how they handle the problem today. If you would like to work through this with us, request an invitation.