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{{first_name|Hey}},
You might have thought or be thinking starting a solo business means inventing something new. I know I did. Everyone out there telling you ‘Find your niche.’
It doesn't. It means extracting something you’ve already built. Something from before.
You have the track record. You've spent 10, 15, 20 years solving problems that people (should) pay money to solve. The business is already inside your career. You are the niche. You just haven't pulled it out yet.
This week's prompts do the pulling. All five are Phase 1 of a 5-phase system I built for experienced professionals going solo. Phase 1 is Identity. Who you are. What you bring. What's already inside your career that the market will pay for.
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Prompt 1: The Experience Audit
I've spent [X YEARS] working in [INDUSTRY/ROLE]. Here are the roles I've held: [LIST YOUR ROLES AND COMPANIES]. For each role, identify: (1) the core problem I was hired to solve, (2) the skill I used most often to solve it, and (3) the type of person or company that would pay for that skill today as a standalone service. Be specific. No generic answers.This is the foundation. Most people can't see their own expertise because they've been too close to it for too long. Claude sees the patterns you stopped noticing five years ago and revives them. Throw your resume in to get it even more specific.
Prompt 2: The Overlap Finder
Based on the experience audit above, identify the 2-3 skills or knowledge areas that show up across multiple roles. These are my throughlines, the things I keep getting pulled toward regardless of job title. For each throughline, suggest a solo business model that could be built around it (consulting, digital products, coaching, content, or a combination). Explain why each model fits.Your throughline is the signal buried under job titles. It's what you'd do even if nobody gave you a title for it. And it's usually the thing people kept asking you about informally.
Prompt 3: The "What Do People Ask You?" Test
I'm going to list the questions people at work kept bringing to me, even when it wasn't my job to answer them: [LIST 5-10 QUESTIONS OR TOPICS PEOPLE CAME TO YOU FOR]. Analyze these questions. What do they reveal about my perceived expertise? What business could be built around being the person who answers these questions professionally?This is the market telling you what you're worth before you ever ask. The questions people brought you for free are the ones strangers will pay you to answer.
Prompt 4: The Unfair Advantage Stack
Here's my professional background: [BRIEF SUMMARY]. Here are my non-obvious skills and experiences that most people in my industry don't have: [LIST ANYTHING UNUSUAL: hobbies, side interests, cross-industry experience, unusual education, lived experiences]. Build me an "unfair advantage stack" that combines my professional expertise with my non-obvious traits. Show me the positioning angles that would be impossible for anyone else to copy because nobody else has this exact combination.Your unfair advantage is never one thing. It's the combination. A marketing executive who also understands data science. A finance VP who also builds communities. The stack is uncopyable (not a word).
Prompt 5: The Identity Statement
Based on everything above, write me 5 identity statements for my solo business. Each one should follow this format: "I help [SPECIFIC AUDIENCE] [ACHIEVE SPECIFIC OUTCOME] using [MY SPECIFIC EXPERTISE AND APPROACH]." Make each one progressively more specific and more differentiated. The fifth one should be so specific that it would be hard for anyone else on the internet to credibly make the same claim.The goal is statement #5. That's your identity. Not a niche you picked from a list. Not a category you saw someone else win in. The thing that's yours because nobody else has lived your exact career.
THE CMO TAKE
I've watched dozens of professionals and peers go through this process. The ones who struggle aren't missing expertise. They're buried under 20 years of corporate language that trained them to describe their value in terms someone else defined. BTW that was me too; took a while to figure out and get the cake out of my eyes. These prompts work because they help bypass that filter. It’s time to pull the rabbit out of your hat, but it’s not magic. These are just keys to unlock a fresh look at your career the way a hiring manager would if the job posting said "build something for yourself."
Smart starts here.
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GO DEEPER
The Clarity and Direction Deep Dive has 20 prompt sets breaking the full Identity phase into a complete prompt system with frameworks, examples, and the exact sequence I use with clients. Grab it for $17.
Before you go...
See you soon!
Keep building,
Tuck