Hey there...

Here is something I have become increasingly convinced of:

Most experienced experts don't have an idea shortage.

They have an extraction problem.

There are probably tools hiding inside things you already do so naturally that you no longer recognise them as valuable.

A question you ask every client.

A pattern you spot almost immediately.

A calculation you make in your head.

A set of warning signs you look for.

A process you repeatedly walk people through.

A distinction that changes how someone sees the problem.

A decision you can make in ten minutes because you've seen the situation 100 times before.

Those things are potential WayTools.

And once you begin looking for them, they appear

Here are some examples.

A Diagnostic WayTool helps someone figure out what is actually wrong.

Imagine a consultant who can look at a struggling business and identify the constraint that is actually responsible for the problem.

That judgment can become a diagnostic.

An Assessment WayTool helps someone understand where they are.

Readiness.

Capability.

Maturity.

Risk.

Positioning.

Performance.

An Opportunity Miner helps someone discover something valuable they have not yet recognised.

A new market.

A product idea.

An underused capability.

A commercial opportunity.

An overlooked asset.

A Decision WayTool helps someone make a difficult choice.

Should I launch this?

Which market should I enter?

Which offer should I prioritise?

Should I hire, partner or outsource?

What should I fix first?

A Calculator turns expertise into numbers.

ROI.

Pricing.

Capacity.

Value.

Risk.

Opportunity cost.

A Planner turns an objective into action.

A Roadmap turns action into sequence.

An Audit Tool exposes gaps.

A Research Tool structures investigation.

A Prompt Engine turns a body of intellectual property into better questions for AI.

An Implementation Tool helps someone actually execute a methodology.

And this is where it gets interesting.

One body of expertise can produce many tools.

If you have spent twenty years helping companies improve sales, your expertise isn't one product.

Inside it may be:

a sales readiness assessment,

a pipeline diagnostic,

a pricing calculator,

a prospecting planner,

a sales conversation evaluator,

a proposal audit,

a closing decision guide,

a weekly sales scorecard,

and an implementation tracker.

Nine potential products.

From one body of expertise.

This changes the question experts should ask.

Instead of:

"What digital product should I create?"

Ask:

"What decisions, diagnoses, calculations, assessments and actions does my expertise repeatedly help people make?"

That question begins revealing the tools.

And notice something else.

Not every WayTool needs to become a huge software company.

Some should be tiny.

A tool that solves one irritating $100 problem beautifully can be more useful than an enormous platform nobody understands.

Others could become serious intellectual property.

Used internally.

Sold independently.

Bundled into programmes.

Licensed to organisations.

White-labelled.

Used as lead generation.

Or deployed as part of a much larger advisory relationship.

The opportunity isn't necessarily to build one giant application.

The opportunity may be to build a portfolio of useful intellectual assets.

Which is why I suspect many experienced experts have far more products available to them than they realise.

They are simply looking in the wrong place.

They're searching for ideas.

When they should be mining their experience.

Till tomorrow

Be dangerously useful

Get out of your own way

CTM