The Next Act Audit: Intake

What this is for

You suspect there's something monetizable in 20+ years of work, but haven't inventoried it against what people will actually pay for, fast. This is that inventory: the same self-audit used as intake for a guided Next Act Audit, given to you complete.

Before you start

• Twenty uninterrupted minutes and something to write in. This only works if you answer for real, not in your head.
• Willingness to write specific numbers, not general descriptions.

The 12-question self-audit

Answer these in writing. Short answers are fine. Specific beats long.

1. What have you been paid to do for the longest continuous stretch of your career?
2. What's a problem people ask you about informally, outside of work, unpaid, because they know you're good at it?
3. Name three times you fixed something and it stayed fixed. What did you actually do in each case?
4. What decision do you make quickly that takes other people in your field a long time to get right?
5. What have you built, written, or created that got reused by other people after you moved on?
6. What do people in your field argue about that you have a settled, unpopular-ish opinion on?
7. What's the most expensive mistake you've watched happen more than once in your industry?
8. If someone paid you for one day of your time and nothing else, what would you actually do with it?
9. What credential, title, or experience do you have that would take someone else 10+ years to get?
10. What's a piece of work you did that you'd be comfortable showing a stranger as proof of skill?
11. What do you find easy that you've noticed other people find hard?
12. If you had to stop doing your current job in 90 days, what's the first thing you'd try to sell?

The prompt that ranks your answers into 3 monetizable assets

Use either ChatGPT or Claude. This is reasoning over your own input, not research, and both handle structured ranking well. Paste your answers underneath the questions, inside the block.

ROLE: You are a monetization strategist who evaluates a person's career
history for sellable knowledge assets, ranked by how fast they could
produce first income, not by theoretical size of opportunity.

CONTEXT: Below are 12 questions about my career and my answers to each.

Q1. What have you been paid to do for the longest continuous stretch of
your career?
A1: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q2. What's a problem people ask you about informally, outside of work,
unpaid, because they know you're good at it?
A2: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q3. Name three times you fixed something and it stayed fixed. What did
you actually do in each case?
A3: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q4. What decision do you make quickly that takes other people in your
field a long time to get right?
A4: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q5. What have you built, written, or created that got reused by other
people after you moved on?
A5: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q6. What do people in your field argue about that you have a settled,
unpopular-ish opinion on?
A6: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q7. What's the most expensive mistake you've watched happen more than
once in your industry?
A7: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q8. If someone paid you for one day of your time and nothing else, what
would you actually do with it?
A8: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q9. What credential, title, or experience do you have that would take
someone else 10+ years to get?
A9: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q10. What's a piece of work you did that you'd be comfortable showing a
stranger as proof of skill?
A10: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q11. What do you find easy that you've noticed other people find hard?
A11: [YOUR ANSWER]

Q12. If you had to stop doing your current job in 90 days, what's the
first thing you'd try to sell?
A12: [YOUR ANSWER]

CONSTRAINTS:
- Identify exactly 3 candidate knowledge assets, not more, not fewer. A
  small number forces real prioritization.
- Each must trace back to specific answers. Cite the question numbers
  and quote the phrase you drew from.
- Rank by time-to-first-dollar: how fast a real person could pay for
  this, not how big the idea sounds.
- Name the likely first buyer specifically (a role, company size, or
  situation, not "companies") and a realistic first price.
- Don't invent expertise I didn't describe. If my answers only support
  two solid assets and a stretch, say so and mark the third as a
  stretch.
- If an answer is too vague to build on, say which one and ask me the
  one follow-up question that would fix it.

OUTPUT FORMAT: For each asset: name, built from [question numbers],
first buyer, format (e.g. fractional offer, workshop, template,
retainer), realistic first price estimate and why, time-to-first-dollar
estimate. Then rank all three 1-3 with one sentence on why the
top-ranked one is fastest.

When to do this alone vs. when a guided audit is worth it

Doing it alone works well if the 12 questions came easily, you already have a rough idea what you'd sell, or you mainly need the ranking prompt to organize thinking you'd already done. Most people get real signal from one honest pass.

A guided version is worth paying for if you got stuck on more than 3 questions, your instinct is to write vague answers instead of specific ones, you can't tell which of the three outputs is actually true versus which just sounds good, or you want someone to push back on the ranking instead of taking the AI's first answer. The value isn't more questions. It's someone who asks a sixth follow-up when your fifth answer was too safe.

Where this goes wrong

• You answer like a job interview. Polished, general, safe. The audit only works on specific, slightly unflattering, real answers. If a question makes you want to write "it depends," push through to the actual example.
• You take all three ranked assets seriously instead of picking one. The ranking tells you what to try first, not three parallel projects. Build the number one; ignore the others until it works or clearly doesn't.
• You treat the AI's ranking as final. It only knows your 12 answers. If something feels wrong, trust that. You have 25 years of context it doesn't.

The 2-minute version

Answer all 12 questions in writing today, even roughly. Paste them into the ranking prompt underneath their questions. Read the number one result and ask yourself honestly if you could sell it this month.

If you want a second set of eyes instead of running this alone, the Next Act Audit is the guided version of exactly what you just did.

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