The Prompt That Finds the Hidden Money in Your Business

"Hidden money in your business" sounds like a stretch, until you actually run the audit and see what surfaces. You probably haven't missed a single opportunity. You've just stopped seeing the ones already sitting in front of you. I got this exact prompt from Romain Plagnard, a fellow AI-for-solopreneurs teacher I've partnered with on workshops, and it's exactly the kind of audit I run live with founders. Here's the prompt, and what it actually surfaces.

Why the best opportunity in your business is invisible to you

You know your business too well to see it clearly anymore. A skill you use daily stops looking like an asset. A piece of content you wrote six months ago stops looking like a product. The service you've delivered forty times stops looking premium. It just looks like Tuesday.

It's a proximity problem: you're too close to your own business to see it clearly. The opportunities most founders are missing were never hidden. They just went invisible from repetition.

Which is why brainstorming rarely works here. You can't brainstorm your way out of something you can't see. You need someone, or something, that's never seen your business before.

Think about the offer you built two years ago and never mentioned again. The client question you answer the same way every week, that could be its own product. The past project sitting in a folder that could become a template. None of that is new. It's just been in front of you so long it stopped registering as an asset.

The prompt that finds it

Treat AI as an outside auditor, not an assistant

Most people use Claude like a task doer. For this exercise you want the opposite: a stranger walking into your business for the first time, with no assumptions about what's "normal" here.

Give it real context, not a summary

The prompt only works if you actually describe your offers, your audience, and your goals in detail. Thin input gets thin output. This is the one step people skip, and it's the one that matters most.

Ask for one idea, not fifty

Romain's own framing, and it's the right one. The goal isn't a list. It's finding the single opportunity you can actually act on this week.

✦ THE ONE THING THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING
The instinct is to ask for as many ideas as possible. Don't. Romain's own words on this: "The goal isn't to get 50 ideas. The goal is to find one." Fifty ideas is a list you'll never act on. One idea, with a clear first step, is a Tuesday afternoon.

Force the output into action, not analysis

For every opportunity the audit surfaces, make it explain why it matters, how hard it actually is, and the first concrete move this week. Analysis without a next step is just an interesting read.

THE PROMPT: Copy and paste

This is the prompt as Romain shared it, adapted to run in Claude.

ROLE
You're a strategic consultant specialized in growth for small businesses.

CONTEXT
Here's my business: [describe your business, offers, audience, and goals in real detail]

TASK
Act as an outside auditor discovering my business for the first time. Identify the hidden opportunities I've probably stopped seeing. Look specifically at:
- complementary products I could sell
- premium services I could create
- possible recurring revenue
- existing assets I could recycle
- content that could become an offer
- strategic partnerships
- ways to raise my average order value
- automations that would save me real time
- mistakes that are quietly costing me money

FORMAT
For each idea, explain why it's an opportunity, its impact level, how hard it is to implement, and the first concrete action to take this week. Don't stop at two or three lines.

Lazy version, for comparison: "What am I missing in my business?" That gets you nothing an outside eye wouldn't say better.

What one audit changes

You don't need a new idea. You need to see the one you've already got. Run this once, give it real context, and let it surface the single thing worth acting on this week. Not the interesting one. The one you can actually start on Monday.

★ KEY TAKEAWAY

Finding hidden money in your business rarely means inventing something new. It means getting an outside eye on what's already there and asking it to name the one opportunity worth acting on. Run the audit once, in full detail, and take the first action it names before the week is out.