The Expertise Excavation Workbook is Step 2 on the Solution Vendor path — Step 1 is HERE
You have become a master at solving certain types of problems and delivering desirable results as your career seasoned and grew. For years you've dutifully offered that ever-improving mastery as your end of the 'social contract', for a salary. This workbook names it, packages it, and turns it into the one 'unique value proposition' that replaces your resume everywhere it lands.
Get the Workbook Available to qualified candidates · $97Haven’t completed the Assessment yet? Find the Solution Vendor Viability Assessment here →
The Premise
You are not here
to reinvent yourself.
You are here to excavate what you have already done — repeatedly, reliably, as your career seasoned and grew — and give it the name and the packaging that the market will actually respond to.
Most professionals in this position underestimate the market value of what they know. They filter out their best insights automatically, assuming everyone knows what they know. That assumption is almost always wrong.
The problems you became masterful at solving — the ones that kept finding you no matter where you were — are exactly the problems companies will pay a project fee to solve.
A Solution Vendor is not a consultant, a freelancer, or a job applicant. A Solution Vendor shows up with a specific solution to a specific problem, delivers a defined outcome, gets paid a professional fee, and moves on. That is what you are building toward. This workbook is where it starts.
What the market actually buys
Inside the Workbook
Three stages.
One unique value proposition.
The workbook is structured so each stage builds on the one before. Do not skip ahead. Stage 1 installs the identity. Stage 2 excavates the substance. Stage 3 produces the output. Set aside 90 minutes of uninterrupted time and a pen. Answer honestly — no one else reads this.
Stage 1
The Identity Shift
From unceremoniously de-valued employee to Solution Vendor
- 1.1 The Fear Audit — surface the expertise hidden inside your hesitation
- 1.2 The Peer Proof Test — social validation as antidote to identity resistance
- 1.3 Your first draft Solution Vendor Identity Statement
Stage 2
The Expertise Excavation
Distilling your career into one repeatable, marketable solution
- 2.1 The Frustration Inventory — the problem you kept fixing across every organization
- 2.2 The Called-For Question — what others seek you out for is your highest-value expertise
- 2.3 The Retirement Reflection — third-person exercise that bypasses self-doubt
- 2.4 The Three Stories — one story is anecdote; three stories are a pattern
- 2.5 The Industry Mirror — validate that the market pays to solve your problem
Stage 3
The Positioning Statement
From career history to Solution Vendor sentence
- 3.1 From Activities to Outcomes — translate your career from resume language into market language
- 3.2 The Brochure Architecture — five components that power every outreach message you will ever send
- 3.3 Your Solution Vendor Positioning Sentence — the sentence that gets you a meeting
What You Leave With
Four things you will have
when you are done.
Your signature problem statement
The specific, recurring problem you solve — named, precise, and impossible to confuse with anyone else in your field. Not a skill. Not a function. A problem that a decision-maker recognizes as their own situation.
Your Solution Vendor positioning sentence
The one line that replaces your resume everywhere it lands: LinkedIn, your client-approach materials, your outreach, every conversation. It passes three tests: a decision-maker recognizes their situation, you can say it without hesitating, and it could not describe anyone else.
The raw material for your client-approach materials
The five components of your client-approach materials architecture — the problem, why it persists, your solution, your proof, and your offer — fully drafted in your own words, drawn directly from your career. The module that turns this into finished client-approach materials comes next.
The identity that the rest of the program builds on
A Solution Vendor is not a consultant, a freelancer, or a job applicant. This is a different identity with a different positioning strategy, a different outreach approach, and a different relationship to the market. This workbook installs that identity before anything else is built on top of it.
Who This Is For
An honest answer
in both directions.
This is for you if —
- You completed the SVVA and your result was Strong Candidate or Candidate with Potential
- You have deep, specific expertise in one or more initiative types or problem categories, with demonstrable successes
- You have operated at a senior level — as an individual contributor, team leader, or manager — and can point to specific outcomes that resulted directly from your involvement
- You are ready to do the thinking honestly — 90 minutes of real answers produces real output; half-answers produce nothing
- You see genuine opportunity in bringing specific solutions to specific problems — not as a consultant, freelancer, or job applicant — but as a Solution Vendor
This is not for you if —
- You have not completed the SVVA. The assessment is where this begins — not because it is a gate, but because the workbook builds on what it surfaces.
- You are early-career and still building the depth of experience that produces a repeatable solution. The workbook is an excavation, not an installation.
- You are looking for a template. There is a format here, but the substance has to be yours. The workbook cannot supply the raw material. Only you can.
- You have faith that hundreds of resumes over a six-month period will land another job, or that a pivot to consulting engagements or freelance arrangements will fill the gap. The Solution Vendor option requires a different commitment entirely — partial positioning produces no meetings. This workbook is where that commitment begins.
A Note from Spunk
Before you
open it.
How to get everything this workbook has to give.
If you choose to move forward with the Expertise Excavation Workbook, we strongly suggest you read it through in its entirety first — slowly, deliberately — without writing a single answer.
Take it in as a whole. Sit with it. Let it marinate. Resist the urge to fill in blanks on the first pass. The exercises are designed to surface things that don’t always rise to the top immediately — things that have been operating below the surface of your career for years, doing their work quietly, without ever being named.
Then come back. Go through it again from the beginning. This time, respond to each part with everything the first read stirred up.
We cannot stress this enough — the Expertise Excavation Workbook is the foundational element upon which every subsequent step in the TGS methodology, and their ultimate efficacy, are based. What you surface here is what everything else is built on. Give it its due time and consideration on that first pass, and it will pay dividends for years to come.
This is not a form to fill out. It is not a worksheet to complete before your next meeting. It is the most important professional exercise you will undertake — and it deserves to be treated as such.
How It Works
Everything you need
to know before you move forward.
The 100% Credit Policy
Every dollar you invest in the Expertise Excavation Workbook credits 100% toward any TGS program level within 12 months. No partial credit. No recalculation. The full amount.
This is not a discount structure. It is a sequencing structure. The workbook is not a lower-tier product — it is the step the entire program architecture is built on. The credit exists because Partners who have done the foundational work arrive at the program ready to build, not ready to start.
Every ascending step of the TGS program credits 100% toward any level above it within 12 months. There are no dead ends. Every step builds on the one before it.
A Note from Spunk
Why the workbook opens
all The GIG Solution program levels.
I spent several decades placing project-based talent inside corporations. I have watched hundreds of professionals present themselves to buyers, and I can tell you within 60 seconds whether someone knows what they sell.
The ones who do not know — who are still presenting their background instead of their solution — do not get a second meeting. Not because they lack the expertise. Because they have not yet done the work of turning that expertise into something a buyer can say yes to.
That is what this workbook does. It is not the whole program. It is the foundation the whole program is built on. If you skip it and go straight to outreach, you will be selling your resume to people who were never looking for a resume.
Do the workbook first. Own your unique value proposition. Say it out loud. If you hesitate, go back. When it lands without hesitation — and it feels true — that is the moment this choice becomes real.
— Spunk Burke, TheGigSolution.com
Where This Fits
Step Two in
the full path.
The SVVA is the entry point. The Expertise Excavation Workbook is the first step with a cost. Every ascending step of the program credits 100% toward any level above it within 12 months. No dead ends. No restarting from zero.
Step 1 — Free · Complete Before Proceeding
Solution Vendor Viability Assessment
The diagnostic. Three outcomes — strong candidate, candidate with potential, or not the right moment. Fast, free, and private. Your per-dimension breakdown is yours to keep regardless of what you do next. The Expertise Excavation Workbook is available following the assessment.
Take the Assessment →You Are Here — $97
Expertise Excavation Workbook
A structured, 90-minute process for identifying, articulating, and packaging your expertise for the project market. Three stages. Eight exercises. One 'unique value proposition' that replaces your resume wherever it lands. $97 — credits 100% toward any TGS program within 12 months.
Get the Workbook →Core Program — Multiple Options
The TGS Program
From a self-paced curriculum to a limited-seat group with Spunk present every week, to direct one-on-one work at critical inflection points. Every level credits 100% toward any level above it within 12 months. The workbook credit applies to all program levels.
Learn About the Program →Step Two
The expertise is already there.
Name it. Package it. Own it.
Ninety minutes. One ‘unique value proposition.’ The foundation everything else is built on.