One Easy Way To Generate Business Ideas

Discovering the skills I have outside my full-time work

Recently I spoke to an entrepreneur who’s writing I have been following for a while. He generously gave me his time and advice on starting a new venture on the side. His online community, Small Bets, has this idea called your “Asset Stack”, where you list all the skills you have that could be used to get paid.

When I first heard this idea, I was worried, I felt I was too early in my career and too narrowly focused to be able to offer any expertise on the side. I was “just a software developer”. Not only just a software developer, but just a database developer, so I am not even widely skilled in the software space. But Louie told me how he had had these same feelings when he was looking for business ideas and that he still gets feelings of impostor syndrome. I have seen him make money and find success online, so maybe I could too.

Louie told me to include all the skills I use at work, but not stop there. I should look at hobbies, things I have studied in my spare time, things I enjoy doing and anything I can think of that could be classed as a skill.

Following this process I started with the things I do every day at work:

SQL, SSRS, documentation, Git and any software I use day-to-day.

Then I thought about some things I learned in my spare time:

Explainer writing, jump rope, AI Safety and digital minimalism this lead me to think about some things I had read and courses I had taken:

Learning techniques, biographies of scientists, kickboxing, online poker, experimentation mindset, digital privacy and side hustles.

Getting myself to just choose ideas was the hardest part. Every idea seemed stupid, “who am I to make money from digital privacy?" I’d think. Once I stopped chastising myself and started just writing down any ideas that came to mind, I found there were tons of things I can do and many more I have forgotten about, I even had ideas pop into my head once I was finished brainstorming, so I could added those later .

Rating the Asset Stack

Next I rated my skill out of 10 on every skill I could list where 10 would be world class and 1 would be essentially useless. This is just an estimate I wasn’t too worried someone would find my list and tell me I was wrong, it was more a feeling.

Then I rated how excited I was by each skill, out of 10, so that 10 would be something I was absolutely love to work on and 1 would be something I don’t want to touch. Anything that I dreaded would be a terrible side project, as I would put it off forever.

Then I tried to rate usefulness out of 10 to the market. Here I struggled, because sometimes I thought this would be really useful if I were world class at it, other times I thought how useful it appeared to be based on my current skills, so the numbers are a little screwy.

Then I tried to remember how recently I had learned each skill for the first time, so see if how up to date my skills or advice would be. This was something I took from Louie as he suggested that recent skills are sometimes more attractive to other learners, as it’s more relatable. What can someone like me learn from Jeff Bezos? He’s a billion steps ahead and started his business so long ago, that the world was entirely different and he wouldn’t remember how it felt anyway.

Next I will be figuring out where in the market my skills may be useful.

3 Pieces I Enjoyed Recently:

• M&Ms: How to Find Ideas to Build
  Louie’s version of what I just described, he has done it many more times and can explain it much better

• MFM: This $50M/Yr Side Hustle Is On Track To Make $1 Billion By 2030
  AI cameras recording amateur sports matches, so parents don’t have to and can just enjoy it at home and how the NY Times became a games company.

• Nick Huber: Businesses I Love
  Another successful entrepreneur, listing some businesses he thinks are very achievable to get some success in. It’s a great place to get a few hundred business ideas.