How to know what you should actually sell

Nobody at a dinner party has ever asked a pharmaceutical researcher what’s in her notes app.

Which is partly why, when I left my corporate career and decided to start something online, I had absolutely no idea what to sell. I knew things. Quite a lot of things, actually. I just couldn’t work out how any of them turned into something a stranger would hand over actual money for.

Turns out that’s almost everyone’s problem. Not that you don’t know enough. You can’t see what you already know, because you’re too close to it and it’s never once occurred to you that it might be worth something to someone else.

There’s a Japanese concept called Ikigai. It means “reason for being,” usually drawn as four overlapping circles, ideally accompanied by a stock photo of someone doing yoga on a cliff (I couldn’t find one). I came across it years ago trying to figure out what on earth I was doing with my life and I’ve been using a version of it ever since- not for the enlightenment, for the much more useful job of working out what to actually sell.

What you know inside out. Not what you’re passionate about. (Passion is a terrible business compass and extremely hard to monetise if your passion happens to be, say, documentaries about unsolved cold cases.) What do you actually understand well enough to explain to someone who doesn’t?

Maybe it’s your old career. Maybe it’s the thing you’ve been secretly obsessing over on weekends while telling everyone at work you were fine, totally fine. Maybe it’s the new direction you went deep on after you left - styling, photography, foraging, baking, home decor, panting, fitness, nutrition, whatever pulled you out of the office in the first place. Doesn’t matter where it came from. What matters is you actually have depth there. Write it down without editing it for how it would actually work or how impressive it sounds.

What lights you up. The thing you’d talk about for free, at length, to someone who didn’t ask. The rabbit hole you fall down on a day off when you could be doing literally anything else. If something from the first list also shows up here, you’ve already narrowed it down to something you won’t hate in six months.

What people around you keep bringing to you. This isn’t about strangers on the internet, it’s about the people already in your life. What do people come to you for? What do you help with without even thinking about it, because to you the answer is obvious? This one tends to surprise people the most - the answer is almost always closer than they think, and usually something they’d stopped even noticing they were good at.

What someone would pay to shortcut. Does what you know save someone time, money, stress, a bad decision, an embarrassing one? Could someone skip two years of figuring it out themselves if you just handed them what you know? If yes - that’s a product. Full stop.

Wherever all four circles overlap is what you sell first. It’s not going to be your whole business, it does not need to be the five-year plan. Pivoting is allowed, but first you need to get started with something. Something that’s specific enough to help someone, that you know well enough, that you don’t hate doing, that someone would pay for.

I left pharma and jumped into social media with 128 followers and no idea what I was doing or where I was going, apart from vague idea of becoming an interior designer. I even got a client - a lovely lady with a beautifully renovated house, who just needed some help with finishing touches. My first paid design job! I was so excited, until about a week later when I realised it was not for me at all. I didn’t hate it exactly, but also didn’t enjoy one bit. It turns out I love interiors when they are mine and I can do what I want. I got into interior styling and photography (which I loved), so the Ikigai circle one for me was never “pharmaceutical researcher.” It’s everything I picked up in the new direction instead. How to style and shoot a space. How to grow an audience from nothing with zero marketing background, using my analytical skillset instead. How to start a digital product business when you came from a completely different world.

What lights me up: watching someone go from “I want to start a online business but I don’t know what/how to sell it” to “I just made my first sale.”

What people around me struggle with: starting. Having solid expertise and experience in varied fields, from their old career or their new one, and absolutely no idea how to turn it into something someone would pay for.

What they’d pay to shortcut: shortcut in a form of clear order of steps that takes the guesswork out completely.

That’s what we do in the Digital Product Weekend. Nothing clever about it. Just the complete step-by-step system that takes you from idea to finished, priced, ready-to-sell product in one weekend. Friday evening to Sunday evening. Join the waitlist here (and get £100 off only available for people in the waitlist).

Grab a pen. Actually write yours down, don’t just nod along and close the tab. Don’t make it tidy - just write down everything that comes to mind.

If you get stuck on question three - what people around you struggle with - reply and tell me what you do for a living. I’m really quite good at spotting the product before the person can.

Susanna xx

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