6 minute read time

If you have about 15+ years of job experience and you are good at your job, you have a superpower.

You just don’t know what it is yet.

Once you find your superpower, all you need is to follow a set of logical, sequential steps to turn that superpower into a business that can fund the life you want to live.

Let’s get one thing straight.

This is not some hack or shortcut. You are not going to copy paste a prompt into some AI tool and start printing money.

This requires effort, dedication, and honesty with yourself. After all, you are building a business.

However, you get to keep all the money you make (after taxes and expenses). And you will never be retrenched or laid off to rationalise costs or some other corporate code for: your CEO wants a new super yacht, and they don’t want to spend their own money.

How difficult is it actually?

Some people turn their skill into a business and say it is as hard as pushing an angry gorilla up a tree.

And there are people who say it is as easy as rolling down a slope on well-oiled skates.

The difference?

The second business has an offering that fulfils a genuine need in the market, and is priced just high enough to make a profit, but not so high that your customer thinks you are ‘too expensive’.

How do you achieve this?

You have come to the right place on the web.

#1 Discover your superpower

This is the skill that will prevent you from being just another consultant, freelancer, or gig worker.

This is the knowledge that you, and only you, have, because of your experience.

Scars you have gained from late-night crisis meetings, negotiating with cut-throat vendors, dealing with unreasonable clients, and solving ‘it-will-never-ever happen’ problems that somehow arrive on a Friday night.

Discovering your superpower is just a matter of finding a clear, short answer to this simple question.

What do you know that most people don’t know?

It could be a skill, a hack, or a way to achieve a certain goal.

Are you really good at something specific?
Is there something that colleagues or friends often come to you for advice?

This could be your superpower skill.

Do you have a method or a framework to achieve a specific goal faster than the standard route?

This could be your superpower offering.

Are you a master at solving a very specific kind of problem? Have you seen and solved the same disaster again and again for years?

This could become a superpower service.

If you are professional with tons of experience, here are three questions to get you started

What is the one disaster project your team always dumps on your desk because "only you know how to fix it"?
What topic do junior colleagues or peers book 30 minutes on your calendar to talk to you about?
What industry "best practice" do you secretly think is complete nonsense because you know a way to do it much faster?

Once you have identified your superpower, write it down.

My superpower is....

For instance, my superpower is breaking down jargon and complex ideas into simple, easy-to-understand ideas and turning them into practical, usable concepts. (Take this article, for instance.)

I use this superpower to turn complex product and service ideas into product stories and go-to-market communication assets for early-stage and bootstrapped startups.

Try to stick to one superpower, but definitely limit yourself to three.

Move to the next step once you have your superpower(s) written down.

#2 Who will benefit from this?

List all the people who could benefit from your superpower(s).

Make it a long list.

If you are the lazy types (and this doesn’t bode well for your business), you can customise the prompt below and get your AI monkey to do the work for you.

<context>
I am trying to start a one-person business. I have identified my marketable skill. I will share it in this form: My superpower is the ability to (write your superpower here). This is the skill that I have developed over years of lived, real-world experiences.
</context>

<task>
Your job is to identify people who get the most value from this skill.
Group them by personas.
Who are they?
What is their pain point?
Why will they value my superpower?
</task>

For example, if you are a lawyer who is skilled at negotiating peaceful divorce settlements, then your list would be something like this:

HNI couples who cannot stand each other
An HNI family with a son/ daughter who cannot stand the spouse

A celebrity who doesn’t want their name dragged through the mud
Husband and wife who are Co-Founders & Business Partners
An HNI Family protecting an adult child’s inheritance
Prominent community leaders and religious figures

If you are using an AI tool, remember that it is showing you an average of what everyone else knows.

Use your experience and your knowledge to find a group of people the AI could not generate.

Your goal is simple: Find out who on this planet will benefit from your superpower.

Print out this list or save it as a separate document.

If you have more than one superpower, eliminate the ones with fewest potential customers till you are left with one.

Now take a break from this and do something else for a day.

The next day, go through the list and cull the outrageous ones - people who may need your help but will never turn to you.

No religious figure is going to hire a divorce lawyer. So goodbye godman.

Then move on to the next step.

#3 Who will value your service the most?

Go through this whole list of people. Picture them in your mind.

Among this long list of people, whose life is the most miserable because of the problem you can solve?

Who wakes up in the morning worried about this problem, and goes to bed drunk because they don’t want to think about this problem while they sleep?

It should be a pain point. Every one pays for a pill that removes a headache. Only some people will occasionally pay for a vitamin pill.

Your offering should be a must-have, not a would-be-good-to-have.

Here are 3 questions to get you started

Whose life is the most impacted by the problem you are trying to solve?
Why is their life miserable?
Why aren't they satisfied with the solutions available?

This is your niche market. And they will be your first customers.

This article is Part 1 of a 5-Part article series I am writing to help people with marketable skills become one-person businesses.

Coming soon

Part 2
Who is stealing the money that could have been yours, and how to be different.

Part 3
How much can you actually charge, and how much can you actually make.

Part 4
Your pitch and taking your offering out for a test run.

Part 5
Going to market and beyond

Don't miss the rest of the series
Skip the cluttered email inbox. WhatsApp me on (+91 9892364745) with your superpower, and I’ll send you a link to Part 2 ("Who is stealing the money that could have been yours") the moment it goes live.