When you’re starting your first business, one of the worst things you can do is follow your passion. This is one of those pieces of advice that’s thrown around by business gurus or business leaders who aren’t really thinking through the ramifications of this. If we purely followed our passions, a lot of our businesses would involve watching Netflix or playing video games, or lounging by the beach. These are things that we actually want to do, but they’re not the basis of a solid value-producing business.
Instead, I want to walk you through a process that will help you identify what kind of business you should be starting, what kind of niche you should be focusing on. This process is adapted to your strengths, skills, and the type of activities that you find engaging, not necessarily fun or your passion, but engaging enough for you to stick with them and sustainably build a business.
To uncover your skills, we’ll use a coaching prompt with ChatGPT. Start by acting as a coach and ask ChatGPT to help you curate a list of your skills. You can ask questions about your current job, past jobs, formal education, courses, workshops, hobbies, achievements, challenges you’ve overcome, and more. ChatGPT will guide you through a series of questions to extract information about your skills.
For example, if you work in digital marketing, ChatGPT will ask you about specific areas within digital marketing, such as SEO, email marketing, paid advertising, and content creation. It may also ask about the tools or platforms you’ve used, like Google Analytics, MailChimp, or Facebook Ad Manager. By going through this process, you’ll uncover skills that you may have taken for granted or not considered as your specialties.
Continue this process for each area of your life, including work, hobbies, and other aspects. ChatGPT will compile all the information into a long list of skills. This comprehensive inventory will be a valuable asset for later steps, where we’ll use ChatGPT to help generate business ideas based on your skills and strengths.
Remember, following your passion alone may not lead to a successful business. By uncovering your skills and focusing on engaging activities, you can build a business that aligns with your strengths and has a solid foundation for value creation.
