This is the written version of a tool I built. The tool asks you ten questions and works out an answer in about a minute. This page walks the same road on foot.
Use whichever suits you. If you'd rather think it through on paper with a cup of coffee, you're in the right place. If you'd rather have it done for you, the tool is here.
Start with what you know ➔
Either way you're after the same three things. What you know that other people need. Who those people are. And something small you could give them. There are seven questions here and ten in the tool - the tool asks a few more because it can follow up on what you say, and on paper you can do that yourself.
Every course written about this starts the same way. Pick a niche. And every beginner sits there looking at a blank page.
Here's why that happens, and it isn't a failure of imagination on your part.
"What are you an expert in" is a question about status. To answer it you have to decide you're an authority, and most people who are genuinely good at something won't claim that about themselves. The ones who will claim it are often the ones you'd least want to learn from.
So the question gets you nowhere. Worse, it leaves you feeling like you have nothing.
The way around it is to stop asking about expertise and start asking about evidence. Not "what do you know" but "what did people already come to you for." That's a question about things that actually happened, and you can answer it.
Seven here, ten in the tool - it asks a few more because it can follow up on what you say. Doing it this way, you follow up on yourself.
Work through these on paper. Write more than feels necessary - the useful detail is usually in the second or third sentence, after the obvious answer is out of the way.
A job title is enough to start with. If you did several things, take the one that lasted longest, not the one you liked best.
This is the easy one and it's here to warm you up. Very little of your final answer comes out of it. It's the ground everything else stands on.
Not your job description. The thing colleagues actually knocked on your door about, which is almost never the same as what you were paid to do.
"She knows how to handle a difficult parent." "He can fix anything." "Ask him, he'll know who to call." Outside work counts too - the neighbor, the church, the family.
This question does more work than any other on the page. What people came to you for is proof, and it's proof you never had to claim for yourself.
The garden, the committee, the workshop in the garage, the grandkids.
Unpaid time is honest about what you care about in a way paid time isn't. You did the job because it was the job. You do this because you want to.
Anything at all. Advice, a favor, sorting out something that had somebody stuck. Small counts, and recent counts for more than impressive.
A thank-you is somebody telling you that a thing you did was worth something to them. That's market research you already have and didn't have to go looking for.
Slow down on this one. It's the most valuable question here.
Something you got wrong first and worked out afterward. The lesson that cost you money, or time, or a job, or a working relationship with somebody.
Here's why it matters more than the rest. Anybody can teach the correct procedure - it's written down somewhere and you can look it up. What can't be looked up is what it feels like to be standing in the middle of it, having already made the mistake. That's the part people will listen to you about, because you've been where they are and you came out the other side.
The thing that still embarrasses you slightly is usually the thing worth writing about.
Picture one person. Not a group.
Whatever you got through, somebody is in it right now. They're the person you can help most, because the distance between you is small enough that you still remember the details.
Being three years ahead of somebody is a better teaching position than being thirty years ahead. By then the expert has forgotten what confused them.
The bad tip that gets repeated. The thing people say confidently that you know is wrong, because you tried it.
Disagreeing is a shortcut to a point of view. If you know why the common advice is wrong, you know something specific, and you have a reason to speak that isn't just "here is some information."
Leave it a day if you can. Then read all seven answers in one sitting.
You're looking for something that shows up more than once. Not the same words - the same shape. The job, the committee, the thing the neighbor asked about and the mistake you made years ago may all be about one thing, and you won't see it while you're still writing them down.
Two rules for this pass.
Don't discount something for being obvious. The reason it's obvious is that you've known it for thirty years. Obvious to you and unknown to somebody else is exactly the position worth being in.
Don't reach for the impressive answer over the true one. The impressive answer is what you'd say at a dinner party. The true one is what people actually came to you about.
If nothing shows up at all, that's information too. Read questions 2 and 5 again and take just those two - between them they'll usually give you a subject.
Write it like this.
I help [who] with [what], because [why me].
That's not a headline and nobody else ever has to see it. It's a test. If you can't fill in all three parts, the thinking isn't finished, and it's better to find that out on a piece of paper than three weeks into building a website.
Two examples of the shape.
I help someone who's just been put in charge of a small library get through the first six months, because I did thirty years of it and the first six were the hardest.
I help new beekeepers get a hive through its first winter, because I lost two before I worked out what I was doing wrong.
Notice what those have in common. A specific person, a specific stretch of time, and a reason to trust the speaker that isn't a claim about being an expert.
You wrote a person down in question 6. Go back to them.
The mistake nearly everybody makes here is widening. "Anyone interested in gardening" feels safer than "somebody who put in their first raised bed this spring and can't keep up with it," because it sounds like more people. (I made this mistake for years.)
It's the other way around. The wide version speaks to nobody in particular, so nobody in particular feels spoken to. The narrow version makes one person think that was written for me. That's the person who signs up.
You're not turning anybody away by being specific. You're being findable by the people who were already looking.
Lead Magnet
Now the small thing you give away in exchange for an email address. The usual name for it is a lead magnet, and there's an entry on the Basics page if you want the longer version.
It comes straight out of what you've already written. Take the first problem your person runs into - not the biggest one, the first one - and solve that completely.
It has to be small enough that you'll actually finish it. A checklist. A one-page guide. The five questions to ask before you buy. The order to do things in.
Two tests before you start writing.
Could somebody use it and get a result without buying anything from you? If not, it's an ad, and people can tell.
Would you have wanted it, back when you were where they are? If yes, stop deciding and go and make it.
You should now have three things on paper. A subject, a person, and something to give them.
That's the thinking done, and it's the part most people skip. What's left is building it - the page that asks for the address, the emails that go out afterward, and the first people to see it.
That's what the course is for. Module 2 takes the giveaway you just outlined and turns it into a finished thing. Module 3 builds the page. Modules 1 to 3 are free.
Or see what the tool makes of your answers - five to ten minutes, free ➔
$17, BOUGHT ONCE
Module 4 - Your first twenty visitors
Module 5 - What to say to new subscribers
Module 6 - The sequence that runs without you
No subscription, no upsell, no reseller rights.