Turn work experience into a business: a 20-minute test.
To turn work experience into a business, start with what you know that a clever, well-funded stranger could not find out in a week. That knowledge only comes from being in the room, and it is the one asset nobody can copy.
Two kinds of knowing.
You can learn some things by reading, and anyone with a library card can do the same. Other things arrive only by being present while the same events repeat. For example, you know which suppliers really deliver on time, which rules the inspector checks, and who really decides.
None of that is on the internet. Consequently, it is not a resource you compete for. Yet many people spend years collecting it and then describe it as the trap that stops them starting.
Why you cannot see what you know.
Knowledge goes quiet once you have learned it. So when you ask “what do I know?”, your mind returns nothing. Instead, ask what new people get wrong in their first month. You will have an answer within five seconds.
Test it before you turn work experience into a business.
Rare knowledge is not the same as valuable knowledge. It becomes money only when someone else has a problem it solves and cannot solve alone. Also, be strict about where each insight came from. Years near the work count far more than years spent one floor above it, describing systems instead of touching them.
Find what you have in twenty minutes.
Write three things you know about your industry that a smart, well-funded stranger could not learn in a week. Make each specific enough to include a name or a number.
Next to each, write how you learned it. If you read it somewhere, cross it out. Only what came from being in the room is yours.
From the book.
Ask a different question and the whole thing comes back. Not what do I know, which returns nothing, but this: what do new people get wrong in their first month? You'll have an answer inside five seconds. Every one of those is a thing you know that a stranger doesn't, and you just proved you own it by producing it instantly.
I Want to Start a Business but I Can't Quit My Job, chapter 2: The forty-five-year-old founder
Questions about turn work experience into a business.
What if I can't think of anything?
An empty page is a result, not a failure. Either you are early in the industry, or your job keeps you far from where the real information lives.
Does experience in a big company count?
Partly. What you know about customers, suppliers, prices and failures travels with you. However, the operational work often does not, because big firms have a department for each part.
How do I know if my experience is worth money?
Only a stranger paying for it can tell you. A later chapter of the book is about getting that first payment while you still have the job.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 2, “The forty-five-year-old founder”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
