How to find your next thing

For the past 5 years I’ve been looking around for my next thing.

I’ve been doing 20+ years of digital design. 12 years ago I moved from full-time and a bit of freelance on the side to a solo consultant for early-stage business software companies.

And for a while now I feel it’s time for another shift.
I’ve been running small experiments to see what sticks.
Sporadically.
When the inspiration hit.
Or when I don’t have anything better to do.

Most of them failed one way or another.
With some small wins here and there.

I have tried:

• selling my services packaged in different ways

• building small software tools

• productised service

• selling templates

• content creation

• digital product

• doing advisory

• online course

I have learned some things I’d like to share for someone looking to find their next thing.

The Identity Problem Comes First

This is the invisible prerequisite that nobody talks about.

Finding your next thing is rarely about a lack of ideas or knowing how to execute. It’s mainly a misalignment between the story you tell yourself and others about who you are, and the new thing.

You sort of lack proof of the new story - proof that even you can believe. And when you don’t fully believe it yourself, it shows as an unspoken hesitation when talking with others. This turns into a self-fulfilling loop.

You don’t believe it.
Others don’t believe you.
You question whether this is going to work at all.
You look for a new thing and restart the process.

I have spent an embarrassingly large amount of money and time on self-help and entrepreneur resources. Here are 3 things I have found useful to break this loop.

1. The day in a life
You think or write in detail how a day in the life looks if the new thing works.
What are the things that you start doing?

The things that make you successful at the new thing need to be part of your day today. In business and in your personal life.

What are the things you stop doing?
The things that anchor you to the old job and the story you tell yourself.

How is your day different from what you are used to in the past few years?
Describe it as an average workday and a weekend, with as much detail as possible.

Why do this?
Sounds like you are wasting time daydreaming instead of doing something productive.

Your goal is to build a clear picture in your head so you can spot opportunities in your day-to-day life where you can practise the new thing.

For example, my new thing that I aim for is to get paid for thinking, not execution only. People who get paid for thinking should be able to articulate their ideas clearly. This means spending time researching ideas, distilling them in writing, and sharing them clearly in an advisory setting.

So my day-to-day should look more like that than picking up tasks other people assign to me.

2. Practise your new identity
Once you have a clear picture of how your new thing changes your day-to-day life, you start spotting opportunities to practise.

Do so.

This builds the proof in your head.
I’m that person who does that new thing.

The goal is that over time you start stacking more proof for the new thing so that people start noticing. They start asking questions out of curiosity. Or straight up asking for help related to the new thing. Then you start believing it.

3. Talk about it
Find opportunities to talk about the new side project you are doing. Share with family, friends, and colleagues. Framing it as something you do in your spare time is low pressure for you and non-threatening for them.

Try different wording when explaining it.
Notice how quickly people get it.
Notice how you feel about it.
Make changes on the fly.

In low-pressure situations with new people you can experiment with presenting yourself with the new identity. See their reaction, if any. See how it feels for you.

Create content about it if that’s your thing.

Do a short post.
Write an article.
Record a short video.
Film a long-form video.

These small bits of proof compound quickly.
You start believing it even before the thing starts working.
So other people start believing you.
And the new thing starts working.
It’s a self-fulfilling loop.
The good kind.

This is what I found helps with the quiet identity crisis most of us experience when starting a new thing.

The Competence Trap

You are so good at what you’ve done so far, people keep hiring you for that.
How do you stop being so useful at the wrong thing?
How do you say no to easy money?
And say yes to a possible failure?
There are no mind tricks here.
You need to have money.
So you can say no.

I’m not talking “fuck you money”.
I’m talking “I’m not fucked money”.

This is savings you can live off for 6–12 months. Or some recurring cashflow gig that covers your basics and doesn’t take all your time.

The other part of this trap is subtler. Your reputation travels ahead of you. People introduce you as the thing you used to be. Opportunities arrive pre-labelled with your old identity. You can be fully committed to the new thing and still spend most of your week doing the old one — because that’s what the people around you expect and reward.

The only way out is to be deliberate about what you say yes to, even when it costs you. Every time you take the old work because it’s easy, you’re voting for the old story. Every time you decline it and do the new thing instead - even for free, even badly - you’re voting for the new one.

---

---

Finding the Idea

I don’t have an idea.
Or I don’t know which idea I should choose to work on.
This is often seen as the number one blocker for starting a new thing.
But if you don’t sort out the first two I mentioned above, this one is pointless.
Once you are here, there are a few ways to find ideas that might work.

There are 4 playbooks you can consider:

The classic way

• Solve problems for people around you

• Look for people with big budgets and no time to spend on the problem

• The problem you solve is a painful one with real consequences

• You have a clear, repeatable way to communicate with your potential customer

• There are existing businesses that do well solving this problem

• You have knowledge or interest in the problem space

The opportunist way

• Look for painful problems in a community

• Join an online or offline community

• Be part of it, talk to people

• Contribute

• Listen for recurring pain points around a topic

• Create a free community resource for them

• Become the go-to person on that problem

• Create a paid product or service

My way

• Solve your own problem

• See where you are willing to spend the most money and you are not happy with what you’re getting. Build that.

• Find others like you to sell to

• If it doesn’t work you have at least one happy customer

• You move to the next thing

The audience-first way

• You start making content online on topics you care about

• You find the topic your audience cares about the most

• You find the highest-value problem around that topic

• You co-create a product by involving them

• You sell what they ask for

There is overlap between the 4 and they are not mutually exclusive, but it helps to choose a starting point.

Testing Without Quitting Everything

How do you pressure-test an idea without burning down your current income? There are a few ways I’ve seen work without making big commitments. These are experiments to see if there is appetite for your offer.

1. Ask for a deposit
If you already know some people with the problem you solve, call or send an email with a short pitch and a direct ask for a deposit. With the promise that if you can’t gather a group of X number of people you will refund.

2. Run a free event
You run an event on the topic, giving away a high-level solution to the problem you solve, and you pitch at the end for the paid version. This can be online or in person.

3. Paid ads to waitlist
Run a paid Meta ad campaign to a landing page with the offer and a waitlist form so people can leave their email.

4. Make organic content
If you have an existing audience, publish text/image/video posts on the problem you solve. Add a call to action for people to DM you. Share your offer in DMs.

5. I’m doing research
Reach out to potential customers to do research and learn more about the problem you’d like to solve for people like them. At the end ask if they’d like to be notified when the product or service is ready. As a thank you, offer it at a discounted rate.

The goal of these experiments is not to get profitable on day one.
It’s to see people’s willingness to pay with money or time.

The Traction Gap

You have a validated offer.
Maybe you’ve even sold a few.
But traction is slow.

In these cases people often think the idea is bad.
And they look for a new one and restart the process.

I’ve done that so many times I feel slightly mental.
It seems I have not learned this lesson.

And the lesson is: it’s a volume problem.

I have not talked about it with enough people.
I have not posted content consistently enough.

I see the volume of conversations and content output that the successful founders I work with put out, and it’s crazy volume. Calendars filled with 20-minute calls. Content calendars with a minimum of 3 short posts a day, one long one a week.

Often they have a person for it, but they always start on their own. So they know what good looks like and can train whoever they hire.

As a bare minimum I think you need to do at least 30 posts or 30 calls over 30 days.

I’ve seen this work for myself once I did a 30-day online writing challenge. And I didn’t even have a business goal then. It was only - let’s keep this habit for 30 days. And midway, people started reaching out for me to write for them and offering contributor spots on big newsletters.

So before you give up on an idea, do at least 30 days without judging too early. You are collecting data points to review in 30 days. It might turn out you just worded it wrong, not that your offer sucks.

And if you can’t keep going talking about this for 30 days, that’s a data point too.Maybe you should pick something you can’t shut up about for the next few years.

Meaningful vs. Sustainable

This is the ultimate dream.
Do something that feels meaningful to you and brings you a sustainable income.
You see other people do it.
So why not you?

To be honest, I’m not sure this thing is real.
You never know the full story of someone.
You always get the Instagram version. The fun, flashy bits.
I don’t really know the trade-offs they made in their life to get there.

I don’t know — maybe this is only me being bitter for not been there in the way I imagined it.

The most kudos from friends I’ve received in my life for doing something cool was when I was working full-time and doing art for fun.

At that time I had decided I’d do my job the best I could during the day and forget about it the moment I stepped out of the office. It was a clear trade-off that I chose to make.

At some point I tried to make a living with my art and lost the fun.
Short after I stopped doing it.

My current best guess on this topic is:
make your work that pays the bills sustainable - not by replacing it with a passion, but by working with people you like and spending the least amount of time possible on it. And use the money to fund the meaningful thing that doesn’t have to be profitable.

I’m not fully satisfied with this setup either.

But it gives me one thing I appreciate.
The permission to keep taking shots.

That’s really what this whole thing is about.
Not finding the perfect idea on the first try.
Not making one brave leap and landing cleanly on the other side.

It’s about setting yourself up - financially, mentally, practically - so you can keep going. So you can try something, learn from it, and try again without having burned everything down.

Whoever eventually get there didn’t find it.
They narrowed the options by taking shorts.

Been a guy that spends a lot of time in my head I like to believe that I can think my way through this. Unfortunately I keep learning the same lesson:

Only action gives you clarity.
Even the wrong one.

The goal is simple to say and hard to do:

Find meaningful work with full autonomy over your time that builds a sustainable living for you and the people you care about.

Nobody gets there in one shot.
So we should keep taking shots.