What do you do when you have an hour and eleven minutes on a flight and your wife has stolen the only book you’ve brought with you? Naturally, you put thoughts to paper and map out your next business.

Typically such a specific amount of time would be filled with an audiobook or podcast. So, this use of time is intended to be tongue in cheek. 

But I’ve been ruminating for awhile now about a business idea. I figured this time would be as good as any to work it out. 

They say the best business is one that scratches your own itch. I would argue the second best is one that scratches an itch you previously had.

Throughout college I was the proverbial wantrepreneur: a thousand ideas and no clue how to launch them. 

I spent an exorbitant amount of time on the first 10-20% of a project only to run out of steam before launching it. After awhile I would lose interest, the idea would fizzle, and I was left with another expired idea.

Talk is cheap. Ideas are a dime a dozen. And so on and so on.

If I had maintained the same strategy I would have given up. But eventually I observed what was taking place. And made the necessary changes. Spending so much energy on the details were a guarantee for failure.

Like a runner setting a sustainable pace my observations taught me the importance of stamina. Burning all your energy right out of the gate will leave you with nothing to overcome the mountains ahead.

Focus also needs to be developed and maintained. That includes knowing how to divide your focus. I would spend more time than I’ll admit on the footer font or the justification of the hero text. Like a rocket scientist worrying about the color of the rocket before the rocket could even launch.

Since making these observations and implementing the needed changes I’ve had the opportunity to help others bring their ideas to fruition as well as my own. 

I want to help others stuck in these early stages push their idea beyond the breaker. Spending so much time in the shallow waters near the beach leaves you with little energy in the open waters of the free market. The concept lays a path from idea to execution.

And for those who haven’t even made it that far, I wanted to help isolate and extract valuable experience for monetization. Most of us have something that can be useful for someone else.

So, after thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided I was going to spend the remaining hour and some odd minutes to see how far I could get this concept before touching down in Nashville.

For the website:

I used Squarespace for my landing page (I’ll build out the rest of the website later on). I grabbed the domain at GoDaddy.com for $10.99.

The idea is to create an MVP, keeping things basic before anything is proven.

For the web copy:

Again, I’m keeping things simple. I’m mostly addressing the questions I used to think through myself when I was struggling to launch my ideas. These include:

Do you have an idea?

Do you have an idea but you’re unsure what to do with it?

How will you materialize it?

How will you monetize it?

Is your idea even worth devoting your time and energy to it?

For the content:

I laid out a simple content strategy. This includes:

Featuring different people from different disciplines who are either working towards monetizing their skill or already have. 

This could be in a traditional sense, or a hybrid role (i.e. a side hustle). It could also include people who are working towards monetizing their skill.

For the product itself: Monetize My Skill will include (format and features)

Begin with a lead magnet that shows people how to decide what to do (Monetize My Skill Matrix — a framework for deciding what to do and how to execute it).

There are multiple tiers for the product itself:

Tier 1: one time payment: educational course

Tier 2: monthly payment/subscription: Course plus community (will be built out over time)

Tier 3: elite community: everything above plus ongoing support (there’s some secret sauce that will be involved here)

To get started: execution

Step one: Create the landing page website 

Step two: Map out an email nurture series: back log 10 emails for this. The initial email would deliver the lead magnet (Monetize My Skill Matrix). Another email could talk about potential trends that could be useful for sparking ideas. The emails would provide tons of value.

Step three: Create the Monetize My Skill Matrix: Currently in the works

Step four: Presell the initial course

Step four: Reach out to Facebook groups, podcasts, etc. to spread the word

Step five: Start highlighting the stories from people

Step six Create 3-5 blog posts to get material on the website and to use in the newsletter. Possible topics could include, “Biggest Fails”, “How to Make an Extra $1,000” in a Day”, “The Millionaire Next Door: How to Think Like the Rich”

This is a work in process…

I’ll check back in with more updates soon.