Ask HN: How do generalists find a service/skill to focus on?
i started listening to the Side Hustle School podcast just a week or two ago, and it&#x27;s basically great.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidehustleschool.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidehustleschool.com&#x2F;</a><p>i think the only better&#x2F;next thing it could do is actually tell me what i need to do, or want to do, or should do.<p>it would be a kind of a career coaching service, but for people who despise &#x27;careers&#x27; -- so it&#x27;d be a type of &#x27;entrepreneur coach&#x27;.<p>usually i think this comes in the form of finding &#x27;mentors&#x27; -- basically, successful entrepreneurs who you can convince to &#x27;teach you the ways&#x27; -- or even just, listen to your &quot;I don&#x27;t know what to focus on&quot; problems and point their finger in some direction that they think could work for you.<p>and i think that mentor path is good&#x2F;valuable -- it can work.<p>i also think it&#x27;s difficult, and i personally would not mind paying someone to help me figure things out.<p>that pod releases a new episode like every single day, which is great -- and it doesn&#x27;t seem forced, or too forced, because the episodes are hella short - like 7 minutes maybe? it&#x27;s 2.5 min of commercials, the rest some overhead and then stories and comments, with &#x27;failure fridays&#x27; that talk about founders who had successful failures -- that&#x27;s a weird one that i don&#x27;t understand yet -- i think it&#x27;s kind of like a weird humblebrag, but it&#x27;s not actually supposed to be maybe?<p>the dude who hosts it seems normal and smart and thoughtful and not scammy, which is basically an impossibility in america today, if not the entire world, so i&#x27;m still skeptical, but i&#x27;m just reporting what i&#x27;ve heard for a couple weeks. i&#x27;ve actually prob listened to 100 episodes already, at least.<p>in one case, a caller called in (imagine that) and said whatever -- asked for advice. host said well, i like the idea generally, but i think you found your life&#x27;s work, and this idea (i think the guy was a self-styled, and probably actually, a good&#x2F;great&#x2F;non-violent communications-type expert) was not &#x27;just&#x27; a side hustle or something, so he should consider becoming an &#x27;expert&#x27; in his field, and growing from there -- it seemed like a very clear piece of advice, it seemed like very good advice, i didn&#x27;t do it justice here, but the point is that the host guy seemed good&#x2F;smart&#x2F;sincere, but also that he actually thought about the question and actually gave advice which seemed to me to be sensitive and&#x2F;or nuanced.<p>it did remind me of the, i think it was tim ferris (??), who said, &#x27;just go out and do x y z to become a (fake) expert, but then you will actually be an expert, so do not worry about it&#x27; -- basically, it seemed like a, &#x27;hey, go get famous so you can be famous for being famous&#x27;-type thing, kim kardashian-style.<p>so, not hating on tim or kim, tho i have and do, mostly tim, but it seemed like the pod host recognized that the caller actually had something -- a real something -- that a lot of people don&#x27;t have, this kind of clear strong skill and deep passion that transcended &#x27;business&#x27; or side hustling, and i think the host gave good advice.<p>i personally think &#x27;skill&#x27; -- that is, how much of &#x27;x&#x27; skill do you have right now at this moment -- does not matter, really, at all. assuming you&#x27;re not locked in poverty, not saddled in some totalitarian country, etc. -- if you have a passion to find something, to fix something, or even just to make money, or be evil, or whatever you want to do -- you can gain the skills necessary to accomplish your goals.<p>so, maybe you thought about building no-code websites for people (little to no tech expertise required), but you think, &quot;Damn - there are a zillion people out there doing that already, etc.&quot; -- well, i understand that, but at some point you&#x27;re going to have to put that shit to the side. there will always be excuses to not do something - competition, cost, what ifs, etc. boring.<p>i get that you don&#x27;t want to be bored by focusing on a single thing -- that, i&#x27;m told, is death to any entrepreneur, and maybe that&#x27;s why i haven&#x27;t been successful yet, but i&#x27;m sticking to my guns. i&#x27;m not sure there is a simple answer there, but i know that when i&#x27;ve been engaged in one of my startups&#x2F;projects, i&#x27;ve never felt more alive -- it&#x27;s the best times of my life. there are others, but these are particularly special to me -- they feel like what every human should have the chance to enjoy -- dervied from the rudolph rocker quote on freedom -- [Every human should be able to experience freedom], that is:<p><i>the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account.</i><p>so, maybe you&#x27;re not skilled at x y or z -- but you upskill, as you can and must, to make your business successful -- and now you&#x27;re engaged, and now you&#x27;re actually living.<p>but i def identify with not being able to choose a route -- whether it be a service or skill -- to focus on.<p>i have tried many things over the years and they&#x27;ve mostly all failed completely, but i&#x27;m still glad i tried them, and i&#x27;ll keep trying them.<p>this weekend i&#x27;ve been working on a simple learning&#x2F;kb tool -- it&#x27;s almost a massive albatross (actually, it almost certainly is, imo) that I know how to code&#x2F;etc. -- that i _am_ a techie -- because otherwise i would have just bought some off the shelf Q&amp;A-type software and went to work marketing and selling and whatever -- trying to make money, gain knowledge&#x2F;skill&#x2F;power&#x2F;etc. -- but instead i&#x27;ll spend too many more hours hacking and tweaking and doing all sorts of boring shit just to get some semblence of working software that will barely meet my requirements. a non-techie could lap me 1,000 times.<p>but i will have full control over the functionality of the site, and that&#x27;s really important to me right now -- i keep trying to convince myself anyways -- and it _is_ in my view just a tool i&#x27;m using to try to build a education-type service that will hopefully fulfill one of my life goals -- this idea of &#x27;activist education&#x27;.<p>really, the tool does not matter, in theory -- the technology -- but i am legit fascinated by tech -- in the way that it could be used for good -- and i generally dig that designing&#x2F;coding is this kind of creative endeavor in itself -- so even if there is no monetary gain, it&#x27;s fulfilling as a human to create and learn.<p>so, while i would not generally suggest taking advice from a failed entrepreneur, i do agree with mark cuban that &quot;you only have to be right once&quot;, so maybe i&#x27;m a just yet-to-be-successful-entrepreneur -- so my advice to you is the advice i am kind of telling myself -- it&#x27;s something like this:<p><pre><code>  - do something. like, navel-gazing, complaining, crying, worrying -- that shit is boring. enter the game. be a person who is &#x27;actually in the arena&#x27;. T. Roosevelt.

  - don&#x27;t be a wantrepreneur. that&#x27;s a Mark Cuban term. not sure if he coined it. that&#x27;s somewhat similar to the previous item, but maybe more all-encompassing.

  - find a problem you want to fix, then try to fix it. work with others if you want&#x2F;can. that&#x27;s Chomsky.

  - talk to customers and prospective customers and people. what are their problems? are you interested (enough) to fix any of them? those people are you, your friends&#x2F;family&#x2F;fakebook friends&#x2F;twitter folk&#x2F;hn people&#x2F;people on the street&#x2F;etc. read what they say on those sites and others. steve blank of berkeley business prof &#x27;customer development&#x27; fame might get blame for this piece of advice, not too sure. either that, or i&#x27;m not too sure if i actually agree with it, but i prob agree with it more than i disagree with it, and it&#x27;s important enough to mention.

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good luck!