Making a living should be fun. This short article helps beginning entrepreneurs identify what they have to offer that others will buy. It lists the steps to getting a product marketed. Then it takes up the first step, know yourself, where the reader is encouraged to take stock of the things he or she is passionate about.

Starting a successful business requires knowing what you can uniquely provide that others will happily buy. It may be something like quilts or a music CD. Or it may be something less tangible such as knowledge, skill, or art. You can turn almost any interest, hobby, or experience into a product for which people will pay you in a straight-forward transaction where everyone wins.

You don’t have to be tricky. You don’t have to ruthlessly beat out the competition. There’s plenty of room for all in business. You only need to define what people want that you can provide.

There are just a few easy steps to defining, creating, and selling a product.

1) Know yourself.

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2) Be confident in yourself.

3) Know your public.

4) Reach your public.

5) Deliver what you commit to.

Here I am taking up only the first of these steps: know yourself, your skills and wisdom.

It helps to do a quick assessment of who you are and what you can do. Make a list of the things you care most about, the things you love to do, the things you like to talk about or read about. You will find several products you could develop.

For example, you are 17 years old and you have spent years skateboarding with your friends—in the neighborhood, at the skateboard park, and even along a trail in the woods where you built a ramp and practiced your moves. You find skateboarding a fast, fun, and inexpensive way to get around. You have an audience out there yearning to learn skateboarding techniques and eager to hear of your adventures. What you know can be told in speeches or written and packaged as simple how to books or eBooks. You will find the best way or ways to sell what you know. As a first step it is only necessary to put skateboarding on your list along with anything else about which you feel passionate.

Or, suppose you have volunteered delivering meals to the elderly and homebound. During that time you have heard lots of stories of days gone by. You decide to start writing these down. Before you know it, bingo, you have a fascinating collection of stories, supplemented perhaps with a photo of each storyteller. For now, just put story collecting on your list.

Let’s say you have always had a knack with small children. You seem to know how to quiet a crying infant or keep a toddler occupied. Other people comment on your ability and ask you how to do it. You have never really thought about it but now you begin to notice what you bring to children. You tell people, “I never worry—I just know kids will respond to me.” You realize that your calm and interested approach to children is a gift that can be cultivated. Never mind how. For now, just put this on your list, something you know that others want to know.

Simply making the list will give you confidence and start ideas sparking.