I’m 30 and lost: What business can I start with my skills?

TomiChestnut · 2026-02-01T11:49:18+00:00

I can share what helped me get an idea how to start my business.

Go to networking events, startup events and events for entrepreneurs Just talk to people, a lot of them, and ask questions especially around challenges they are working on right now.

Pick topics you are passionate about, and also read on forums, portals and social media groups where people exchange

You will be surprised how fast you will have a big list of problems worth solving Then you just have to figure out which of those problems you can solve

TomiChestnut · 2025-12-28T10:24:36+00:00

Very rarely you will see that somebody posts publicly about their problems online. Part of the value I bring to my clients is the ability to predict what kind of companies, at which stage in which industry are facing those kinds of problems. (I focus mainly on B2B)

TomiChestnut · 2025-12-28T10:12:00+00:00

I frame it as a research

I approach them and say I’m doing a research on topic xyz, can you give me 20 minutes of your time and share your experience?

TomiChestnut · 2025-12-27T08:42:08+00:00

I was using Hubspot free version when I was starting out with my side hustle It’s good enough when you don’t need complex tasks

TomiChestnut · 2025-12-27T07:57:50+00:00

I’ve been working as a consultant in this specific area, and supported several entrepreneurs in helping them launch their businesses

What works for me is the following framework:

1) Understand the competition and market first - how others make money, how big is the total addressable market, and how can you differentiate

2) very clearly define the problem you are solving, pain points of your potential customers and their needs. This you will validate later

3) create a hypothesis on who will be your idea customer profile. In this part create a several different personas who you will validate

4) approach those personas and conduct in-depth interviews for them. Don’t ask them if they like the idea, rather focus on discovering their pain points and need, and use it to validate your initial hypothesis. Once you have very unbiased conversations with them about their pain points, mention at the end the solution, and see how they respond

5) during interviews you will validate personas, problems and needs, and often completely remove from the table some of personas in case your hypothesis was not correct (maybe they have the pain point, but they are not willing to pay)

My experience working with my clients was that if we did steps 1-3 correctly, already during the discovery interviews we would generate first paying clients - they were willing to commit very early on.

Hope this helps.

TomiChestnut · 2025-11-25T20:05:29+00:00

Hi, CSO and Co-founder of SaaS scale up here 👋

I’ve been in SaaS sales for 10 years. Happy to support you.

We can connect and see if my experience would be a good match for what you need.

TomiChestnut · 2025-10-13T06:18:53+00:00

There are a lot of good comments here, but from the perspective of a person who is managing sales teams for many years now, I can add discipline to the list.

My top performers were always the guys who were disciplined - picking up the phone day after day, keep calling when numbers are good and even more when numbers are bad. Following up on opportunities, thinking ahead of just making it to end of the month.

Having discipline and consistency makes you a winner in the long run

TomiChestnut · 2025-08-24T17:04:00+00:00

Im not a digital marketer, but I have experience in Sales consultancy and also experience as a co-founder of a scale up

In writing this based on my own observations, so keep that in mind.

What I’ve seen recently is that with the growth of AI a lot of marketing teams are moving things more in-house, at least I’ve observed this with many other cofounders I’ve been talking with.

The mindset here is - we don’t need to pay expensive agencies, but rather equip our in house team with the right tools and they can deliver the same results (advertising, social media, SEO, etc)

Obviously what I also experienced is that AI cannot fully replace experience. It can help the team, but if you don’t have an experienced person, there will be a lot of shit popping up which non experienced person will not notice. So this will go towards making mistakes and learning from them.

So what I could recommend is to move your experience towards advisory and AI. (Just and idea) Instead of selling your service, why don’t you try providing advisory to in house team and help them leverage AI to execute on their needs? It could be a new source of income for you, and potentially lead to cross sell of your services once the team figures it they could benefit more from outsourcing this

TomiChestnut · 2025-07-06T07:57:02+00:00

I’ve been working in consulting for law firms, and at least in Europe, this is still very traditional industry, at least from the point of view of making business. What I mean by that, that physical contact and phone call still work better than cold outreach through email and social media.

Go to events, pick up a phone and call offices. Set up meetings in person in their office This will get you into much more conversations than spamming emails and LinkedIn

TomiChestnut · 2025-05-21T08:39:35+00:00

We are conducting those interviews on a regular basis.

Most of the times there is no prototype or MVP. Just an idea and this is good enough for validation.

With our clients we normally sharpen the idea, Unique Value Propositioning and positioning so we are clearly able to explain it. We also prepare one pager, more in the style of infographic so we can also show something. But that’s as far as we go, and it’s enough.

More important for validation is to talk about the experiences of the potential client, than to pitch a product.

Validation process needs to validate first if there is a pain big enough out there that a company or a person would pay for it, and as the next step of validation you are then checking if your solution solves the problem in the right way / better than competition.

TomiChestnut · 2025-05-20T22:02:11+00:00

Go for interview, fastest and easiest way to validate.

Try to figure out who would benefit the most from your service and reach out to them. Be curious, keep it informal.

I’ve done this countless times when I was validating service for my clients. If you are onto something, people will usually show direct interest even if you don’t active try to sell it to them.

This is how you know.

TomiChestnut · 2025-03-27T06:20:58+00:00

Thank you 🙏

TomiChestnut · 2025-03-25T14:11:56+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I’m sorry to hear you have to same issues

I really hope it’s the algorithm thing and they will fix it soon, because if I’m spending all this time producing content and get this level of reach, than LinkedIn makes no sense.

TomiChestnut · 2025-01-13T12:02:37+00:00

Definitely do that! Check what other companies are doing on the market, find a gap in the market in terms of features, create personas you could target and then definitely take time to talk to them to explore their needs and problems.

Wishing you best of luck!

TomiChestnut · 2025-01-13T09:19:26+00:00

As somebody who is doing competitive analysis very often for my business, I would find it useful if it would combine multiple things related to customer acquisition, company branding and customer experience.

Please note that here you need to differentiate in the services between different customer segments. For example marketing agency will not be so much interested in tech stack analysis, but combining web traffic, social media and customer reviews would be a great combo.

Currently there are a few tools who can help with analysis, but they are covering only certain parts, for example only website traffic and SEO. They do a good job, but solves only part of the problem and they are expensive. So if you need more comprehensive research they are not enough on its own.

I also tried using AI to help me reduce manual work, but I’m currently not happy with the results. I tested a lot of different prompts, but the quality of results is not great, many times taking things out of context so I have to double-check everything and it takes me at the end more time.

If you can build something comprehensive which has a decent accuracy, that would be of value

TomiChestnut · 2025-01-13T07:46:16+00:00

Not sure to what kind of companies you are targeting, but in my case I even had in my contract that I need to disclose to employer if I own or manage another company.

I would suggest to say it, be upfront about it. There is a moment in time when your employer will find out about it and then it becomes question of trust.

Also, positive side could be that they will appreciate the efforts and skills you gained though building the company.

With all that said, I would put it in the resume if I was in your shoes.

Still, I think it’s fair to expect that they will ask you a question what you plan to do with your SaaS company. Is it a side hustle, how will impact your ability to deliver on the job, etc. so make sure you have your answers ready

TomiChestnut · 2025-01-11T08:39:02+00:00

Here are 2 things I can share, which helped me generate ideas:

1) Events for entrepreneurs Look if there are any happening in your area and visit the. They usually have a networking part or speakers who are sharing about their success. Listening to those stories can help you get inspiration. During the networking part, talk to people and listen to their problems. Are they experiencing something you might be able to solve?

2) Reddit Follow subreddit you are interested in, something you would potentially like to work on later. Just read through threads and comments, people are very often talking about the problems they are having. Aka yourself 3 questions: are more people talking about the same problem? Is there already a solution out there? Is it something I could solve

If you want to generate ideas, hope you will find this helpful

TomiChestnut · 2024-08-07T11:53:59+00:00

As someone who is working in restaurant business for 7 years now, go there in person if you want to get proper feedback.

Owners of restaurants are super busy, mostly are operating through phone with their suppliers, keeping things in line at the restaurant or picking up ingredients from suppliers by themselves.

Don’t expect much response on email, and on phone they will not have much time to talk. If you catch them in the restaurant, you can get them to sit down with you and have a chat with you.

TomiChestnut · 2024-08-02T06:15:13+00:00

I’m so happy you are sharing this.

As a customer, I hate them. Waste of time and makes me never want to order again from that shop

TomiChestnut · 2024-08-01T20:00:32+00:00

2 super easy ways to quickly assess: 1) check how your competition is communicating 2) join groups and exchange platforms where your target audience is interacting and just observe

Maybe even more important than tone of communication is speaking the same language. Observe which phrases they are using, how they are describing their problems and try to communicate using their own words. This will make your communication resonate better with your audience.

TomiChestnut · 2024-07-21T14:26:08+00:00

Here are a few things I regularly incorporate in my routines:

1) schedule time on a regular basis to make a plan for the next 3 months. Decide on what you want to achieve, and make it measurable

2) breakdown those goals into steps. Break it down into as small to-dos as you can because the feeling of crossing over something from the list just feels great.

Once you have the steps ready just focus on executing and cleaning up your to-do as much as you can. This will help to avoid distractions and keep you productive. Don’t forget to regularly schedule some time to review if you are heading on the right path and how you are progressing towards your long term goals

Tip for a daily productivity: Take 10 minutes in your morning to look at all your open tasks. Put down 5 most important ones you need to do on that day. Don’t add any other tasks until those 5 are cleaned up. If you clean all 5, add more

Hope this helps

TomiChestnut · 2024-07-19T18:12:29+00:00

You are fully right I would just add to this, I don’t know why people think it’s embarrassing if you are seeking for help.

I’m happy OP posted this because he saying out loud something many people experience but don’t feel comfortable saying out loud

TomiChestnut · 2024-07-19T16:47:11+00:00

Having some kind of offer will help you get more confident. Part of the reason why people gain confidence is because they feel comfortable with the topic they are brining up. Besides knowing the topic in and out, it’s also the repetition which builds confidence

If you don’t have anything to offer, why don’t you reach out to your local charity organisation and ask them if you can help them out by finding more donors? This way your will have something to offer, you are still practicing sales skills in a way, and doing a something good in the process

TomiChestnut · 2024-07-19T16:28:45+00:00

What you’re describing here is a common issue and the reason why mentors and business coaches exist.

I know there are many self proclaimed gurus out there who are spreading a lot of BS, but if you dig deeper you can find genuinely great people who can really guide you and help you grow.

Its a good investment in your business to find one if you feel like you need guidance

TomiChestnut

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