You Know More Than You Think

The work you have done, the responsibilities you have carried, and the problems you have learned to solve may hold the beginning of a small business. The first step is recognizing which parts of that experience could help someone else.

In You Know More Than You Think, Marine Corps veteran and business owner Bill Riggs offers a practical way to examine what you already know and turn a useful ability into a clear service. Written for people exploring entrepreneurship, career change, supplemental income, or work after retirement, this book connects personal experience with the decisions required to serve paying customers.

Across twenty-four chapters, Riggs guides you through identifying overlooked skills, choosing work that fits your life, understanding customer needs, and defining an offer people can evaluate. You will examine the full cost of delivering a service, set a price to test, reach appropriate customers, and make expectations clear before work begins. Later chapters address dependable delivery, repeat business, referrals, setbacks, and decisions about how much business you want to maintain.

Five practical appendices help you put the ideas to work. They include a skills and experience inventory, a business opportunity evaluation worksheet, a service pricing and profitability worksheet, a first thirty days action plan, and a completed sample business plan with a matching fill-in template. Illustrative examples show how an idea can be narrowed, tested, and revised as actual results replace assumptions.

You do not have to know the whole future of your business to take a thoughtful first step. You need a useful ability, a customer need worth examining, and a clear understanding of the commitment involved. This book helps you bring those pieces together and decide what deserves your time.

Take a fresh look at what experience has taught you. There may be a practical use for it you have yet to recognize.