The Three Buckets for What to Sell
Mine parent trades, past jobs, and interests for the problem you can charge for
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 83%
Hormozi rejects the belief that you need a novel idea, arguing everyone has unique depth from simply living. He sorts sources of that depth into three buckets: knowledge absorbed from your parents' jobs and industries, skills from your own past jobs, and your current personal interests. You interrogate each bucket for a problem you could help someone else solve. The selection rule is value: in a B2B setting, pick the problem that makes clients the most money so you can charge a percentage of what you generate; in B2C, pick the problem people perceive as most painful. A strong real-world signal is the favors people already ask of you, because unpaid requests reveal skills you can later charge for. The output is a packaged solution to a specific, valuable problem rather than an original invention.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal, where Hormozi previewed material from his forthcoming leads book on how anyone can find something to sell.
Core principles
- 01Everybody already knows something valuable from simply having lived
- 02The most valuable thing to sell is the problem you can charge or save the most money on
- 03What people ask you to do as a favor signals what you can charge for
- 04You don't need a novel idea, only a packaged solution to a real problem
How to run it
- 1
Inventory the parent bucket
Write down everything you absorbed from your parents' trades and industries by osmosis over years.
Pro tip A mechanic's kid knows cars deeply just from proximity; count that knowledge.
- 2
Inventory past jobs
List the industry knowledge and skills you picked up in every job you've held.
- 3
Inventory current interests
List the side passions where you already invest attention and have above-average competence.
- 4
Pick the most valuable problem
Across the buckets, choose the problem you can solve that makes a client the most money or that people feel most acutely.
Pro tip Charge a percentage of the money you make a B2B client rather than a flat fee.
- 5
Validate with favor signals
Notice what people already ask you to do for free; those requests point at what you can charge for.
Watch out Don't wait for a perfect idea; package a good-enough solution and start.
In the wild
By his own three-bucket test, Hormozi weighed a test-prep company, a frozen-yogurt shop, and fitness. Fitness won because it sat in his current-interest bucket: he'd trained for eight years, held state records, and people already asked him for workout programs unprompted, the favor signal that it was chargeable.
→ He turned an existing interest plus unsolicited requests into his first real business.
Common mistakes
Waiting for a novel idea
Founders stall hunting for originality when copying and improving an existing solution is faster and safer.
Ignoring the favor signal
People overlook the very requests friends make of them, missing the clearest evidence of a sellable skill.
Is it for you?
Best for
First-time founders and side-hustlers hunting for a viable offer without a novel invention.
Not ideal for
Founders who already have a validated offer and need scaling help, not idea discovery.
From the transcript
“if I put those into three buckets it's like parent stuff past jobs of self and current interests”
“what people ask you to do as a favor is an indication of the things you can charge for later”
From the episode
Alex Hormozi: How He Built A $150 Million Empire And His Best Business Advice
Alex Hormozi