How do you figure out what you have (personally) that you can sell?

From the recent conversations that have occurred [0], [1], I determined that I have no idea how to figure out what I have that I could sell to someone else. I mean that: I'm a software engineer, I know how to write and deploy software for full stack applications. But what I don't know is what I could sell to others, what would be even marginally useful to other people.

All of this serves a larger question: how do I get customer number 1?

In order to get customer 1, I must have something they need, and they must be convinced that they need it. Setting aside convincing, I don't know how move towards acquiring/discovering a saleable idea.

I can ballpark some ideas that I picked up from the other two conversations:

- Know and speak to professionals in a variety of fields. Know them well enough that they will complain to you. This will be a source of potential things that you could solve. - Scratch your own itch. Someone from the EatThisMuch app showed up and commented that they used this approach [2].

...and, that's it.

My question to those who have gotten to customer 1:

- How do I do what you did? How do I go from skills and raw talent to selling to customer 1?

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[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37834908

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37868705

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37873897, this is why I love HN.