fill that need. find your purpose.

In business, the number one thing we're told to do is to fill a need in society. Find some place where the world is lacking and create something to fix it. That's the goal of entrepreneurs, or at least it should be. However, now-a-days that gets lost in the huge market industry that is so focused on making money and reaching the next big milestone in their industry. We often forget that the purpose of business is to serve.

There's this book I'm currently reading that's called Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel. The basis of the book follows this one idea that what makes a business successful is if it goes from zero to one. In other words, it is easy to see another business and follow their idea and improve it in your own way and therefore move horizontally from zero to n. But what Thiel argues is that for a business to truly succeed and create value, they must move vertically. From to zero to one. "Indeed, the single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful people find value in unexpected places." This quote is at the very beginning of the book, but has stuck in my mind ever since. It is only when we create something new that hasn't been done before that we can truly fill a need in society and create value.

Now, if you're anything like me, at this point in reading your mind has gone to Shark Tank and you're trying to come up with the next foldable mattress or coffee cup that doubles as a fire extinguisher. And while yes some of

these ideas do end up very successful, most are honestly pretty dumb and useless lol. To be an entrepreneur or business person in general, you don't have to invent a new revolutionary product that will help the world of tired parents or stressed teens. Instead you need to start with identifying a need.

Find your audience

Who is it that you would love to work with? Children? Teens? Your church? The government? You get the point. Identify where and who you want to work with and center your business around first. Look to see where your passions lead you.

Identify the Need

Next find where society is lacking. This could be on a world level, country, state, county, city, demographic, etc. Look at your target audience and see what they are needing. No group of people is perfect and completely need-free, so I promise you there is an empty space!

Niche Down

Once you have identified your audience and their need, now you need to niche down. What exactly will your business help? What problem will it solve? How will it serve people? Who is your ideal client and how can you individually serve them and solve their problems? This is really where your skills and passions come in. How can you use your God-given talents to serve others and fill that need? Take some time to lay out a big piece of paper and just dream. Write out your skills, passions, and start to formulate your client avatar. It's this stage that your business will really start to take form.

Put a Name to It

Now here I don't just mean come up with a cutesy business name, slap it on a business card and call it a day. Instead, after looking at the previous three steps and your piece of paper with everything laid out, where does this lead you? What things go together and what is unique? It's extremely hard going from zero to one. As humans, we have an innate instinct to copy others. We see that something they did works and it's comforting. We like the known and we like the security. But here I am going to challenge you to go into the unknown (cue Frozen 2 soundtrack which I may or may not definitely be listening to right now hahahahah). Dive deep into the scary and unstable. Go where it is uncomfortable. It is only when we go out onto a tightrope and it looks like we have an extremely high chance of failure that we can begin to succeed.

Now that you have the tangible steps laid out, it's time to stop keeping your dreaming to when you're bored in a zoom and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!! Take time TODAY, yes TODAY and sit down, dream and then put those dreams into action! Time to go from zero to one and change the world because you have the potential to do it!