Competition Doesn't Exist.

And no, I don't mean "be so good that competition doesn't exist", because that still means there is competition out there. Competition means others who offer more or less the same product or service as you do and are trying to get people to buy their goods in preference to yours. What I mean is: really, competition doesn't exist for you as a (social) entrepreneur. But there is one choice you need to make: what type of entrepreneur do you choose to be?

For me there are only two types of entrepreneurship. Every single entrepreneur can be categorised in one of these two types. The first type is what the majority of entrepreneurs has chosen - consciously or unconsciously - and what I call One To Many entrepreneurship. There is already a product or service in place and you make your own version of it. You may improve, tweak or change it, but it's still something that is already created and you decided to pick it up.

There's nothing wrong with this type of entrepreneurship, you can be a successful One To Many entrepreneur and enjoy it for a lifetime. It's the world of entrepreneurship that everyone knows, has heard about and imagines when one thinks about entrepreneurs. As an entrepreneur you need to know what problem are you solving with your products or services, understand your market, engage with your target audience, create your sales funnel and so on. Just understand that in One To Many entrepreneurship - as the word many is already showing - you're not the only one in the field, so you are facing competition. You'll always have to focus on how to stand out and stay ahead of your competitors.

A less crowded type of entrepreneurship is - what I love to call - Zero To One. The product or service does not exist yet. Most of the time, people don't even know they need or desire it. Until someone creates it. All of the sudden it's out there in the world and we realise we want to have it and it's actually something we were missing like forever. "Why didn't I come up with this genius idea" is what is mostly said afterwards. And once it's created, the One To Many entrepreneurs dive on top of it and start running with the product, service or idea behind it - by copying, improving, changing and tweaking it.

As a Zero to One entrepreneur you experience zero competition. It's the entrepreneurship of discovering of what is not yet perceived by the 5 senses - seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and touching. It's stepping into the realm of the 6th sense, your genius, intuition or whatever label you want to give it. It's understanding that the journey of your entrepreneurship starts not with the question what does the world need, but with what do I need. What do I miss in this life? What am I craving? The answers you start receiving are the first steps in discovering your talent, your gift, your genius and - my favourite word of all - your passion.

Passion means to me: serving myself because I need it, and in this service as a beautiful bonus I discover there are more people out there who want it as well, and they line up to pay me for my passion. The world needs more people who share their passion. People who create. People who give us the products and services we are missing now; goods that we are waiting for - mostly unaware of our desire. So not only can we say competition doesn't exist, but we need more (social) entrepreneurs.

Leave me a message in the comment section below, I’d love to hear from you.

- W.