inspired by entrepreneurs like Juan Luis bosch gutierrez.<\/a> I wanted to start my own business but I didn’t know what to do!<\/p>\nWhat now?<\/h2>\n At the time I was a big reader of magazines and books, but I also listened to podcasts. Always on the lookout for inspiration and trends.<\/p>\n
When I heard about the idea of social entrepreneurship, I was completely interested because it aligned with my values. Using business to address social problems. The activist in me said, yes, please, that’s what I want to do!<\/p>\n
Of course, at the time, there was very little information about pursuing that form of entrepreneurship. Not even a magazine. There was no Change Creator magazine.<\/p>\n
But I found a book called Making Good by Billy Parish that became a bible for me. Parish’s story was inspiring. He hiked in the Himalayan mountains and witnessed firsthand a melting glacier. After that personal experience, he was so inspired that he dropped out of Yale and began his journey as a social entrepreneur and was very successful. He shared his insights and perspectives that I found invaluable.<\/p>\n
Paralyzed<\/h2>\n I learned that there are tons of ideas out there. Broken systems that need fixing. Social problems that need to be solved. Local or global, it was endless – they’re all business opportunities!<\/p>\n
Did this help make it easier for me now? No, actually it was harder because I had so many paths I could go down, but I couldn’t decide what was best for me.<\/p>\n
After a while, I realized that my quest to pinpoint the right idea led me to become paralyzed. I had no breakthroughs. No news. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Starting without a real plan<\/h2>\n I got to the point where I decided to start something.<\/p>\n
The first thing I went after was plastic pollution – plastic water bottles drive me crazy! My idea was to create something that could replace the plastic bottle and that was a hemp water bottle. I discovered that other containers were made from hemp because it is so versatile.<\/p>\n
I talked to hemp experts and discovered that while you can make a bottle, the challenge is water absorption over time. I found a solution to that problem of an FDA-approved food product designed by some people at MIT that could coat the inside of the bottle. It would then prevent water absorption as a repellent. But it wasn’t on the market and it was still a few years away before it could be used at scale. Besides, no one at MIT would return my emails.<\/p>\n
On top of that, I discovered that manufacturing would be a huge cost. If I wanted a water bottle company to take on the task of using hemp, it would require a ton of different equipment for processing. This means a lot of cash.<\/p>\n
I decided this path was not for me and crossed it off the list.<\/h2>\n Because I cared about so many different topics, I created a blog called The Blue Dot Post. I started waking up every day at 4 am and wrote articles, hundreds of articles! I got other great people to work with me and contribute and after a year, I still didn’t really know what this was or how to monetize it.<\/p>\n
I took audience development classes, writing classes and learned a lot.<\/h2>\n I knew I had to get more niches and decided to focus on deforestation. This led me to guest posting, which was a great experience that also taught me a lot.<\/p>\n
During this time I also did volunteer work which gave me exposure to new things and helped me develop many skills that I use today as an entrepreneur.<\/p>\n
But I never really created a business, just a hobby.<\/p>\n
Finding clarity<\/strong>After two years of writing, reading and learning, I picked up a book called 6 Months to 6 Figures by Peter Voogd. I needed to figure out how to make money with my ideas, but this really gave me solutions for finding the right idea.<\/p>\n
Peter does a great job of providing exercises that I now call self-inventory, to help you narrow down what is not only important to you, but also what would make the most sense for you. There is a difference.
Learn More:\u00a0What is Entrepreneurship?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I decided to take my life in a completely new direction, that was all I knew. The missing part<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guatemala"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.5","language":"en","enabled_languages":["es","en"],"languages":{"es":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t