entrepreneur interview

How to Make New Media Work for Your Business: Interview with Neil Rosen, Author of Chatter Marketing

by Paul Joseph November 1, 2011 Featured

New media, which encompasses all aspects of online marketing, such as social media marketing, blogging, comment marketing, and more, is everywhere we look these days. It’s almost impossible to find ads even in traditional media that don’t point to a company’s Facebook and Twitter pages, and the web is replete with blog posts, e-books, websites, you name it, talking about how to market using new media. Still, many business owners are struggling to figure it all out and make new media work for their business. In Neil Rosen’s new book, Chatter Marketing: Putting the Relationship Back in Customer Relationship Management , he helps to shed light on this important topic and shows entrepreneurs not only the importance of new media marketing, but how to use it effectively. Chatter Marketing is an excellent book for anyone who wants to truly engage with customers and potential customers to build a community of interested “bought in” individuals. I highly recommend it and am pleased to have had the opportunity to ask Neil some questions about the book and his marketing philosophy. Matthew: Your book, Chatter Marketing , focuses on how businesses can use new media to attain and keep customers. How is the Social Web uniquely positioned to accomplish this? Neil: Marketers so far have been playing catch-up on the web, spending their time and resources protecting their brand, including spending a fortune buying their own brand keywords on the search engines. But marketers have one great advantage. They already have relationships with their customers. And the social aspects of the web are uniquely able to help marketers leverage those relationships, get the “first look” at what their customers are doing, have the “first transaction opportunity” with their customers. But they need to get pro-active. Marketers need to reverse the keyword flow structure and truly follow their customers and listen to what they are doing and saying. They need to know what keywords their customers will be typing into the search engines before they get to the search engines, and communicate with them early in the process—again, before they get to the search engines. They need their customer communications to be intuitive in order to make shopping from them the most convenient possible customer experience. Next companies need to identify their ambassadors, enthusiasts, and influencers, and (especially by using email and social campaigns) leverage this group of people to become the brand’s sales force and help build business. Matthew: If a small business owner is new to social media, what is one important step he or she should take to begin using it effectively? Neil: The first step is to tune in – monitor what is being said online about your company within your specific competitive market (I call these micro-competitive environments). The competitive aspect is crucial and creates a context for everything being said about a specific brand. Monitoring your own brand without listening to the competitive chatter specific to your market can create serious misconceptions and misrepresentations about how your brand is viewed in the marketplace. And the second step is just to “get in the game.” Use the major social sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to get started, maintain consistent activity on each of these sites, and listen and learn what happens as you are building your presence. Don’t try to do everything at once. Create a solid presence in a few places and make sure the campaigns you execute build positive brand reputation – when you see that happening consistently think about expanding the presence. Matthew: What is one key take-away that you want everyone to get from Chatter Marketing ? Neil: That for both marketers and consumers the social internet creates opportunities to develop a level of convenience in shopping that will strengthen customer relationships beyond anything in history. Loyalty is not dead, it has simply been put on hold until brands (and service providers) figure out how to best take advantage of these opportunities. Matthew: Do you propose different marketing strategies for each social platform (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)? Neil: I think companies need to work with service providers who know the space and not try to do it in-house without the proper expertise. The social space is both volatile and persistent (which is not an oxymoron!). Brand reputations can be dramatically grown and/or significantly harmed overnight, with the effects lasting far longer than what marketers are used to seeing offline, and the same strategies that drive positive brand reputation on Facebook may not have the same effect on Twitter or LinkedIn. Campaigns and strategies need to be carefully tested and monitored to understand the influence they are having on specific social environments before being launched, and this takes a high level of experience and expertise. Matthew: As a new media and Web 2.0 expert, looking to the future of technology, what do you see for “Web 3.0” and how do you think social media will evolve? Neil: The more people think things change, the more they remain the same. With online marketing it is still all about something Seth Godin talked about many years ago: interruptions. People still react negatively to interruptive marketing. So the trend for 3.0 and beyond will be toward technologies that seamlessly integrate relevant marketing content directly into chatter, where the chatter itself defines the content and the promotions that are included in the conversations. In addition, the privacy conversation is going to go away as technologies do a better job of filtering personal data, and as people become comfortable that the data driving marketers excludes personal information. Matthew Toren is an Award Winning Author, Serial Entrepreneur, and Investor. He Co-Founded YoungEntrepreneur.com along with his brother Adam. Matthew is co-author of the newly released book: Small Business, Big Vision: “Lessons on How to Dominate Your Market from Self-Made Entrepreneurs Who Did it Right” and also co-author of Kidpreneurs .

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, facebook, internet marketing, marketing-strategies, social-media

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Young Entrepreneurs: “Quit being such babies!” Tim Sykes Tells it Like it Is

by Paul Joseph October 25, 2011 Featured

Tim Sykes, Founder and CEO of Investimonials and Profit.ly , had a different college experience from most university students: skipping classes at Tulane in favor of trading penny stocks every day, he turned $12,415 in Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million and started a hedge fund during his senior year. He also created a scholarship for talented/passionate people open not only to current Tulane students, but also Tulane faculty and alumni. He calls it “an economic bailout ahead of its time.” Today’s interview demonstrates exactly why Tim has been so successful – and at times, so criticized. He’s a straight shooter who isn’t afraid to speak his mind, but don’t confuse his outspoken confidence with the false front many in the financial world present. Tim knows what he’s talking about, and he’s got the proof to back it up. Enjoy the interview and share your thoughts with us below and on our Facebook page. Your companies, Investimonials and Profit.ly, are unique concepts. Can you sum up what they are for our readers who aren’t familiar with them? Neither idea is totally new; we’ve just improved upon existing models and applied them to the finance industry. Investimonials is like TripAdvisor or Yelp, meaning it is a database of consumer ratings and reviews for everything related to finance from books, TV shows and movies about business and the stock market to brokers, software, financial commentators like Jim Cramer, websites, bloggers and newsletters. The goal is to discover the best financial products and wisest people while weeding out the worst and in the past year over 10,000 traders and investors have written nearly 20,000 reviews. Gradually our members are learning about the best and the worst the industry has to offer and I’m proud to see frequent emails from members thanking us for turning them onto things like great books and documentaries and getting them educated while also helping them avoid scams. Profitly is similar in that we think transparency is the future of finance and our aim here is to discover the best traders on the internet based on actual performance and stock picking accuracy. There are hundreds of thousands of wannabes out there and many lie about their experience and success while really living in their parents’ basements. So much so that it’s almost as if you can’t trust anyone on the internet because anybody could be the next Bernie Madoff. In just one year, Profitly, with over 7,500 traders sharing their performance openly, has become the trading industry standard for not only showing off % gains and track record, but also the exact dollar amount of trading profits because while other websites focus only on beating the market indices, we know you can only pay for things in the real world with actual dollars not percentage points. After all, there are many people who claim extraordinary percent gains like being able to turn $100 into $1,000, but those strategies are gimmicky and usually not replicable or teachable. Being a self-made multi-millionaire myself via stock trading, I know EXACTLY how important it is to be able to have a scalable strategy (and while I’ve done very well, as I often point out, my short selling strategy of small-cap stocks is incapable of making more than a few million/year hence why I’m a teacher and internet entrepreneur instead of a hedge fund manager). You’re a pretty controversial figure in the world of finance sometimes. What drives you to put your neck out and “tell it like it is?” Most people in finance are full of BS because while they have studied and learned the basics, they are truly average and have no special talents that would allow them to outperform. They take advantage of the fact that 99.9% of the world doesn’t know stock market basics and they use that widespread naivety to appear to be better than they actually are. When you hear an outrageous success story like mine – turning my $12,000 Bar Mitzvah gift money into $2 million in 4 years during college – many people think I’m one of the BSers and it’s my passion to prove them wrong by showing everyone EXACTLY how I did it and why it’s still a great strategy which my 2,000 students learn day in day out. I will not tolerate any lies about my strategy or me, and I’ve come to enjoy attacking those who tell lies and manipulate in other areas of finance. Since I’m 100% honest and transparent in everything I do (aka come at me all you want I have nothing to hide and I CRAVE the opportunity to correct ignorant assumptions made about me, my trading strategy and my business), this allows me to go on the offensive. It’s not only fun, therapeutic, just, and fulfilling, it’s also great for marketing purposes as I welcome the opportunity to explain exactly what it is that I teach. Many young entrepreneurs are understandably reluctant to get involved in today’s turbulent financial markets. What is your advice for them? Quit being such babies. If you always wait for perfect opportunities, you’ll waste precious time that could be used to learn and gain experience during the tough times. There’s a saying “when you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose” (Yes I just quoted Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic) and it’s true for young people everywhere no matter what field, but especially young entrepreneurs. If you can succeed even a little bit in this environment – which I’m doing quite well growing my business from roughly $1 million in 2010 to over $3 million in 2011 and yes, the margin are ridiculous – then you will most likely only do better during stock market bubbles. Long story short, it’s great to get into an industry when it’s depressed and then sell out when there’s too much hype and morons are willing to pay excessive premiums for something you know goes in cycles. How is your life different today from the vision you had in college? I’m fatter and I can’t rebound from drinking like I used to so I workout more and value the serenity of old-person things like the opera, symphonies and Central Park. I still go crazy with my fine dining, and drinking, but instead of just partaking with my friends, now just about every lunch or dinner is business so I’ve adapted my passions to better suit my ridiculous ambition and revolutionary business model that I believe is just starting to play out. Friends take a backseat, you can ask any of them, they’ll probably call me a selfish prick. On a sadder note, I don’t get the same thrill of making $5,000 to $10,000 in a day like I used to – over time you lose that “rush” which I feel tugs at me to aim for bigger thrills meaning I must try to make $100,000 in a day (I’ve come close a few times in 2011). What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? Try every single angle to monetization ignoring your own expectations and biases. Some of my most successful projects came out of thin air (my blog readers encouraged me to create a newsletter to deliver my trade alerts in real-time and three years in, that is my single biggest revenue and profit generator) while my failures have been truly passion projects (Profitly trading cards like those I used trade of baseball players…nobody cared…and TIMbucks, a virtual currency designed to increase useful information sharing among my students). Also, be meticulous with every new project and understand that if you want something done right, you likely will have to do it all yourself which is why entrepreneurs as a group are uniformly tired. To help, find a partner to share the load, but make sure you get along with them and your skills are complementary to achieve maximum efficiency and give you the greatest odds of success. How do you personally define success? How many students I can help teach to achieve wealth in the stock market, both monetarily and knowledge-wise. I’ve had several students who have turned $1,000 into $10,000+, one who has turned $3,000 into $75,000 and several who have made $100,000+ all in just a few months. The money is nice, but they now are self-sufficient and they know the process that they can repeat again and again on their own. You can see hundreds of testimonials from my students all over the internet, many on Investimonials and Profitly (hence the reason why I created the websites in the first place – to keep track of all the praise and to show it off and compare to the many other financial gurus.) One of my students, Michael Goode, has earned over $300,000 in the past few years and he learned my strategies so well, I’ve actually hired him to help me coach the rest of our 2,000 students so I’m looking for more success stories to expand my growing mentoring team. I never had any mentors when I first started in the stock market and that cost me a ton of time, frustration and money so I love being the mentor I only wish I’d had. The whole business is becoming more exciting by the day as the more successful traders we teach, the more we’ll hire to teach others thus enabling us to teach even more people and create more success stories. Oh yes, I love this game!

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, investing, success

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YE Interview: Brian Reich, Author of Shift & Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues in a Connected Society

by Paul Joseph October 11, 2011 Featured

I recently had the privilege of reading a truly outstanding book, and just had to interview the author to share his insights. Brian Reich is the author of Shift & Reset: Strategies for Addressing Serious Issues in a Connected Society . It’s a book that’s not only a good read, but an important, solution-oriented change agent, at a time when it can seem from many perspectives as though the world is falling apart. With social and political upheavals, environmental catastrophes, unprecedented natural disasters, and other serious world issues making headlines every day, many people around the globe are wondering, what can we do? The answer, according to Reich, lies in the rapidly changing and advancing tools of new media. This book teaches companies and non-profits how to implement strategies that will truly make a difference. Read the interview below and share your thoughts in the comments – then go buy the book! Your new book, Shift & Reset , comes at a time when a multitude of global issues seem to be coming to a head. What do you feel is the most important concept or idea people should take away from your book? There are two related concepts that are important: first – we need to recognize that what we are doing isn’t working. If we are going to address the serious issues that exist in the world today we are going to have to think differently. Second – because we have limited time, energy and resources to apply to these challenges, we need to STOP doing things that don’t work. We can’t simply come up with new ideas. Those two concepts are critically important, and related. You feature several interviews in the book. What’s one insight from the interviews that stands out? Nancy Lublin, the Chief Old Person at DoSomething, said ‘Awareness campaigns are bullshit.’  And she’s absolutely correct. Continually generating awareness is not enough to address a serious issue or solve a complex problem in our society. And of course, you can run a campaign that both raises awareness of an important issue and delivers a meaningful, measurable impact at the same time. In Shift & Reset , you assert that many well known charity campaigns, such as the pink ribbon breast cancer campaign, are great at raising awareness but not as effective at achieving their stated missions. Haven’t they raised millions for research as well? Raising money is important. But finding solutions to the complex challenges that face our society is more important. And I don’t think raising money for research is necessarily the fastest way to find a cure for something like cancer. Just recently, a group of gamers deciphered the crystal structure of a protein that causes AIDS in rhesus monkeys. It had baffled scientists for 15 years, but took gamers 10 days to solve it. Why? They approached the challenge very differently. In a connected society, we have access to people and information on a scale that wasn’t possible even a few years ago. Instead of raising more money, or awareness, the organizations that are committed to addressing these issues should be doing everything they can to find solutions. You talk about the value and power of mobilizing people for a cause. What advice do you have for organizations that want to maximize their efforts to attain their objectives? First, organizations need to be very clear about what they can accomplish. Too many organizations promise to solve a problem, but their choices and actions are focused more on building organizational capacity, or raising awareness about an issue. Those efforts may result in compelling outcomes that organizations want to celebrate, but they are not the same as finding solutions. And when an organization sets high expectations, and can’t meet them, it has a chilling effect on the willingness of the audience to get involved in the future. As for mobilization specifically, organizations should look to identify all the steps along the path towards finding a solution and direct their supporters/audience to take actions that help move things forward. A complex problem is not going to be addressed with one simple action – and certainly not something flashy like a concert or advertising campaign – but you can make progress if you are focused on the right things. Finding incremental successes while always keeping your eye on the ultimate goal, will not only help you address a complex problem over time, but the small victories serves as a powerful incentive/motivator to keep audiences engaged and get them more deeply involved. You are known as a new media and Web 2.0 expert. Looking to the future of technology, what do you see for “Web 3.0” and how do you think social media will evolve? I actually think the future is less about social media and more about being truly social – appreciating more about how people get/share information, what motivates our decision-making and what we find important, and using that to understand how to develop relationships, build trust and influence shifts in behavior. The idea of being social doesn’t require technology, and I think as technology and digital media become even more prominent in our society, we’ll see more offline activities, more human connections being made and communities forming. The next phase of the digital age will seem like devolution in some ways (as opposed to a re-volution) because of how much we focus on the analog activities in our lives. Technology and digital media will help to enable and support the activities in our lives, but they won’t be the only thing defining those activities as they can easily do now.

Tagged as: business, business planning, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, social-media, technology

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Matt Peters, Co-Founder of Pandemic Labs

by Paul Joseph October 6, 2011 Featured

Along with Brennan White, Matt Peters is the co-founder of Pandemic Labs , a social media marketing agency based in Boston, MA. Their agency helps businesses to navigate their brands through the gantlet of social media and use this powerful tool to successfully promote their brand. Matt and Brennan (and their whole team) get that social media marketing is more about conversations and engagement than simply pushing a message out, and that philosophy has led to considerable success in the SMM space. Matt shares some valuable insights in the following interview that any entrepreneur can learn from. Read the interview, and then feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section. For those of our readers who aren’t familiar with Pandemic Labs, let’s start with a quick overview. What does your company do, and who is your target audience? Pandemic Labs helps brands leverage social media for business gains. We are a dedicated social media marketing agency, so we have a very specific focus all day, every day. From strategy to execution to measurement to company policy, we tackle the whole social media world for our clients. In terms of a target audience, we deal mostly with large national and international brands like The Ritz-Carlton, Au Bon Pain, and DIRECTV. But, we also have a thriving and exciting set of services aimed at small businesses and startups. How would you describe your social media marketing philosophy (in a nutshell)? Social media marketing must be approached as a conceptual change in marketing philosophy before it can be discussed at a strategic and tactical level. Many companies approach social from the bottom up; they build a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare because they are “cool” and only then do they try to figure out why they are on those platforms. We don’t do it that way. We come from the top down, taking your target customers and our desired actions into account, then building a campaign that achieves your marketing objectives and aligns with your other efforts. In a nutshell: social media marketing is a means to an end, not an end itself. You’ve launched a business in a pretty competitive space. What were your primary concerns before launching, and how have you differentiated from other social media firms? I think the space was slightly less competitive when we launched in 2007, but we certainly knew it was going to turn into a frenzy of competition. And it certainly has. It seems like everyone is a “social media expert” these days, even though most don’t appear to have any inkling of why social media is such a powerful platform. They use old thinking on a new medium. We’ve consistently differentiated ourselves from other firms because we can answer the most important question: Why? Many people can manage a community or develop a blogger outreach plan, but if you can’t explain why you are doing those things using the specific business needs of the client, then you are just drinking the Kool-Aid. We answer the “why” before we every start a campaign. That’s why our campaigns are so successful and cost-effective. What has been the single biggest business challenge you’ve had to face, and how did you overcome it? Since we are in a new industry, we have often faced that challenge of “selling social media” before we ever get to “selling Pandemic Labs.” Especially in the earlier years, we had to spend more time showing people why social media was valuable than we spent showing them why we were the right company for the job. Having to win two battles for every one new client was very hard. Though, as social media marketing has matured a bit, this is becoming less of a challenge. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? Listen to all advice given, but then make your own decision. If you can’t explain to a stranger why you are doing a certain thing, then don’t do it. “Because a smart person told me to,” is not a valid reason to make a choice early in your business. Listen, digest, formulate, act. It will not seem like it at the time, but the social dynamic of your office is absolutely crucial to how well your business can run. Especially when you’re starting out and there are only 4-15 people in the office, a bad group dynamic can sink you. Unplug. The human brain is not meant to deal with the overwhelming volume of data streaming into it all the time these days. I have three computers, an iPhone, an iPad, and an blackberry for international travel. At least one day every two weeks, I have to unplug. Leave the phone off…leave everything off. It will feel terrible the first time you do it because you will assume the worst and think you are missing something crucial. But it can wait, and you will be more productive when you plug back in. How do you personally define success? I’ll tell you when I see it. For me, success is a moving target. As soon as I reach a certain level, the line at which I personally define success has already moved. I can never catch it. Perhaps this is why I keep working so hard.

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, internet marketing, social-media

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Emerson Spartz, CEO of Spartz Media

by Paul Joseph October 4, 2011 Featured

Emerson Spartz is a great example of what a young entrepreneur can do if they believe in themselves and are willing to work for their vision. Emerson began home schooling at the age of 12 and started creating a website for fun. Today, that site – MuggleNet – is the world’s number one Harry Potter site. Building on the success of his first site, Emerson has created a media empire in Spartz Media , the umbrella company for all his projects. He’s also a New York Times Bestselling author and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Enjoy the interview, and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section below, and on our Facebook page ! You started your first website at the age of 12 – is that right? At what age did you first start thinking about the internet as a business tool, and how did that come about? Yes, I founded MuggleNet (The #1 Harry Potter site) in the fall of 1999 at age 12. I stumbled across a free website builder and started playing with it. Over a period of months I became increasingly determined to build the best and most comprehensive Harry Potter website. Initially I had no desire to make money off my creation. Later, I learned that I could use the website for commerce without sacrificing its character. The first bill I received for $200 also changed my attitude towards advertising. The first check (several thousand dollars) changed my attitude even more. As a young entrepreneur throughout your high school years, do you ever feel that you gave up some of what it means to be a teenager to pursue your business ventures? Because I was homeschooled, I had 8+ hours every day to work on MuggleNet while my friends were in school. I had great friends, a supportive family, and generally speaking, I was given every opportunity to succeed. I count 13 internet properties owned and operated by Spartz Media. Is that all? (Just Kidding!) What are your plans for future expansion? More sites, or just working to build the properties you currently have? We launch a new site every month. Our strategy is to build tools that are so easy to use to create content, millions of passive consumers become active producers. Social media is a big part of all your businesses, with over 4 million combined followers. How would you define your social media marketing strategy? We’re actually up to 5 million combined followers on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Social media marketing strategy is our marketing strategy. We study and measure the components of what gets shared – the viral coefficient – of each piece of content. Our success is measured by how much our content is shared. What is the biggest business challenge you’ve faced to date, and how did you overcome it? Recruiting top talent has been our #1 priority since the founding of the company. We’ve been able to attract some very talented people, but it is always a challenge. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs thinking about starting their first business? 1) Study the patterns of those who have been successful before you. Learn from their mistakes. Read books and articles on entrepreneurship. 2) Don’t make the mistake of trying to ‘protect’ your idea by refusing to tell people about it. Tell everyone. Get their feedback. The feedback is invaluable. Your first ideas will probably suck. 3) Study the patterns of those who have been successful before you. Learn from their mistakes. This is by far the most important piece of advice I could give. How do you personally define success? Like many entrepreneurs, I want to use technology to change the world – and in a big way. I was given every opportunity to succeed in life (thanks Mom and Dad) and I believe to whom much is given, much is expected.

Tagged as: become an entrepreneur, business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, startup

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Gelie Akhenblit, Founder & CEO of NetworkingPhoenix.com

by Paul Joseph September 29, 2011 Featured

If you have a local business or website that you’d like to take national, or if you just like to hear stories of young entrepreneurs who have beaten the odds to realize business success, today’s interview is for you. In the late ’80s, 8 year old Gelie Akhenblit and her family immigrated to the US as Soviet refugees fleeing religious persecution. Because of the hardships of poverty, it was necessary for her to take on many adult roles at that young age. She quickly became the family’s interface with the outside world – translating at doctor’s appointments, dealing with landlords, and even setting up and coordinating her own schooling. Gelie learned how important it was to know the right people and have access to the right resources at a very young age and she carried this knowledge into adulthood. Today, Gelie is the CEO of NetworkingPhoenix.com , one of the most visited websites local to Arizona, and even making a global imprint as one of the top 1% most visited global websites. Over 18,000 members have joined to date, and the website’s growth shows no signs of slowing. Gelie’s insights into what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur are golden! So take it all in, and be sure to share your thoughts in the comments. You founded NetworkingPhoenix.com in 2008, and it’s grown to nearly twenty thousand members. To what do you contribute your growth rate, primarily? We have been very fortunate as all of our growth has been very organic: word of mouth, forwarding emails, social media, ranking high on search engines, etc. Having our quarterly Signature Events provides a lot of visibility as well and we get many sign-ups around our networking events. However, I think the main reason behind our fast growth has been the fact that this is a much-needed service for the community. Business owners need to find new clients on a consistent basis and job seekers are always looking for opportunities. It’s like I always say, networking never goes out of style. There are a lot of networking events out there but few that draw thousands of participants like yours. Why do you think people come to your events in such great numbers? We just hosted our 10 th Signature Event that attracted about 2,000 attendees – which is phenomenal! I think people come because they hear great things about it. It’s a place to make business connections, grow your network, meet new clients or find that next best job – the sheer energy in the room is just exciting! If people didn’t think it was worth attending, they wouldn’t be telling their friends to come. The very first event I ever had, I reserved the space for 125 people and more than 500 showed up. We’ve been growing ever since. With online networks becoming so popular, what is the primary value of face-to-face networking events? Nothing can replace a handshake or meeting someone face-to-face. I think online networking is a great way to stay in touch with people and get to know people’s interests a bit more, but the initial face-to-face meeting is not something you can replace with social media. When you have a chance to meet someone and get to know him/her as a person, your chances of building a relationship from that point on are much greater. You currently serve the Phoenix, AZ area. Any plans for national expansion? What is the process you go through to determine where and when to expand? Absolutely! A lot of my work depends on having the right people in place. So, while I have specific geographic areas in mind, a good portion of the expansion will involve having quality people in place representing us in the different cities. What has been the biggest business challenge you’ve had to face, and how did you overcome it? Being a social media type of a site, we’ve faced some of the similar challenges that Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have battled. For example, how do you monetize the site? When we first launched, my goal was to build critical mass and worry about monetizing it later. That’s exactly what we did and about 1.5 years into the business I came up with our Networking Passport concept. It’s basically an optional paid membership program that we offer to our free members. Once they sign up and become Networking Passport holders, they can attend many other organization’s popular paid events for free. On a monthly basis, we have anywhere between 30 and 40 events in the Passport program, which range from $5 to $100 per ticket. The Networking Passport members can attend all of these events for free, therefore saving a great deal of money. The events range from Chamber mixers to educational seminars geared toward professional development. The program has been wildly successful and we are expanding it daily by adding more events and more perks. You’ve used social media very effectively to promote your business, and you’ve become known as a social media marketing expert. What advice do you have for young entrepreneurs trying to promote their businesses through social media? Creating the proper infrastructure to implement your social media campaigns is key. Social media is a way for you to build and perpetuate your brand – be very careful with the information you put out into the world. I keep it at about 80/20; 80 percent personal and 20 percent business. People want to know about YOU before they want to know about your company. Show them value and make them care. And when it comes to personal posts, my rule of thumb is to always keep it light, bright and polite! What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? 1. Let go of the fear and go for it! If you don’t succeed the first time around you can always try again. 2. Surround yourself with like-minded individuals. Friends and family are great, but they’re not always the support system that you need to move forward. 3. People will doubt you; it’s part of the game. Just keep going and prove them wrong. How do you personally define success? If something that I created helps at least one person a day and makes someone’s life better, I’ve already succeeded.

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, networking, startup

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Maren Kate Donovan, Founder & CEO of Zirtual

by Paul Joseph September 22, 2011 Featured

If you spend much time in the entrepreneurial blogosphere, chances are good that you’ll come across Maren Kate Donovan, or someone talking about her. Maren Kate, as she usually goes by, is a true entrepreneur to her core. Her entrepreneurial journey started just after high school, and she’s persevered through a good number of challenges to get to where she is today. We caught up with Maren Kate recently and asked her to answer some questions for an interview. We know our readers, and we know that Maren is representative of a good percentage of us. She’s young, ambitious, determined, and driven to succeed. So you’re bound to get a lot out of her insights and story. Enjoy the interview, and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments. Your company, Zirtual , provides a way for busy entrepreneurs to delegate tasks to virtual assistants. Can you sum up the company’s mission for our readers? Our mission is based around the idea that there are two types of people in the world: those who have more money than time and those who have more time than money. The former is our target customer – people whose time is worth more than say $20 an hour, so anything they delegate to a Zirtual Assistant is not only saved time, but it’s saved money. The latter is the perfect Zirtual Assistant candidate, generally college students and recent grads, these people are just getting started in the career world and are looking to sharpen their skills while earning some money – we call it “earning and learning”.   There is a fair amount of competition in your industry. How do you set your company apart, and how are you getting the word out? It took a while for us to really understand the importance of differentiating when it comes to starting a business, but the day that we really embraced that idea was the day when our business started to take a turn for the better. The primary ways we stand out from our competition is the fact that our assistants are all U.S. based, college-educated and dedicated to each customer. This allows our customers to work with a particular assistant who gets to know their preferences and business and who they can develop a relationship with over time. The other way we really try to stand out is through epic customer service. It’s something I drill into each employee and every Zirtual Assistant who wants to join our team. This is a customer service centric business, and if we can provide absolutely out-of-the-world value to our customers and make them feel good about the experience while we’re at it, we’ll always have a solid base. You’ve been involved in entrepreneurship for a long time. Where did you get your entrepreneurial spirit? Are your parents entrepreneurial? My parents aren’t entrepreneurs so to speak, but they’ve always instilled in me that “you can do whatever you set your mind to” drive. My mother is starting her first business selling high-end pet vitamins, and my father does commercial real estate. I always knew I wanted to be a “businessman” when I grew up, even when I was a little girl, so it’s been a natural course for me to lean towards working for myself versus working for others. The hardest part has just been cultivating that dogged determination and persistence that helps you through the good and bad times – if you don’t have ridiculous persistence as an entrepreneur, you’ll have a hell of a time reaching success. As a young entrepreneur, have you ever felt like your age was a disadvantage? What have you learned about dealing with more seasoned entrepreneurs? I can’t stand when people point to anything they’ve been born with as a handicap. There are far too many successful people in the world who have overcome HUGE physical, mental, and socio-economic obstacles for someone like me to complain about my age or the fact that I’m a chick in the 90% male-dominated tech startup world. Instead, I’ve looked at the fact that people are more willing to help young entrepreneurs (than someone who’s more experienced and more of a threat) as a great thing. I ask advice from and listen to every successful person I meet, this way I can grow and learn without having to experience the years it took them to get there. The best thing to do with more seasoned entrepreneurs is to shut up and listen. They will impart so much knowledge if you just act respectful and are truly interested in their war stories – there are goldmines of business genius in each one. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? 1) Absorb everything you can get your hands on about startups, business, and successful people. This can be in any form from books, to Mixergy.com to magazines, even to overhearing people’s business conversations in bars. 2) Start before you’re ready. This means just start trying little things before you think you’ve hit upon your “perfect” idea. 99% of the stuff you try might fail but that 1% will skyrocket you to the next level. 3) Embrace change. After you absorb all there is to know, become a student of startups, and begin trying things to see what works, it’s time to be open to change – because nothing is consistent in a new business except constant change. Every time you hit an issue and have to change, embrace it and you’ll go far. I honestly don’t think a new business or entrepreneur can fail if they are willing to change everything over time until they hit upon the right product/market fit, and sometimes that takes 30 pivots before you’re there. Thinking back to the first days starting up, please share one major struggle you went through and how you overcame that obstacle. The biggest struggle I had was not learning how to sell early on. Anyone can come up with an idea and any smart person can build that idea into a reality; what separates the “men from the boys,” so to speak, is the ability to sell your idea, your team. and your vision to the rest of the world. What’s your best advice for balancing work and life? When you’re starting up early on, there won’t be much of one! Work hard, play hard – that’s my best advice. How do you personally define success? Doing what you set out to do, whether you set out to be a great mother and wife or whether you want to be the next Ray Dalio – don’t stop until you’ve reached your goals, no matter what the obstacles.

Tagged as: become an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, startup, young-entrepreneur

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Jason Platnick of Died on the Vine

by Paul Joseph September 8, 2011 Featured

Another of our loyal supporters during the 2011 Small Business Influencers voting that led to our being honored as one of the top 100 Small Business Influencers of 2011 was Died on the Vine , the brainchild of Jason Platnick. Died on the Vine is an outstanding site with a unique, compelling concept, and Jason has some excellent insights about what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur – and what to do if you fail. Both realistic and encouraging, the site offers a place for entrepreneurs to learn, grow, and share. Enjoy the interview, then head over and check out Jason’s site! Your company, Died on the Vine, is a very unique concept. Can you sum up what it is for our readers who aren’t familiar with Died on the Vine? Died On The Vine is a place for entrepreneurs to learn from failure. The mental obstacles can be the toughest road to success for most entrepreneurs and statistics will tell you that failure is in the cards for most of them. Our goal is to help those who want to learn and grow be able to separate their emotions from those experiences and use the past as a tool in the present. The realization and awareness that failure is just the beginning and a part of the process to success is very liberating. Once an individual can adopt this view they can try new ventures with a whole new attitude and approach. Without having all your emotional eggs in one basket you are free to not be afraid, be more confident and overall see things more clearly. We are all about telling people it takes time to get the recipe right, use your past as an ingredient to become successful. It shouldn’t be something you run from. Your site helps people relate their stories and learn from others. What has been the biggest challenge in building your own business, and how have you overcome it? The biggest challenge is failure itself. Most people associate a very negative stigma with the whole concept. It’s hard for most to look at their debacles and honestly assess what went wrong. The biggest part of learning from failure is taking a long hard look at yourself and being honest and that simply is not something a lot of people want to do. We also face all the same issues any blog/website does, is our site optimized properly, are we utilizing a newsletter, do we offer social proof validating what we do and making it ok to contribute. The list goes on and on, and it’s all been a learning experience. We are far from where we want to be, having identified our many mistakes that we have made with regards to our site and online presence. We know a lot more today about marketing, SEO and what makes a good site than we did when we started. The only way we could have learned was by doing, fail and then adjust based on what we experienced. We hope to be able to implement a whole new approach to our concept soon. How is your company different today from the original concept? The concept remains the same as far as our site is concerned. As I said we learnt a lot from the mistakes we made with the site and are eager to make adjustments. We originally had a vision of the site and the overall look and feel. But after six months we learned the site simply is not set up properly to draw people in. If we were to do differently tomorrow the site would lead with daily guest blog posts relating to business. The stories themselves would be a part of the site but not the sole basis of the site. We would overall add more value, provide an active newsletter, give away a small eBook to get people to opt in to our newsletter and utilize social proof to validate what we do. Definitely would keep the site fresh and active, similar to our Facebook page. Our FB page has really been great and has become a very robust and authentic community, and we need to emulate that same experience on our website. What are your future plans for Died on the Vine? What’s your vision for the future? We hope to implement the changes I mentioned and retool the overall concept. We still whole heartedly believe there is tremendous value in learning from our failures. Our vision for the future is still the same, create a niche that really doesn’t exist and in doing so help many people shift their mindsets and find success. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? 1. Take Action; but do something that you are truly passionate about. Don’t “pick” something and do something because you make a lot of money. To be successful you really need to love and believe in what you do. 2. Have a Plan and a clear focus, and always remember to help others. Providing value is critical to succeeding. 3. Be Confident and don’t be afraid to fail. Being an entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart, be willing and open to learn from every experience you have and always continue to grow and evolve. How do you personally define success? Finding fulfillment in whatever it is that you do. If you make millions of dollars but are miserable and stressed are you truly successful? I would say not. Being happy and content while deriving satisfaction from what you do is so much more successful than a miserable millionaire. Living honestly and following your heart and true voice is success.

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, small-business, starting a business

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Alaina Ostroff of Tutor Champ

by Paul Joseph September 1, 2011 Featured

Earlier this month, YoungEntrepreneur.com was honored to be chosen as a 2011 Small Business Influencers Champion . We are thrilled to have been selected, and we know that our amazing community of young entrepreneurs made it happen. One such supporter who deserves our thanks is Alaina Ostroff, Founder of Tutor Champ , a math and science tutoring company for students from grade-one through college. With a degree in biomedical engineering with a concentration in biomechanics and a minor in mathematics, starting a math and science tutoring company might seem like a natural fit for Alaina. But as you’ll read below, she never expected to be the CEO of her own company. She’s done a great job of it so far though; and her advice for young entrepreneurs is right on the mark. Enjoy the interview, and help us thank and congratulate Alaina in the comments section! The concept behind your company, Tutor Champ, is something there seems to be a great need for. Can you sum up what it is for our readers who aren’t familiar with Tutor Champ? Tutor Champ is a tutoring company specializing in math and science subjects for all ages. I have been tutoring students for many levels of math for about 8 years now, and when I learned of America being 26 th in the world in math I thought I could make a difference somehow. I started advertising locally, made a Facebook fan page and a website, and soon I had many students where I literally drove from house to house on my street tutoring subjects such as Pre-Algebra, Algebra I and II, Geometry, Chemistry, Pre-Calc, Trigonometry, Calculus, and the SATs. I studied biomedical engineering while in college which is deeply rooted in mathematics giving me the background to help students who may struggle with some concepts. What has been the biggest challenge in building your business, and how have you overcome it? It has been difficult learning how to manage my time. There is so much that goes into the marketing and social media aspects of my business as well as the advertising and actual tutoring. Sometimes it can get very stressful wearing many hats, but on the days I don’t have students I put all my time solely into the marketing and advertising. I had to learn many important key strategies in social media techniques, but thankfully there is a lot of great information out there. How is your business different today from the original concept? Did you have to change your business model at any point? Are you more successful than you had hoped? Starting off I was worried if I could make this my full-time job. But here I am, now an LLC, and with over 1,200 Facebook fans from all over the world in just 6 months. I am very blessed and am definitely more successful than I had hoped and planned. I do have big dreams for Tutor Champ to expand in the future, but you have to start small to plan big. How did you feel going into an industry where there is existing competition from some large companies? How did you plan to compete with them? Honestly, I was a little worried about competing with the big tutoring companies like Sylvan and Kumon. But once I really delved into it, I realized that I provided my services in two distinct differences from them. For one, the Tutor Champ model is to drive directly to the student’s home or library, whereas the student has to drive to Sylvan and Kumon, which could become an inconvenience for the parent or student. In addition, Sylvan and Kumon are math and reading tutoring companies, whereas Tutor Champ specializes in math and science. I thought that if a student had a problem in math they would go to the company which specializes in math. My thought process proved to be correct. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? 1. Determine your market and find your “niche” Finding your market is one thing, but determining your niche within that market is a little more difficult. Clients will be scared away if your market is too broad or generalized, so definitely narrow it down to a specific product or service you are offering. Also, stake out your competition and do some real market research. You’re probably not trying to re-create the wheel here, but check out what your competition is doing and see how you can innovate the business to make it different or better with your “stamp” of creativity on it. 2. Have discipline and time management skills. This is very difficult if you are not used to being your own boss and working from home. Many countless hours are spent at home where people think you are just goofing off when in all reality you are putting in the most crucial part of your business – planning and brainstorming. Do you have a business name, logo, and website? Are you on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter? How will you be doing your advertising? I made a checklist of these beginning steps and felt such a sense of accomplishment when I crossed one of them off my to-do list. This part should actually be the most fun because it is your business you are coming up with – your name, your brand, so be creative!  If you are passionate about it then I’m sure you already have a name picked out. Juggling with competing priorities both personally and professionally can be very taxing at times as well. However, if you are surrounded by people who love and support you then I’m sure they will understand how much time is needed to start a business. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, “If you have a full-time job and you’re home at 6 then you have time to quickly eat before you do what you love from 7 – 2 in the morning.”  Passion is the name of the game here. 3. Get over your fear! Fear was by far the biggest challenge I faced. Will I be able to bring in enough money each month? How can I attract clients, and will they keep coming back? Did I make the right decision to pursue this? Will people think I am crazy trying to start a business in this economy? I assure you, all of these feelings are absolutely normal. But if you focus too much on the worries and the doubts then you will just attract them in your life (Law of Attraction). I found that in time I thrived on fear the most because I was more fearful on quitting and giving up then actually succeeding. How do you personally define success? My personal definition of success is doing what you love and following your passion, because life is too short not to. I think Confucius said it best: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Tagged as: business, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, small-business

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Ben Lang of MySchoolHelp.com

by Paul Joseph August 30, 2011 Featured

Find a need and fill it. We hear that mantra over and over as advice on how to start a business. And that’s exactly what Ben Lang of MySchoolHelp.com has done. Much like a lot of household name companies of today, such as eBay, Craigslist, and Facebook, Ben’s company started out as an idea that wasn’t intended to become big. He just wanted to help out his fellow students and himself with note sharing for their high school classes. At just 17, this young entrepreneur’s vision and insight into what it takes to make it as a young business owner is an inspiration, and we know you’ll get a lot out of his story and his advice. Enjoy the interview, and remember to leave your thoughts in the comments below. MySchoolHelp.com is a great concept to help high school students with home study. For those of our readers who aren’t familiar with the company, can you give us a quick overview? Sure, MySchoolHelp is a note sharing site for high schoolers. Once a student arrives on the site he or she can search for their school, if it’s not there they can easily submit it. Afterwards they can access their school page and can find the notes they’re looking for and see a leader-board with the top contributors. Once they find the notes they’re looking for there are plenty of features to make it more engaging, in particular the ability to interact with other students via Facebook comments. How did the idea for the MySchoolHelp come about? Two years ago I started a note sharing site with my friend, just for our school. It immediately took off, and at this point about 70% of the school uses it regularly. A few months ago I decided to make a similar site for all high schools to use. Without the original site, I never would have passed high school, so I want other students to have the same opportunity that I had. What is your future vision for the business, and how will you make it happen? The vision for MySchoolHelp is to impact as many high schools as possible. Eventually our goal is to expand to other age groups. To get the word out we’re reaching out to high school teachers, administrators, education technology blogs, student governments and influential students. It’s been very effective so far and we’re looking to grow. As a teenage entrepreneur, have you faced any age-related challenges? How do you get more seasoned business people to take you seriously? Fortunately, with the internet, age doesn’t affect business much. Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to build up my brand name which has helped tremendously. The only frustrating aspect is that I’ve been unable to legally sign documents until September when I turn 18. What has been the biggest business challenge you’ve had to face, and how did you overcome it? One of the biggest business challenges is building a team. It’s always difficult to find the right people, and I’ve learned how crucial it is to be absolutely certain that everyone is a good match. One of the greatest pieces of advice I’ve ever received was in this domain. I was told that you should trust everyone you hire enough that you’d be willing to let them hire ten more people without consulting you. What three pieces of advice do you have for young entrepreneurs interested in starting their first business? Patience and persistence: I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve failed and made mistakes. It’s certainly a long learning process but it’s important to keep trying. Team: Again I can’t stress enough how important it is to build the perfect team. Networking: In my opinion it’s all about the people you know. Start building your network as early as possible and it’ll pay off tenfold in the future. Even if you meet someone who can’t help you now, one day they may very well be in a position to assist you, so it’s important to stay in touch. How do you personally define success? I set goals ahead of time, and if I reach them I consider it a success. There are many different ways to define success; what’s most important is your own definition and that you always strive for it.

Tagged as: become an entrepreneur, business, business-ideas, entrepreneur, entrepreneur interview, entrepreneurship, starting a business, startup

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