Credibility is key to growing your company, whether it’s with potential customers, employees, suppliers, or investors.

Fortunately, there are ways to establish yourself as a credible expert in your industry, no matter your age.

Today I’ve asked Shreyas Tallamraju to show us exactly how it’s Done.

Shreyas is an entrepreneur, investor, and youth entrepreneurial advocate. He built 2 profitable ventures before turning 18; including building and running a tech consultancy company that employs 50+ contractors and holds $1.1 million in contracts. 

Take it away Shreyas!

I built a successful IT consultancy when I was 15 years old, growing it to 50+ employees and $1M+ revenue.

I had to deal with expert IT professionals and large, bureaucratic companies that would not do business with me unless I could demonstrate the following:

1. I was legitimate
2. I would deliver.
   

Here’s the techniques and tips I used to build credibility in my industry (IT/Software) and successfully get clients to buy my products, investors to give me money, and, most importantly, employees to work for me.

As a young entrepreneur, here are 7 ways to build credibility:

#1. Display Extensive Industry Expertise

There is absolutely no way around this – the most important way to build credibility is to have the knowledge necessary to intelligently converse with anyone in your industry.

There is no shortcut—customers and colleagues won’t cut you slack because you’re younger than they are. In fact, you may have to go a little above the ‘average’ expertise to compensate any hesitation that is derived from your young age (more about that on #3).

The key is that you always know what you are talking about when you are pitching for more business or hiring. You should know every single piece of jargon in your industry.

For the IT industry, for example, a commonly used term is ‘RCA’, which stands for ‘root cause analysis’. Despite the fact that most people can guess what ‘root cause analysis’ means, I knew what I was supposed to talk about when a customer asked for a ‘RCA’.

Bottom line is, there’s only two true ways you can be credible—to have expertise and to be ingrained in the culture of your industry. You can BS in the beginning if you want, but that will inevitably lead to not delivering (#2), and losing your reputation.

#2. Always Deliver

The biggest problem that other key players in the industry (customers, employees, investors) see when doing business with a young entrepreneur is the risk. They don’t know if you’re going to deliver the results as well as a dependable adult, or if you’ll slack off and lose focus (which are qualities that are perfectly normal to have when young).

The only way you combat this is to make a pledge right now. Go on, raise your right hand, and repeat after me:                                            

I will always deliver.

That is a mantra that you should remember forever. Starting from the first time you ever make a deal, always keep your promises, and deliver. Build a reputation that screams, “I am dependable and you can count on me!”

This means that if you make a deal with a customer to deliver, always send something back within an agreed time frame. Even if you’re not finished or you are behind a set schedule, send a progress report. It could be code if your developing an app or website. It could be a photo of a prototype.

Never go into any meeting or deal empty-handed.

#3. Always Deliver 120%

Now, you always deliver, but to truly build credibility, your work/product needs to be excellent. As in, not just finishing the job given, but delivering exceptionally excellent results.

As a young entrepreneur, you send addition signals of risk to older customers or co-workers. In my experience, people actually hire other expensive IT companies who charged 120% of what I did, just because they thought I was a risk to hire.

Thus, you need to mitigate this risk by delivering not 100%, but 120% of the value you are paid for. I realized that my customers were paying a 20% premium for reliability, so I would provide work that was 20% better than everyone else to justify them hiring me.

If you want to seriously compete with companies that are several times larger and filled with dependable, experience workers, you need to completely out-compete them to win.

The best way to do this is to always deliver 120%.

#4. Leverage Prestigious Authorities

I like this strategy a lot more than the previous ones, and it’s because this is the best way to build credibility without working harder than you already are (at least, in the traditional sense).

Prestige is largely an association game—people will look at brands and other people you associate with, and judge you accordingly. Whether this is unfair or not, this is what happens in the real world.

Thus, you, as a young entrepreneur, need to find credible and eminent domain experts who you can meet with and associate publicly.

I used this strategy to great effect—I once scheduled to speak at an IT industry conference. I knew that my young age (I was 16 at the time) would dilute the credibility of my words, so I had a well liked and respected peer in the IT industry (who happened to be 54 years old) introduce me before I gave my presentation.

This prestigious association immediately made a difference—my company grew nearly 70% in revenue in the one month following alone.

Because a young entrepreneur starts out with little prestige, this association with experience mentors and references can change your perception in the industry by leaps and bounds.

Your end goal is to be the prestigious person that would introduce less-known peers. This is when you know you have truly built credibility.

#5. Be Humble

Yes, you’re a young entrepreneur. While many others your age still study for exams and a chance to someday impress a HR representative, you’ve gone out into the unknown and are trying to do what others would only dream of. Good for you.

The issue is that many of the people you deal with are not like you. They are hard-working employees, thrifty investors, and hip consumers.

They don’t care about your accomplishments of ‘escaping the rat-race’ of Corporate America. They don’t care that your 18 and started your own profitable company that makes more in a month than they do in a year.

In the end, bragging about being a young entrepreneur, or having an air of conceit because of your entrepreneurialism, will turn off almost every investor, customer, and employee you meet.

You absolutely must have an air of absolute humbleness and be willing to learn from anyone around you, even your employees, if you are to succeed as a young entrepreneur.

Even if you think that you know exactly what you’re doing (which you do, according to #1), I’ve found it helpful to actually ask questions to my older employees and customers to build a reputation as someone who is willing to learn from others.

People will be jealous of young entrepreneurs no matter if the company succeeds or fails—it takes a lot of guts to go out there and do your own thing. Just make sure that you remain humble and willing to learn the whole time.

#6. Have Silent Confidence

At the same time, avoid fake humility like the plague. When you know something, and everyone else know you know it, pretending that you need help because you’re young will win you nothing—indeed, it could actually turn potential customers/investors off.

Since it’s granted that you are a domain expert, you should have an aura of silent confidence no matter what the circumstances are. This is a natural quality of all leaders, and young entrepreneurs are no different.

This is especially important for a young entrepreneur’s relationship with their employees. Since employees of young entrepreneurs tend to be of a similar or older age than the CEO, it is incredibly important to show everyone that the leader is in control of the situation, and seems to know what to do.

The key word is ‘seems’—ask any entrepreneur (young or old) and they will tell you that there are times in which there is no right answer or one could not possibly know the correct decision, and that’s OK.

You may not have the answers to every decision, but you have to seem like you are always in control. The slightest inkling of panic from you will be compounded by the fact that you are young to others, and you’ll be left with a dead business before you know it.

#7. Be Authentic and Don’t Fake

I can’t stress this enough. I’ve seen too many fellow young entrepreneurs who have no idea that the three business courses they took online have made their pitches to me look like a Dilbert comic strip, or an unfunny parody of modern office politics.

You are a young entrepreneur, but you won’t gain credibility by simply acting like an older one.

People won’t believe that you are serious if you speak exclusively in business-speak (words like ‘synergy’ and ‘workplace positivity’ come to mind) to them. You’ll simply look like you ‘playing’ entrepreneur, instead of actually owning a company. In the end, you aren’t really selling just a product.

You’re selling your brand and your story. Present yourself as an authentic and serious person who is an entrepreneur who happens to be young.

Follow the 7 tips I’ve discussed above and customers, investors, and employees will begin to take you seriously. You’ll be treated not as a cool news story piece, or a novelty, but a serious businessman/woman who is looking to build a real business.

Remember, it’s not about being a young entrepreneur. It’s about being a successful one.

Here are 21 tips to make you a successful 21st century entrepreneur.

The post 7 Ways To Build Credibility As A Young Entrepreneur appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Every year Yanik offers a few promising young entrepreneurs around the world the opportunity to go to his seminar on full scholarship. Each year, hundreds of applicants compete, but only a handful are accepted.

This year is the 6th-year running, and the fourth year that we’ve been hosting it atWebMakeMoney! Each one of these young entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to attend the event for free, network with some of the biggest names in business, and learn unique strategies to grow their own ventures.

Look out for these guys and gals! You can expect to see great things from them in the future. As always, let us know if you’re going to Underground this year. It’ll be great to see everyone. Find out more about Yanik Silver’s Underground.

Also, if you’re a young entrepreneur 23 and under and you haven’t applied for the scholarship this year, check out the streaming scholarship here, allowing an additional pool of scholarship winners to stream the event live from the comfort of your own home.

Harry Cammer – MyDigitalNatives.com 

I was born and raised in New York City. I am currently a senior at Tulane University in New Orleans majoring in Marketing and Consumer Behavior and minoring in Psychology. I started Digital Natives Marketing along with three other students in an attempt to help small local businesses leverage online tools (social media, web development, PPC, etc) to grow their business. I’ve always had a passion for tech and innovation, but unfortunately science and engineering were never my academic strengths. My current mission is to use this enthusiasm for technology to bridge the gap between technologists and the everyday person andhelp bring about meaningful change.

“Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it” – Bill Cosby

Paulo Ribeiro – aprendizadoacelerado.com 

Paulo Ribeiro is a modern strategist, writer and marketing lover. Author of an ebook on accelerated learning, he helps people to learn better and faster with a Brazilian company that offers trainings on metalearning. Paulo has helped raising thousands of dollars through GiveGetWin, a philanthropic organization that runs deals with amazing experts all over the world and wants to impact lives in Mongolia.

With his role as Ambassador of Exosphere, a Chilean startup disrupting the way we think about real-life education, Paulo expects to contribute to the solution of the entrepreneurial education problem. He helps people to live better and meaningful lives running a self-development community in Brazil called Estrategistas. And he is about to hold a degree in chemical engineering but has no idea what to do with it.

Tara Byrne – TaraEByrne.com

I connect alternative learning environments with startups to give students a better shot at an education that works. I’m invested in opening new pathways between like-minded individuals to share resources, incite conversations, and cultivate collaborative partnerships. I want my peers to be able to flourish in nourishing, challenging environments that support vulnerability and transparency.

I’m 18 years old and have been an entrepreneur since early high school, with my first project at 14.

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Craig Jaffa – www.azurawear.co.za

From the age of 9, Craig started his entrepreneurial journey selling Power Ranger toys and dodgy lemonade to his neighbors. Since then he’s co-founded an eco-friendly clothing label at university, and is now receiving mentorship and working within a digital marketing agency as an ‘intrapreneur’.

His vision is to embark on ventures that create growth in developing countries and have the greatest impact for the greatest number of people. One such venture is a current project to launch a South African startup incubator.

When he’s not immersing himself in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Vipassana Meditation, or playing late night didgeridoo, he’s secretly pursuing his stand-up comedy career.

“Find out today whether you are willing to do what it takes to give your gift fully. As a first step, spend at least an hour today giving your fullest gift, whatever that is for today, so that when you go to sleep at night you know you couldn’t have lived your day with more courage, creativity, and giving.” – David Deida

Brandon Wagner – mypalettefabrics.com

Business had ran through my veins my entire life, the desire to improve the industry – revolutionize business all together. To this date I’ve had 12 realistic start up attempts of all sizes, my most recent has been my most successful to date and I plan on staying with it 100% until June, when I will break off into this and a personnel blog.

I have a huge passion for graphic design, branding and sewing.

“We’re all different people, all throughout our lives when you think about it. That’s okay, that’s good. You’ve got to keep moving forward, so long as you remember all the people you use to be.” – 11th Doctor from Doctor Who

Maxine Schiffmann – www.TheLeaderOfTomorrow.com 

Maxine has started her blog to inspire students to live life to the fullest and become the CEO of their life. She is a self-proclaimed information junkie who loves everything related to personal development & entrepreneurship. She currently consults an e-learning start-up in her home country Germany while finishing her business degree.

One of her biggest inspirations is Marie Forleo who once said: “Hustle, have patience and don’t quit”.

Jerry Panzu – www.kondeexpress.com

I was born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was raised in Brussels, Belgium and the U.S. I attended boarding almost all my life. I started attending boarding school at the age of 8 at Rumsey Hall School in Connecticut. My father is a businessman. Owns his own construction company and has oil and copper mines in Africa. I have two sisters. My older sister is a college graduate and has 3 beautiful girls my nieces two of which are twins. I am very motivated, ambitious and a gym freak. When I am not in the gym, I spend a lot of time reading about astrology, ancient aliens, UFO’S, economics and much more.

“Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.” – Niccolo Machiavelli

Evan Luthra – EvanLuthra.com

I am a 18 year old entrepreneur who is thinking of new ideas to make this world a better place. I Conceptualize, Innovate and then work on Executing world changing ideas. I love building and rebuilding Products. Using creativity, ideas and magic, I build products in a way you’ll never forget.

I started out by curating Technology news at the age of 12, After crossing 200,000 readers – I moved on to developing mobile apps when I was just 13 , since then I haven’t looked back and created various web 2.0 companies and have user base of over 1,000,000 users. I have founded my own startup and now consult on others. I also occasionally speak at universities and Corporates about entrepreneurship.

“To get rich , you have to be making money while you are sleeping.”

Frances Farmer – stressoutlets.com 

Stress is a part of everyday life. It’s something to be dealt with, not avoided. A majority of people simply ignore stress until they finally can’t take anymore. Frances Farmer believes in facing stress head-on before it accumulates.

Frances has experienced first-hand the damage stress can wrought. She used to handle stress ineffectively by worrying excessively and overworking herself. As a result, she developed a stress disorder called Trichotillomania, causing her to pull out her hair as a stress response. For 7 years, she has struggled with the disorder. She finally found the light at the end of the tunnel when she learned about yoga. Yoga helped reduced her stress so much that it inspired her to search for other stress outlets. Thus, the journey began.

On Frances’ search for alternative methods of stress relief, she realized others probably have the same desire to find an outlet. So, Stress Outlets was born.

“SO” offers an assorted variety of stress relief methods from different cultures & philosophies to help you find a stress outlet you can plug into. The last thing you want to do when you’re already stressed out is to search for ways to calm down, you want immediate relief. “SO” brings the information to you in a nice and neat blog post, every Wednesday.

“Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.” — Cadet Maxim

Akshat Goel – www.iValueTech.com and www.TechiBiz.com

Akshat Goel (15 years old, New Delhi) is the founder of Techibiz. He is a mobile and web marketer with extensive knowledge in internet and mobile marketing. He is also the founder of iValueTech Apps, a mobile app development firm which specializes in Android, Kindle and iOS App Development.

Akshat can’t make it to Underground this year due to travel restrictions, but we were so impressed with this young entrepreneur that we wanted to make sure everyone reading this saw what he was up to.

The post Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s UndergroundX 2014 appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Marshall was a winner of the Underground scholarship the first year it was done, and has gone to a very successful entrepreneurial journey.

Marshall is really a product innovator, so we talked about his process for coming up with product ideas, the pre-launch process, and successfully running multiple brands at once. We also talked a bit about Marshall’s entrepreneurial journey, his successes, and his failures and lessons along the way.

My biggest takeaways from the interview include…

• Idea generation often has to be intentional at first, before it becomes natural. Marshall started by sitting down and consciously thinking of ideas, then eventually it became a natural process of innovation.
• Having an older business partner and mentor can go a long way in creating greater success as a young entrepreneur. Combine your young energy and creativity with their experience, resources, and wisdom.
• Most times, things won’t work the first time around. Maybe not even the first 5 times. This is normal, and you have to keep trying, keep pushing forward, and you’ll eventually get it right.
• While you can build a successful business from any circumstances, having freedom of location allows you to think and act more clearly, and be a more effective entrepreneur.
• As long as you build proper systems and automate the process, you can launch multiple unrelated physical products in different niches successfully without dedicated CEO’s or Product Managers for each.
• If working on multiple brands, even if unrelated, having a larger Umbrella brand (for Marshall this is NeedWant) helps build long term momentum and recognition in the marketplace.

The Google Hangout unfortunately cut out Marshall’s video at the beginning, so the recording is mostly just audio. You can listen below, and read the accompanying interview transcript.

Transcription

Dmitriy: I’m here with Marshall Haas, he’s 23 years old, a serial entrepreneur and product guy, he already develops lots of really unique stuff, he was a scholarship recipient for Underground, the first year we ever did the scholarship program and has before and since been a successful entrepreneur and has built really cool stuff over the last few years.

So welcome Marshall, thank you for taking the time today.

Marshall: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Dmitriy: Absolutely. So, I checked out your personal site in the needwant.com and it looks like you build a lot of like really unique products for unique market places almost like category creators.

So the first question would be, what’s your process for idea generation and then testing for market viability.

Marshall: Sure. I used to just sit down and literally try to have ideas, like as weird as it sounds, almost like trying to practice it and then like know what it’s just like, it’s always on my mind.

Looking for different problems that you know may have a solution but isn’t very elegant or with the bedding thing, like it was just personal frustration and like productizing a solution. So yeah, it’s all good place nowadays it’s just like more of like day to day like a natural thing. I don’t know which thought process starts to go in that direction when I have free time. So yeah, I don’t know it all, a good place.

Dmitriy: Cool. So now it’s like you solve the old problems and bring that to the market place?

Marshall: Yeah, I think so. Sometimes it’s our own problems, sometimes it’s others, there’s a gap in the marketplace and this could be really cool. I think the best solutions like smartbeddings is one of my favorite and like that one of course like a personal frustration and I understand the problem so I could figure best one to design a solution for it.

Dmitriy: Okay. So now that you have multiple ventures, or multiple products, did you end up starting like multiple things at once or did you start one and then once you’re like, “okay this one’s nice and neatly buttoned up, start the next”. Do you have a science to it? Or is it just like, you’re inspired and you go start something?

Marshall: Sure. Like most people, I can have like entrepreneurial A.D.D., I’ve heard that term a lot. So I used to just like go all over the place, it’s like “oh this is interesting” but I’m still like you know, well into this a year into this other thing, like I need to put my time into. So I think like over the last years, I got a little more disciplined. Like okay this is a cool idea but let’s put this on the shelf until we like really locked down a process on this one and get it rolling. So it’s like, I definitely became more disciplined about it and now it’s definitely like “alright let’s lock down going for needwant example like let’s lock down smartbedding, like keep production rolling, everything we need to get that set-up and then work on the next thing”. And sometimes whenever, there’s like downtime waiting on manufacturing or whatever we’ll do a little bit on the next thing. But yeah, I’ll definitely try to be way more disciplined with that with the last year because it’s definitely true, like when you start bouncing around things start to suffer.

Dmitriy: Yeah, you lose focus a little bit.

Marshall: Yeah, absolutely.

Dmitriy: So then on that note, right now and in the near future do you run all of the companies with yourself and your business partner or all of the projects and products or do you guys find operator CEOs for the individual subsets or companies?

Marshall: Yeah. So with Needwant it’s definitely Jon and myself. We’re 50-50 partners and we’ve never really looked at hiring someone else to like run the day to day. Also I don’t think we ever will; with physical products and you have that process down and you can now resell. So it’s not like a lot of day to day that needs to – basically what I’m trying to say is that you can automate a lot. It’s really worthless bringing in a CEO type for each product unless they’re much, much bigger.

Unofficially, I’m CEO and he’s much better with the product than me. Like he definitely I would say has a lot better ideas than I do. And I think he tends to spend a lot of his time to think up different ideas. So yeah, we’re a good fit. Like we definitely have a lot of the same skill sets. We’re both like super product focused. I’m focusing more on the business growth ideas and he’s working on like making product better. And there’s a lot of overlap as well but yeah I think that it’s going to be just the two of us working on it long term.

Dmitriy: Cool. Awesome. How much do you think finding the right business partner has played a role in your success so far for the last few years? And then going forward?

Marshall: I think it’s huge. The first thing I tried was with my cousin who was like my brother. And like whatever that was the first thing and it crashed and burned because probably we were both really inexperienced. So nothing against him. Yeah, I had a lot of business partners and you know I think you can make things work like you know people that aren’t the greatest ever but it’s definitely huge finding the right people. And thinking about that I would just start working on things by myself and just never really make any assumptions like “oh, I need a co-founder” at some point. And it just , you know, you meet different people, you start making things putting them out to the world. Meeting other cool people that are doing other interesting things. And sometimes they’re like a good fit and you both like a place where you both starting something up that it make sense to you to bring them in. And that’s how things happened with Jon and I. Yeah so super important obviously.

Dmitriy: Cool. Both you and Jon have exited before you started working together through some sort of a previous start-up company – so you tell me a little bit about that and then how that played a role in what you do now.

Marshall: Sure. So, Jon co-founded dailybooth which was like pre-Instagram, like it was this picture sharing platform, where like you use mostly, I think actually only the webcam. And like you take a picture daily was the idea then you could like respond with pictures. And it was like really interesting community of just pictures like going back and forth and like they make their income…. raise much money. Like Ashton Kutcher is an investor and stuff like that. like their pretty big. And then they were like aqua hired by Airbnb couple years ago, maybe like two years ago or maybe a year i’m not really sure. And then he left just prior actually and went off and started just like thinking out with different tons of different stuff. And then I was working on this company called Absorbed and it was like project management software with like a roll your own takes so the idea was like you know everyone needs something different so we built out this like very modular system where it’s like okay if I need these features I can grab them ànd build my own project management app to suit what I do versus an architect or an event planner. And so that was the first company where I raised a little bit of money, raise like 110k. I started with myself and then actually had a technical co-founder join me while I was in Chile for a start-up Chile. And actually the first product is like ultimately failed. We was not getting enough attraction, and we still own some money in the bank and the idea was like we can either double down on this original thing like totally redesign it or like let’s try something new. And this is a much longer story but basically I got connected with Andrew Wilkinson of Metalab. He and I started keeping in touch. I basically pitched him on doing like a 50-50 joint venture and the idea was like “hey we got some cash in the bank still and we can pair on way and let’s build a product together and let’s lunch under metalab. And it was like cool, awesome, that’s great but like you guys need to come up here for two months here in the Victoria, B.C. And so we did that and then all the while the idea was still it’s like a joint venture between two companies building new products, so like we’re still independent, they’re independent. And then while we’re up there, two months working together it just became very clear, they really liked us. And Andrew made an offer to press to join them and you know it’s good. I’ve always been a fan of Metalab so we obviously took the deal. So I’m actually still with them. Like I’m a partner with them now. So I’m like bouncing my time between Metalab and Needwant stuffs. So that’s getting way out of myself, that’s the start between Jon and I, and those two companies.

Dmitriy: Yeah for sure. It sounds like you know you probably learned a lot through all of those experiences that allowed you to build your own.

Marshall: Yeah absolutely.

Dmitriy: How much of a factor do you think, or how important do you think it is to have that flexible lifestyle where you feel like ok while I’m living here, I’m gonna move to Chile to work on a start-up and go up to Victoria. That’s obviously pretty cool how much of a factor do you think that plays in being able to have that agile lifestyle for an entrepreneurial success?

Marshall: Yeah, I mean, I just think it depends on your personality like some people need, you know, structure and like routine day to day. And I’m actually getting to that point now where it’s like I want, I wanted to just, like for a while I don’t know where I will be, I just wanna be in two months or six months or whatever or where I’m gonna be living. And that gets old but I think for several years like it’s awesome, like I’m super laid back. And I think I have the right personality where like I can thrive in those situations where it’s like, oh, this is exciting, like I’m gonna be somewhere new. So, yeah, I mean totally important but at the same time like, it does get old after you know, a while, like you want to be based somewhere, right?

Marshall: But yeah like having the freedom to do that is definitely a huge perk and I think like it helps with, you know, it all trickles down like being happy, likes helps you have good ideas, and like treat people correctly and think clearly like when you operating your business. That happiness comes from freedom of location and will help you I think thrive in whatever you’re doing.

Dmitriy: Cool. Awesome. So, some of your products launched at the other store and pre-launched, do you have any good tips for preparing for launch and how to market yourself during pre-launch so as to have a successful product launch?

Marshall: Sure. It’s like with physical products, we have definitely found, we were just like foreign lever kick starter, I think just that whole crowd funding platform and like concepts, like really, like helps kick things off where it’s like a very big bang like it’s theres a time limit on, like your customer’s being like ‘Oh i want this thing, I wanna be in the first run of it.’ And there’s like you know yeah, okay, you have 30 days or 60 days or 15 days or whatever the limit is to like get behind this thing, and like you know, hand over your credit card. So, I think that helps a lot, like we definitely just really embrace that model. And like you know, if you launch something and it just doesn’t do well like, you don’t have that much money right? Like, you know, we, I think costs is like 5K and be ready to launch your own kickstarter for the last thing we did. And if like, not enough people like it, we obviously would have been out like the 4 whatever 50k and have nothing to market it. Yeah, so with physical products like we definitely just embrace that crowdfunding model and as far as like, you know, different thing is ran now, like you know we’ve put up a coming soon page super early, I mean as soon as we like have the idea that like we’re gonna do this thing and you put up some sort of page with collecting e-mail. And like that definitely help a lot like having that pre-launch. And like now, you know fortunate time like good networking friends that have audiences similar to ours that you know we can just buddies, nothing like super formal that we can hit them up to help us just get the word out. So, it’s super dirty, the whole process isn’t super fun, it’s super messy. Like every time we’re gonna launch something but yeah, there are definitely some things that we’ve been able to repeat and like ok, this works, you know. What the next thing we’ll do, we’ll apply work with the thing after that. Yeah.

Dmitriy: Cool. How do you see the next 2 or 3 years playing out for you? Will you keep focusing on everything you have on the table now or do you envision possibly new ideas, new products, new campaigns coming at the play?

Marshall: Yeah, so I think like now I can say with certainty like I’m gonna be doing in Metalab like helping in like being a partner there like helping with software business and physical products through need what, you know, with Metalab I’m sure we’ll have a new product. I know we’ll have new products coming out in the next few years. It is all through that business at the same you need warrant and for Jon and I,I think we’re gonna bootstrap this thing to long-term and you know, there will definitely be new products but still under you know you need one. I think that’s just gonna the next 20-year plan, I think it’s a to be a part of those two companies and do the longterm like I definitely found exactly what I wanna do, splitting time between, like two different businesses like software, B2B software like consumer physical products but I think that like it scratches all the issues that I have as far as like you know, attention and I think I’ll never get bored doing this for the next 20 or 30 years.

Dmitriy: Cool. So you got to cater your entrepreneurial A.D.D. and still stay focused on something you know, so you got both like the certainty and uncertainty within one spear. Awesome.

Marshall: Yeah. Totally. There is definitely a lot of benefit now, like I always knew this but now I’m like seeing it first hand and to like building everything under one brand like you know ten years from now, people are gonna be like “Oh yeah, that physical product company Needwant’. It is like starting something from scratch, like you’re literally starting from nothing, like with every single product launch that we do, we got an existing customer base or fan base to like we market things to and not just like that’s so huge like that and it’s just easier when you’re launching new things. Yeah.

Dmitriy: Cool. That’s awesome, literally allows you to still keep doing new stuffs but really build momentum for the long term within one company.

Marshall: Exactly. Exactly. Awesome.

Dmitriy: You’ve had a lot of different experiences, my question to you would be about a mentor or something, firstly who have you had as your mentors or other figures you’ve looked up to and then what’s the best advice that you’ve ever been given personally?

Marshall: That advice one is hard, I actually haven’t sat down and like you know it’s the best advice for certain situations. As far as like one person, like I definitely always, I never really had like a formal mentor, like one guy that is like 10 or 20 years ahead of me that you know, I can always go to. It’s just been like a lot of different people that I’ve been fortunate enough to like question about one specific thing I could reach out to. And, so that’s of course, been huge like getting advice from like this giant pool of experts that I could get for knowledge or whatever questions, you know, I consider friends. I think Andrew, the founder and CEO of Metalab, he’s like 5 years older than me so, we’re not actually that far apart but he’s definitely had way more success than I have. I’m his partner now with things like I would consider, like if there was one mentor that I have, I would say it’s him. Like, just being in business with him, he’s further ahead of me. I would definitely say that it’s a roundtable of people.

Dmitriy: Cool. Awesome. And then to flip that, what advice would you give to, let’s say your younger self 5 years ago or to somebody that’s just starting in the business today that’s maybe around that age like 18 or possibly early 20’s?

Marshall: I think, there’s always this heed of uncertainty of doing things, like the back of my mind, there are tons of things like crashed and burned and failed, over and over, right? Like you tried something and didn’t work, and like I think and this applies to most things, and I think people know this in the back of their mind.This is like what keeps you from going and like, if you just keep trying things and like, really genuinely try and learn from what didn’t work last time, like whatever it was like we needed better marketing or a bigger audience to launch to or the product was shed or whatever it was. If you do it long enough, like you stay in the game long enough, and genuinely learn from your mistakes, like you will eventually figure it out; you only need to be right one time and so you’re gonna be right eventually if you stay in it.

Dmitriy: Right.

Marshall: I would just tell myself ‘Hang on buddy, like you’ll figure it out eventually’. Right? Like yeah, so like it’s frustrating because people figured it out sooner or later than others, like some people their first thing is like hitting it out in the park and others, and is like stories of whatever case like so many years of trying and eventually got it. And it’s like late age.

Marshall: So yeah, that’s frustrating to sit by and watch. I had a buddy that like had no interest in business and like the first thing he did was made good money from and it was a nice business to support his lifestyle. That’s frustrating to watch, you know, when you have been trying different things for like 5 years or whatever but like, eventually, I can just promise anyone that eventually, you’ll figure it out.

Dmitriy: Awesome. That’s perfect. Alright, well, I think we’re all set for the day. This is really, really great content. I actually got some good notes myself. It’s really inspiring, what you’re doing at this age so far, and it’s exciting to see what you’ll do the next 5 years and beyond. And it’s clear that you’re gonna keep tinkering and building new stuff and I’m really excited to watch.

The post Interview With Marshall Haas Of NeedWant appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

In this interview Sasha shares his Six Conversion Principles, some great tactics and examples, and his biggest life and business lessons from a year of trials and tribulations. Expect to get a lot of tactical nuggets on how to improve your website’s conversions, along with some inspiration and insight into the entrepreneurial roller coaster.

Sasha was a scholarship recipient for Underground Online Seminar 8, which gives scholarship opportunities to young entrepreneurs 13 – 23. If you’re a young entrepreneur 23 and under, apply by Friday, January 10th 5pm EST for your chance to win a ticket (or streaming scholarship).

Biggest takeaways from the interview with Sasha:

The 6 Conversion Principles:

1. Increase Your Value Proposition. Really evaluate your offer and make sure it matches what your customers are looking for. Posing this question to yourself can result in a series of small or big changes that boost your conversion.
2. Increase Relevance. Write specifically to your audience; the more narrow you can get, the more successful you are in converting your audience. Even if you are selling the same product, you can sell it differently to different audiences, making your campaign efforts convert much better.
3. Build Trust. Whether through personalized copy, or through social media credibility, professional design, or media mentions, increasing your visitors’ trust boosts your conversions.
4. Amplify Desire. You can amplify desire for your product without changing the product, offer, or value proposition at all. From great photography to product display and packaging, there are many things that you can do to amplify desire for your product and boost your conversions.
5. Eliminate Friction. In addition to adding elements to your site to boost conversions, you should also look at what you can remove to eliminate friction. Too many pages, too many fields on a form, or even a multi-step checkout process are all great examples of friction you can eliminate on your site. Make it easy for people to do business with you.
6. Add Ethical Urgency. Create urgency to take action now, but do so in a way that doesn’t violate the trust building principle or your integrity. For example, a physical product can sell out and you can create urgency around this, while an ebook ‘selling out’ just creates mistrust among your customers.

Biggest lessons from Sasha’s recent entrepreneurial roller coaster:

Lesson #1: What Is Not Sustainable Cannot Be Sustained. Take a good look at your business model and delivery process. Don’t oversell unless you can deliver, as it can lead to stress, poor trust, and ultimately implosion of your company through over growth. Build sustainable operations that deliver value, then sell that value, rather than focusing purely on sales and short term revenue.

Lesson #2: Work With Integrity, Even When It’s Easier Not To. Sasha went through a lot the past year – enough for many young entrepreneurs to just walk away, quit, maybe start over. But he followed through on his promises, was honest with his customers about his challenges, and ultimately made it out of the temporary struggle stronger than ever. Not just in his reputation, but also in his personal confidence, entrepreneurial ability, and future.

Enjoy the video interview, with transcription below.

Transcription:

Dmitriy: When we met at Underground 8, you were going kinda in two directions, one was the product route where you were developing some information products and training and the other was the higher end like B2B services, so sounds like you have taken more of the service direction, so what drove you to make that decision and tell me a little bit about how it’s been going since.

Sasha: Sure thing. Yeah as you said, I started off with a product and with a bit of promotion, I sold a few grand of it which isn’t very much and then I just got few, from that I got opportunities to do consulting and implementing services and that just snowballed and I just followed every revenue and then the product just kind of went on the backburner, while the
marketing agency has been growing in the first six months, we’re really amazing from zero to 300k in the first six months which was great.

So with the product not really working and the agency taking off, I decided well let’s just focus on networks and let’s just scale that up.

Dmitriy: How have you guys been able to get high end corporate clients, especially as a newer agency?

Sasha: At first by exhausting all our personal resources, our personal contacts, who do we know, who can we get up there, we didn’t really have any big name people we could put on and so that was the start.

With that, we did advertising on google adwords and I’ve really got the majority of our leads that way; about 2 or 3 percent of leads were from big clients and yeah we were just able to sell them all on to the service. The other thing that i’ve realized is that sometimes, you know selling isn’t that difficult. I had put I guess roadblocks on myself, mental barriers on selling where I thought I had to have this in place, and this in place, and this in place, until someone would listen to me or you know be willing to buy? What I found is, to make things really simple, just speak to your prospect, find out what they want, so focus on the outcome, and then just talk about what can we do to help them achieve that outcome. And you know you might, you might get objections throughout the process but you know that’s not a bad thing, just people doing their due diligence and wanted to make sure you are what you say you are. Just being able to handle objections is enough in saying that once you have more client logos you can show in your site, case studies and things like that, you just make things much easier and the sales process just becomes short of because you already have inbuilt trust.

Dmitriy: Yeah, but it sounds like for you even you built that credibility, it’s awesome that you guys were able to go out and say you generate a bunch of leads, put together sales process even without having, you know all those past testimonials and credibility in the first place, and then build all of that through, just through lead generation sales, really the kind of service that you guys sell that you are implementing for yourselves.

Sasha: A hundred percent. And the other reason why it was pretty straightforward is it is because it was a new market, there were very very few competitors, I think we’re the only in Australia that were doing this at the time when we first launched. So, because there’s no really competitions who really understand conversion optimization as clearly as we did, when people called us up, “Oh my God! You guys are speaking our language, this is what we want you know, we want more conversions, and…

And so now, as more and more conversion agencies are popping – up and more digital and marketing agencies starting to offer conversion like services, all that means is it’s not enough to just say we convert, we do conversion optimization, would you like some, we now have got to show how we’re different, how we’re better, and now being unique and demonstrating proof plays a more of an important role in it.

Dmitriy: So initially, you’re almost a category creator in the marketing agency world and now there so many people popping up in your category, you’re kind of creating a new level of differentiation.

Sasha: Yeah, I mean we went there first in the world, that in Australia we were definitely were, but we still marketed overseas. So, more of our clients were actually from America and the UK and Canada and then in Australia, so that’s really cool too. We initially have a global market from day one.

Dmitriy: Yeah, like instantly international business. That’s what so cool about you know building a business these days, there’s literally no barrier for that kind of growth.

Sasha: Yes.

Dmitriy: Then I guess a little more of a tactical question, and I know this obviously depends on a little bit on your specific style and the market but what are your top let’s say three conversion tips for a website right now or any kind of general principles that you can share with anybody who’s listening.

Sasha: Sure thing. So in terms of tips, we literally have hundreds of different techniques and strategies that we can apply. We also have a six core conversion principle model which basically encompasses all those hundreds of tactics, and six principles, right?

So I’ll go over those in a second, and when you understand all those six principles and you personally come up with your own creative ideas, on how to improve your conversions because what we do is what we say in our logo, “We do what beyond just practice”, and we do things more than just changing the color of your call to action by then or moving a few things around.

Conversion optimization to us is really thinking big picture and really it really encompasses pretty much all the different marketing you can do, you know, under that umbrella. So it’s a very wide scope we have and it’s about identifying what changes to your marketing and your business will increase the conversion the most. So, that’s how we look at it, and so for instance, so i’ll run in to the 6 principles:

Conversion Principle #1: Increase your value proposition.

Your value proposition is essentially the value your product creates. The value means different things to different people and different markets. To keep it really simple, in the electronics appliances market for instance, TVs whatever online, it’s all about costs, if we had 2 Samsung 45” LED TVs, exact same model and one retailer is selling it for $1000 and another retailer is selling it for $995, it’s only $5 difference for these guys but it’s the exact same TV and shipping is very undoubtful so, in this instance, you know pretty much everyone will go to the $5 cheaper TV ‘cause it’s lowest price market. Now, not all industries are about lowest price markets.

Value can be demonstrated through other means, so at first I suggest you think about what is value to my target market, so think about that for you. It could be your personal brand and reputation, it could be the result you’ve achieve for other people’s outcomes, and it could be like the average of all the results that you’ve achieved if you consistently show better results and achieving whatever you’re selling then the next time then you got an advantage in terms of proposition of being better, it’s just giving the best. It’s about being one step better than the competition.

Sometimes, value isn’t that more features, that more power, that more speed, sometimes, less is more when it comes to value. For instance, a few years ago, when the Flip Cam first came out, it was like, do you remember this? The Flip Cam?

Dmitriy: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah, it was all about less feature, just a super quick thing you just whip it out, you film something and then you just plug it into your laptop and you got quick video editor you can upload it.

Sasha: Exactly. And prior to that, they are already selling Panasonic, you know big bulky video cameras, all these features, optical zoom and this and that. The people didn’t want that, you know, there’s a market, we want less, we just want just get easy film, plug-in to the computer, done. And so, Flip whatever the companies out there made this camera really simple, and yeah it sold like hotcakes because to the market at that time, that was the value, something that’s quick and easy and simple.

So, get clear, my recommendations is that get really clear on what value is to your market, to your audience, think how you can do it better.

Dmitriy: So basically, under principle #1, adjusting value proposition, might have been adjusting operations wise was internally as far as how you deliver. Cool.

Sasha: Exactly, here’s a good reason example, Amazon very recently introduced an ad. They are going to introduce that 30 minute shipping with drones. And so that’s increasing value proposition for shipping, you know, faster shipping, also is a tangible outcome value proposition is really not far behind it.

And essentially with the proposition what we wanna focus on is innovation maybe that’s what it should be called, innovation. ‘Cause it’s making your product and service better and delivering more value to your customers and that’s time for innovation.

Conversion Principle #2: Increase Relevance

Sasha: Increase relevance. Relevance is basically how you communicates and if you have different target markets. Let’s say for iPads their target market was pretty much everyone that if they communicate it in special wires for instance and the Mac store, let’s say physical and somebody comes in and they shop in around and thinking I wanna buy an iPad, they’re not sure yet and the actual salesperson, let’s say it’s a kid, like a 15 year old teenager boy comes in and just looking around he’s on the fans club and the salesperson comes out to say, “Hey! How can I help you.” and goes on people you know like that. So for this salesperson to be relevant to this guy, he should think what this 15 year old kid care about like you know, all the games he can do, you know, how he can launch social media network, just like, it’s God! You know snapshot and just talk about all things just relevant to a teenage boy or find apps whatever and to tell just “Yes, yes that’s exactly what I want.” he bought it. And now later a mother, you know comes in with her 2 kids and says, “I wanna buy an iPad or I’m thinking on buying an iPad” so the salesperson to her, you know to be relevant he needs to say things which will appeal to her like, say or what did she lack on cake recipes or bored when I’m cooking and he press the apps and hear about the latest news you know blah blah blah, fashion magazines, all the stuff like so the salesperson just shows pages relevant to that on what she wants.

Dmitriy: So basically that’s the same thing for people on your website when you’re already thinking about who’s your audiences and being super relevant to what they doing.

Sasha: Exactly, and there are many ways to do but a really simple one that’s easy to implement in getting results from is by having a segmentation survey on your homepage. So, first thing you do is select an audience; you know it could be by age groups, it could be male or female, it could be by the level of experience at a certain topic or whatever, and then you can now have one question, a multiple questions and then you send them down the funnel and create a totally relevant experience depending on who they are and where they are at. And people look up and, “Oh my God, you get me” which will result in higher conversions.

Dmitriy: That’s awesome. Yeah, it’s so cool and makes a lot of sense rather than selling the same product to the, to a larger audience the same way every time really narrowing down a funnel based on a turning base than who your market is. Awesome!

Sasha: Yeah, and another why is you probably know with landing pages, so you could do in adwords, advertise, Facebook advertising, the more relevant your landing pages to your ad and to your keyword people were searching for, the higher the conversion will be.

So, if we’re selling office chairs, and we have all sorts of office chairs from the cheapest ones to the most expensive ones. Let’s say it’s a google search type in a cheap office chair you want to if that’s really selling you own your landing page says, “Hey we have cheap office chairs.” And you know post a picture of your office chairs and explain why you have the cheapest, good quality and whatever you want and until we saw some top high office chairs or Hermanela office chair you show by landing page the Hermanela office chair and try to talk about your cheap office chairs because that’s not going to appeal to that person to offer a high-end office chair. So the more tied you are to what people want the better.

Dmitriy: Awesome!

Sasha: Thinking big picture, relevance comes in your actual marketing and the position of your business maybe how business should be positioned at a particular segment and i’ve been trying reach so many people, so we look at a really big picture well not just what’s going on, on your website.

Conversion Principle #3: Build Trust

Sasha: Alright, build trust. If people don’t trust you then how can they buy, right? So, to trust has to show in many different ways from one really obvious one, the design with your site. If your design like looks you know cheap and outdated and looked really bad that’s gonna hurt trust. Paradoxically, if people already know you like they know your brand then that’s okay. It doesn’t really matter how your website looks.

For example, if you have come up from an idea for an offer and you wanted to send it to your list, you cannot like use you know, simplest website, the most ugliest thing in the world right? But, you just say, “Hey guys! I got this idea who’s interested?”, ’cause people sense they know you, they like you or they trust you, they don’t care how it looks, it doesn’t matter. And so, you keep that in mind you gotta understand that you exist in relationship whether it’s a person or could be with a brand you’re presenting, its company, design is one thing, or possible from the design is obviously you know it’s a way better. At the end of the day you can test it but a good design, it generally converts most of the time, also obvious stuff and more testimonials, adding credibility just like big clients that you have worked pr credible associations you’re part of in which boosts your credibility, all these things could use trust and heaps of different things it could be social proof you know, having a big Facebook following so people say, “Oh there’s already thousand of people trust these guys, it must be good”, something like that.

And for instance, if you have Facebook page use things like ten followers and having them on your site and people might be bit reluctant and think these guys must be brand new, who are these guys no one knows about them, so it can hurt trust. So if you go to a site and you show in your Facebook likebox, a very few people you know liking you or following you, then you are actually doing yourself a disservice by showing it there.

Conversion Principle #4: Amplify Desire

Sasha: Amplify desire, so, what can we do to really make the people desire what you have without changing the product just that by showing it in a different light. For instance, let’s go back to office chair example and if we’re selling like, we have a picture or a photograph of the chair. If the picture is done on a shoot-camera phone and it’s kinda dark and it’s blurry and has a bad angle. It doesn’t look like great. Then, you have very well hurt conversions. If however, the photo is done in a professional photo studio, it looked amazing, you know, had the colors and everything. It just makes me go, “Wow, that’s incredible. It looks so great!”, and that amplifies the desire. And if the product is just exactly the same, just by putting it in a different light, it can make people want it more or less. So, you to think what can you do to make your product look better and it could be the design of your product packaging itself, it could be the design of your actual product.

I’m not here to give you a top ten list of recommendations and so okay do these things and get more conversions. I really want to empower you to understand what makes a website conversion go up or down in real time. So, you have the power to come to like a matrix and see what you need to do at any given time and which principle is holding back your conversions the most, so you know what to focus on. ‘Cause there’s thousands of things that we could do, that’s about getting clear on what will make the biggest impact. And other thing to keep in mind is, two years ago I wrote a book, which includes blueprints which has underage principles, a lot of tactics listed, see those ideas as well. So, for anyone interested just email me at [email protected] and I can send you more facts.

Principle #5: Eliminate Friction

Sasha: It sounds obvious, right? If there is friction on your sites, then, it’s gonna slow down your conversions. You wanna make things really simple, effortless, you don’t want people to think, you want them to click, and skim, ‘yup, yup, i like, great!’ done.

The more friction you have, the harder it is for people to convert, so this can mean your website being slow. You wanna increase your website load speed. It could mean, reducing your checkout process, you may have 5-6 steps in your checkout, I’ve seen this. And reduce that down to a simplified checkout process that helps. It could be about eliminating phone fills you don’t actually need. I mean, so many people are, this massive prongs within they share they don’t even need, but they include it anyway just I don’t know why. So, the more simple you can make it, the more streamlined, the better.

Dmitriy: Your site doesn’t really have much of a navigation and stuff kind of following that principle of eliminating friction?

Sasha: Yeah, totally. If you’re look on the site right now, it is in absolute face hold aside. I’ve purposely done that because as a side note, I’m actually rebranding, I did have a business partner I brought on a while ago, and some things happened and now like, I guess we had a legal dispute but long story short, rather than try and battling, battle him for the name, I’m just going to make a new brand. We will be pivoting going down an even better direction and there’s so much to be learned from that in itself, from like what’s been going on in last 9 months with that stuff. Like I’ve been in the business for six years now doing my own stuff and the last 3-5 months

Dmitriy: You’re 24, right? So that’s starting from 18 to 24?

Sasha: Yeah.

Sasha: Yeah. And, the last 6, 9 months as I’ve been really, really, really, really tough time with the stuff that’s been going on, you know, it’s actually what’s making me, it actually what’s, I’ve learned so much more in this last 6, 9 months and I had for the whole 6 years of doing this stuff. So grateful like that shit situation happened, I’ve now grown an unbelievable relationship with clients with internal systems and processes that phenomenally better. Everything is much in my confidence and skill set as an entrepreneur is much better like everything is just unbelievable. I’m going to make a wild pause this one day and that’s really distill the lessons and what-nots and that’s I’ll leave when that comes out because that’s gonna be awesome. Like I learned so much from it. It made me a lot stronger. And, one thing I realized is for a long time, 2xConversion cause I think it’s really a great name, it’s like my baby, I was really emotional and attached to it, and I might still end up getting it depending on how and what my lawyer does and works out and have that really, I don’t care. I know that the success of my company moving forward where I’ve gone where I’ve wanted to go; it’s not gonna be determined by the name.

Dmitriy: Cool. So, i actually don’t know any of that comment this, so I actually wanna come back and hear more so let’s quickly cover number 6 and then i wanna hear about some of your lessons from the past a year ago and the years before.

Conversion Principle #6: Add Ethical Urgency

Sasha: A lot of websites add urgency, ‘How are we gonna sell out? Is there only 10 copies remaining in some e-book?’ We all laugh, we’re not supposed to. And that’s not going to sell out.

Dmitriy: You’re not going to print more digital e-books. Yeah.

Sasha: Yeah. Exactly. So, instantly you say that. You know, most of our clients aren’t really into that because it’s more companies and more low-standard businesses. Actually, 99, no a 100% we don’t work with any internet marketers…

Dmitriy: Actually that’s cool because you were able to apply a lot of the Internet marketing strategies and principles and the stuff you learned from that industry, really ethically to more traditional large companies which have a lot of money, which have a lot of huge customer base but aren’t necessarily tweaking things maximally like people on the internal marketing industry do.

Sasha: Yeah, exactly. And that’s one of the lessons I learned you know, i started off in the Internet marketing like years ago and make information products and things like that and bring in hope inside a community, but then I realized thinking of myself as an internet marketer is actually restricting myself.

What really empowered me and set me through was thinking of myself as an entrepreneur. So, rather than trying to be like Frank Kern, or any of the top internet marketers these days, I changed my approach to how I can be like Richard Branson, Donald Trump, these likes of people? And that mindset is what really helps my business grow a lot. So, whether you’re into marketing, you know, that’s your industry, that’s cool but I want you to think of yourself as an entrepreneur that is serving that category.

Dmitriy: That’s awesome, so, would you say that that kind of shift in your own personal perception of yourself has had a huge impact on how you operate, how you do business?

Sasha: Yeah. I started wearing suits now. (laughs). I’m just kidding. Yeah, totally, like you know, like just really thinking bigger picture and starting the Inc 500, Inc 5000 list seriously, I’m looking at those things as unrealistic anymore.

And, what can I create? What can I innovate? What can I bring to the world? That’s when you innovate it and how can I join those lists.

Dmitriy: Cool, so tell me a little bit more of your past. Your past year, you mentioned that you probably learned more lessons from the past like 9 months or so, the past year than a lot of your business experience before that.

Without going into like crazy dramatic stories what would you say like the top 2 or 3 things that you learned that you could take away from it that if you wish you could have gone back like told that younger version of yourself of you talking an entrepreneur now that sharing that information would really make a difference.

Sasha: Sure, I’m just gonna spit it up what comes to my head. No particular order ‘cause like I haven’t thought about prioritizing lessons, so let’s start off with sustainability: what is not sustainable cannot be sustained.

Lesson: what is not sustainable cannot be sustained.

So I’ll explain. We were getting more and more clients everyday. Adding a new clients, sometimes adding 1 client a day, sometimes 2. And it’s really exciting starting and everything is growing really fast, the problem is our operational delivery wasn’t growing at the same rates. As our sales were up here, but our operational capacity was here. And the sales increase like this but operational was just increasing slowly. So, as you can imagine fast forward a few months, and how we all got these client projects past deadline, over budgets, things not working and just so much stress, everything has to come on hold. And all these projects where we had all this revenue now start becoming losses and things go down, and by chasing the short term revenue at the expense of sustainability, you’re always going to lose money in the long-term.

Just not having enough experience in managing a service-based business and understanding the operational capacity and having the right systems in place to manage work flow and this and this. So, there’s a point where I had 25 projects – I was responsible for and just not enough time or resources so you implement them.

So, that put me in between a rock and a hard place, and I suddenly felt the pain of that, from projects, you know losing money on projects, so many problems and pain from it so, rather than give up, I learned from it and then we put sales and marketing on hold and really fixed operations. And, so I spent months learning project management, agile development, all this stuff, what we could do, how do you get to this practice, what is the best way that this stuff is being done now? And then creating an implement team, this systems, getting the right people onto the team, getting the right people off the team so that we have a team, the capacity that we can deliver on. So, when the client says ‘Hey, I want this.’, I can check what we can work on and then I can confidently say whether we can or can’t do that. Only make promises you can keep and at the start, if you don’t have much experience in it, it’s a longer day out that you’re fighting till you’re making it. What I recommend is ask those who have done it before and get their feedback and advice on it and how they may help you make systems or tell you what you need to know so you’re not just guessing and hoping everything will be okay, you actually understand what is involved and how it will all look.

Dmitriy: I was just going to say I can totally relate to the story of over-selling and trying to deliver and going back to trying to say how are we gonna fix the actual delivery process so that the time you’re making a lot more sales again, it can be sustainable and actually be a growing business for it’s just shuffling money around.

Sasha: Yeah, exactly.

Dmitriy: Yeah, go on, your second big point there.

Lesson #2: Integrity.

S: Integrity. Very simple, you know, you hear all the time but really understanding it is so important. You know, when things went down and my business partner basically took a whole bunch of money he wasn’t meant to and caused a lot of things which made the company into a 100k of debt just to fix that. He just abandoned everything saying “Fuck the clients, who cares? I’m out of it”. Yeah. I could have done the same and just walk off and replace the company but being constantly screwed over, I was not prepared to do that. I realized, okay, I’m between rock in a hard place, all these improper projects which are resting on me now, my responsibility, not for a second, I would not consider screwing my clients. Something I have promised to them, I’m going to deliver. If I can’t, then I would refund. And, so, I told my clients of the situation, I explained what was going on, I was totally transparent with them and no one got angry, everybody understood. A lot of my clients were entrepreneurs and business people, and you know it happened to them. So they were totally cool with it and actually very supportive. You know, they gave me extended deadlines and reduced work load. They really made the work more easier. That’s what you hear about being totally transparent and active integrity. You know, doing the right things by your clients, by your family, whoever it is. Integrity in essence is not mine, it’s caping your word, and it’s doing the right thing. It’s not screwing people up and so, it comes back in ten fold by acting integrity even when I didn’t have the resources, I didn’t have the energy, I didn’t have the emotional capacity like to do the relations with so much going on.

But, also during this time by the way, my Dad got diagnosed with cancer, my dog of thirteen years passed away. It was like 2013 was the worst year ever year for me. And, it was just, yeah, it was really tough but I got a lot of support from my friends, business associates and mentors, and I just kept going through it one day at a time. I was at a seminar put on by a young entrepreneur group Entourage, which are quite popular in Australia and there’s this woman and she said basically as an entrepreneur, there are several times, there would be a few times when you’ll find yourself in bed with the sheets over your head thinking oh my God, I’m going bankrupt, everything is fucked, this is terrible, what am I going to do, entirely overwhelmed. And she goes, this happens to everyone, and I was like, Oh my God! that was me a few days ago!

Dmitriy: Yeah. That’s normal.

Sasha: Yeah. Exactly. And I realized, business is such an emotional rollercoaster…. the biggest highs and biggest lows, and just keeps going and going and going. So, the goal is trying to be most stable and what’s good is the more, like when you have things like super lows and get through it, it makes you stronger, it builds your character so next time you experience a problem or stress, like you’ll be much more numbed to it. Like you’ll see that it’s a problem you need to deal with but wouldn’t really affect you emotionally, just like ‘Oh yeah, we got to deal with that. Oh yeah, we got to see him, okay, whatever.’ You know, it’s just not big deal, it’s just what you do.

So, by going through a really tough time, once you come out of it like I’m just stronger for it, emotionally, in every way which helps me with everything else I do in business and in my life… it helps in sales, it helps me in leading my team, helps me with just about everything.

No matter how bad things are, don’t screw people over, always do the right thing by people and without expectations you know that it will help you better, it will but don’t rely on that. Just do the right thing because it’s the right thing. That’s it. Very simple but really really important.

Dmitriy: Awesome. I think we will end this with that. Sasha, that was an incredible interview, honestly, like so much more than I have expected. Building that integrity in at the very beginning so that when you’re going through those struggles, it makes it not necessarily easier, but more possible.

The post Interview With Sasha Gilberg of 2XC appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Now, the actual content from this seminar has to stay Underground… but I’ll open up my personal notebook so you can take a peak at some of my biggest insights from the conference. Even so, this is like less than 3% of the actual incredible content that I learned there. Read to the end to see how you can get the same opportunity I did as a young entrepreneur to attend this year’s Underground live this coming March.

1. There is a three step formula for creating success online, inspired by AJ Robert’s presentation:

1. Get The lead
2. Convert The Lead
3. Deliver Awesomeness

This might seem obvious, but it’s actually quite insightful when you think about the fact that most young entrepreneurs miss one of these three key steps when building an online business. They might have an awesome product to deliver, lots of leads, but are missing the conversion element. Or they might be great at getting leads, pretty good with conversions, but don’t deliver the best product or service, making it harder to get repeat business. You need all three elements nailed down to build a thriving and sustainable business online.

Lately, I’ve been really good at getting leads and converting sales, largely because my previous work was so awesome and I built a reputation. Then more recently, my business started to suffer a bit because I wasn’t delivering as much awesomeness as I used to. Now that I’ve kicked #3 back into gear, the whole process is working a lot more smoothly! So this applies whether you have a services company or are selling information or technology online.

2. The Five Keys To Burnout (Avoid These!) inspired by Craig Ballantyne’s Presentation

1. Take on too many projects
2. No separation between work and non-work – leads to the biggest stress
3. You do too many $10/hour tasks
4. You are addicted to technology
5. Too much of what we all want – freedom – I am my own boss

This presentation had such an impact on my lifestyle and my business. Let me explain each one a bit more in my own words…

You take on too many projects: you know why you do this. You’re an entrepreneur. You get excited about ‘starting’ great things. The irony is, the more things you start, the less ‘great’ you can make each one until you learn how to focus and scale. Focus on making your key project(s) successful before moving onto the next great thing.

No separation between work and non-work leads to the biggest stress: Again, this is like an entrepreneurial disease; we can’t seem to ‘turn off’ enough to get rejuvenated and build the non-business parts of our lives, like health, family, and relationships. You have to set aside some time each day, and longer periods throughout the year, to totally disengage from your work. When you come back, you’ll be energized and refreshed with totally new energy.

You do too many $10/hour tasks: eliminate and delegated. My biggest solution to this has been to outsource. I wrote another post on outsourcing on IncomeDiary.com a few months after hearing Craig give this presentation on how I applied outsourcing in my business and how you can too.

You are addicted to technology: set several hours each day totally disconnected from your phone and your computer. You’ll hone clearer thinking and make better strategic decisions about your business, you’ll write better, and you’ll even find more peace in your life.

Too Much Freedom: I struggled with this a lot when I first heard this. Freedom actually comes largely from structure, rules, and systems. A lot of young entrepreneurs struggle with this, especially when they first start to make a full time income from home, because they can do what they want when they want. The irony is, if you don’t build structure, you’ll always have more stress and uncertainty, and less real freedom.

3. Screw The Unconditional Guarantee! Inspired by Marie Forleo’s presentation.

Don’t give customers an unconditional guarantee – make the refund terms conditional instead. Your customers actually get MORE value and you get LESS refunds. In order to qualify for a refund, students must submit completed homework. As a result, more of your customers will actually apply what they learn in your course or coaching programs, they’ll get more value from your service, or actually try and use the physical product. If they get results (which they should, assuming you are selling something great), you’ll get even more customers from the word of mouth that results from it.

Try it next time you craft your offer: give your students practical steps to apply before they can even ask for a refund.

I’ve done this with some of my clients’ info marketing and event project and have seen some great results. This is especially important when you have live events, or even webinar series, that are time senstive and have a lot of real hard costs.

4. Get REAL leads from Facebook Fan Pages inspired by Brian Moran’s presentation

Your fan page is so much more than a fan page. If done right, it’s an incredible source of fresh leads from targeted advertising. Create a tab on your fan page and make it a squeeze page – right within Facebook! Then drive paid traffic to it (cheaper than driving Facebook PPC traffic to an external lead capture page). You get two forms of leads: a fan/like, and an email. Even if they don’t optin to the email box, you will often still get a fan.

Your followers grow, more people see your message, your credibility grows, and you’re still focused on the most important lead generation component: capturing your prospect’s email address!

5. IDE = Innovation, Design, Experience … inspired by Ewa’s and Vishen’s (from MindValley) presentations.

This was probably my biggest takeaway that I leveraged for myself and my clients. The old school Internet marketing designs are on the way out, especially for higher end professional markets. Instead of big, bold, red headlines to grab your prospect’s attention – start studying what really innovative and successful companies do to attract customers. The Google’s and Apple’s of the world.

Think high end imagery. Clean design. Interactive experience and gamification. Not only will you see higher conversions, but you’ll also be more proud of your site and brand, and excited to present it to as many people as possible who might share your message.

This concept alone has transformed my business and is now the focus of my company: building a MindValley-like services agency that delivers incredible professional design that converts!

6. Your affiliates don’t care how great your product is… inspired by Glen Ledwell’s presentation (of MindMovies).

Your product must be great to even play the game. Your affiliates really care about what’s in it for them!

A lot of relatively amateur marketers tout the features of their product to affiliates. You’ll notice the more advanced launches focus on what’s in it for the affiliate. They make it quickly obvious that the product great and will provide a ton of value to their list, so that your affiliates know their lists will be appreciate for the promotion. But after that, the focus has to be on what’s in it for the affiliate: affiliate tools, EPC’s, prizes, and more. Once you’ve got your affiliates sold on promoting what you have, make sure you take good care of them!

Pay early commissions when you can, follow up with your bigger affiliates personally (call, don’t just email), have a leader board setup to track affiliate success and create some friendly competition, and make it fun and profitable for them.

7. “Doing traditional things will get you traditional results” inspired by Noah Kagan’s presentation.

Noah taught these steps for building a really successful marketing funnel (for multiple, often unrelated products)…

1. Do a lot of shit
2. Figure out what works
3. Scale the shit that works!

What works for someone else’s market might not work for yours. Try different advertising strategies, colors, copy, etc… test it and see what works, and what doesn’t. Then scale what works. Apply more of it, and keep innovating and tweaking as you go.

8. Network, network, network! Inspired by my results.

Okay, this wasn’t a lesson from the content – but it was a very real lesson I picked up from the experience. Underground 8 totally changed my life – but it wasn’t just because the content was incredible (which it was). It was because I put myself out there and took risks, I asked questions to the speakers on stage, I bought drinks for people I wanted to talk to and get to know, and I let my passion shine through. I put aside all fear of embarrassment or failure. I even break danced a few times (I don’t really know how to break dance) – okay… Michael Dunlop bribed me… for entertainment. The point is, the networking at Underground, even more than the content, propelled me in the past year to totally new heights. I came as a scholarship recipient to Yanik Silver’s Underground 8, and months later I started working with Yanik on a few different levels, and now we both envision a future of creating 10,000 startups by 2015 through various young entrepreneur programs and initiatives.

None of this would have happened if a) I didn’t go to Underground, b) I didn’t pay close attention to the content and the people and c) if I didn’t put everything on the table and put myself and my passions out there.

Your Opportunity:

If you’re a young entrepreneur aged 13 – 23, you have an opportunity to get a scholarship to Underground 9 this year ($3,495 value + priceless bonuses, like masterminding with Yanik and the Mavericks). But you have to apply by January 24th, so go ahead and do it now.

I hope to see you there!

Apply for the scholarship here

If you’ve been to an Underground Online Seminar, please share your experience below. If you’re coming this year or are thinking about it, or if you got some value from my notes above, please discuss below. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll answer!

The post 8 Secrets From Underground 8 appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

This year is the 5th-year running, and the fourth year that I’ve been hosting it atWebMakeMoney! So usually we only give out 10 scholarships, but because of this years exceptional pool, we actually accepted a total of 13 ! Each one of these young entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to attend the event for free, network with some of the biggest names in business, and learn unique strategies to grow their own ventures.

Look out for these guys (and gal)! You can expect to see great things from them in the future. As always, let us know if you’re going to Underground this year. It’ll be great to see everyone. Find out more about Yanik Silver’s Underground.

Larry Yu – DigitizeMyBusiness.com

Larry is a serious student of direct response marketing skilled in lead generation, marketing funnel creation, copywriting, and systemization. He and his brother currently run a web design and digital marketing firm called DigitizeMyBusiness that helps small business owners generate leads, increase sales and boost profits.

His biggest inspirations are Jim Rohn, Tim Ferriss, Johnny Ly, Travis Pastrana, Will Smith and Dan Kennedy. Their ideas and philosophies about life have made a major impact on him.

“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn

Daniel Vitiello – DanielVitiello.com, ActNow.io

Daniel has become obsessed with the power of big data and is working on giving ecommerce stores software that will tailor different offers for different visitors in real time.

Catherine Bronzo – GetRichinCollege.com, Logos4Laptops.com

Catherine has created a blog in which college students can learn how to become self-employed. It provides inspiration and insight into a world that may seem impossible for young students and entrepreneurs. In addition to teaching college students how to live the life of their dreams, Catherine has begun work on her first real business which will allow for companies to advertise on college students’ laptops. Support her blog and her first business by spreading the word! Her biggest inspirations are Tim Ferriss and Shay Butler, as well as many others.

Perry Yu – DigitizeMyBusiness.com

Perry lives his life by 5 core values: Freedom, Connection, Self Excellence, Value and Creativity. He sees entrepreneurship as a way to achieve freedom of lifestyle, connect with people in a unique way, force himself to stay progressive, provide value to the world on a large scale, and spark his natural creativity.

Perry currently runs a web design and digital marketing firm called DigitizeMyBusiness with his brother Larry. On the side, he also does freelance copywriting and has written for several successful product launches.

His top inspirations are Richard Branson, Tim Ferris, Johnny Ly, Dan Kennedy and Mark Cuban. Each one of these entrepreneurs have made a significant impact on the way Perry develops his brand, lives his life, and approaches entrepreneurship and business.

Perry is a self-proclaimed personal-development junkie and lives by a quote he heard from the late Jim Rohn: “Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better”.

Ryan Krysiak – RMKStudios.com

Ryan is a strategic video marketer that uses his skill set of search engine optimization to drive massive amounts of traffic and generate sales via video. In 9 short months, his business transformed from a hobby to a full time job.

Chris McCann – OutlierAcademy.com

Chris is the fearless visionary of his two companies: Outlier Marketing & Design and Outlier Academy.

Whether it’s building online marketing solutions for brands or teaching entrepreneurs through Outlier Academy’s online courses, Chris is continuously committed to helping others achieve entrepreneurial expansion.

One of his biggest inspirations is Tony Robbins and Chris is currently devouring any and all training that Tony has to offer.

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Lukas G Resheske – YoungEntrepreneurAcademy.kajabi.com

Lukas started on the entrepreneurial path midway through college after the terrifying realization that he didn’t have a clue what he wanted to do with his life. His business ventures include local app marketing, ebook publishing, app development, and an interview site designed specifically to guide young entrepreneurs (age 29 and below) to become really, really, ridiculously successful.

He has three main inspirations; his mother Air Force Lt. Colonel (Retired) Julie Resheske, Tim Ferriss, who taught Luke that he really could do everything in one lifetime, and Robert H., who believed in Luke when nobody else did.

“Out of every hundred men, ten shouldn’t be there, eighty are are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.” – Heraclitus

Justus Allen – GetLeadsGetMoney.com

Justus is an extraordinary entrepreneur – definitely huge things coming from this guy. Justus is the CEO and Founder of GetLeadsGetMoney.com, which is comprised of 3 core pillars – A marketing platform that allows you to license his whole GLGM product line and sales machine, a Gold Inner Circle Family, which is a elite university and incubator for some of the world’s top direct response marketers, and a rapidly growing info-marketing/service business.

Justus is also a full-time professional musician, playing drums with national recording artist JJ Lawhorn. He says his biggest inspiration is “Strategists, innovators, visionaries, young people doing big things, and every one of you who is doing what you love, turning dreams into reality, and bringing more happiness to the Earth! …And, I’m inspired by surfing, music, & hot wings. DEFINITELY hot wings.”

Go check out Justus’ stuff and say hey – he’s a ton of fun, and has a massive vision to bring change and service to the world.

“Fate is for any man too weak to create his own destiny” – Kamran Hamid

Wes Schoeb – Fightingravity.com

Wes and a group of his Fraternity brothers decided to take what was once a performance developed for a charity event, and turn it into a business. The performance group, which does up-tempo blacklight illusion and choreography, is called Fighting Gravity. They have performed in over 5 countries with a majority of their performances having been for Fortune 500 companies. They are and have been in development of their full-length show for the past year.

Wes lists Josh Linkner (CEO and Managing Partner of Detroit Venture Partners) as one his biggest inspirations. “The passion that Linkner directs towards the value and overall importance of creativity assists me in preventing any form of complacency within the business”

” To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mo Sahoo – Abilitylist.com

Mo helps individuals with disabilities find and share the resources, organizations and people that can help them in their own hometown. Mo’s biggest inspirations are his friends Amit and Matt, who each represent an ideal that he strives for daily, and Michael Mansoor.

Timothy Kenny – TimothyKenny.com, TimothyKennyUniversity.com

Timothy Kenny is a guy who lives in Lexington, MA and believes that learning how to learn faster is the most underrated and valuable skill for entrepreneurs. He wrote “Accelerated Learning for Entrepreneurs” after going on a journey to figure out why he forgot (and failed to implement) so much of what he learned from the business books he read.

Jock Purtle – BrokerCorp.com

Jock helps web masters sell their website through his website brokerage service brokercorp.com. He also buys websites for his own portfolio.

“Think big, make it happen” Donald Trump

James Guldan – 24HourTechStud.com

James was born in Green Bay, WI and graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire with a degree in Computer Science and Business. He created his business while still at the university and continued to build it while getting his degree, partnering with a college classmate along the way. James specializes in technology support for websites, marketing funnels, and almost any other web-based platform. His real passion is always finding a way to answer the question of “Can this be done?” with a YES, and proves this ability on a daily basis for many top marketers in the industry.

His passions include his iPhone, which he has developed apps for — he also enjoys working with/building computers, building his first computer when he was about 11 and has been playing around with them ever since.

“Everybody always has a plan until they get punched in the face” – Mohammed Ali.

The post Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s Underground 2013 appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Sasha Gilberg – www.2XC.com

Sasha helps marketers and entrepreneurs achieve a 2XC (two times conversion) on their website, fast. He lists his biggest inspriation as his dad, Will Smith and Bill Gates. Growing up pretty poor, Sasha’s biggest initial inspiration was to create a better life for his family, and at the age of 16, a motivational speaker came to his school, led a talk and finished his talk by saying “Don’t worry if you don’t know what you wanna do, just pick your dream car to get started” – so he picked a Porsche 911 Turbo. With that set in his mind, at the age of 18, he set himself a target of owning that very car by the age of 21, and he soon realised that it would only be possible through success in business. It’s this goal that he’s set himself that has motivated him to push himself harder than he had done before, and inspired him to keep persisting when times got tough.

The entrepreneurs that inspired him the most are Ruslan Kogan, and Siimon Reynolds, and his favourite quote, “Stop waiting for things to happen. Go out and make them happen”

Jack Ross – www.grackleapp.com

Jack is an iPhone app developer, and currently has an app named Grackle available on the App Store. It’s a fun game in which you are a farmer and birds are attacking your farm. As you progress the birds get more dificult, but your weapons get bigger and better.

He lists his biggest inspiration as his brother. – “When he was four years old, he set the goal of becoming a fighter pilot for the Navy. Nearly 17 years later, he is studying aerospace engineering and on the fast track to flying jets. He has never given up and always given his best. He has taught me to never give up and to stay determined to achieve all you can.” Clearly a strong inspiration to someone, even at such a young age. This is Jack’s favourite quote…

“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is, everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” – Steve Jobs

Philip Hu – Philhu.com, TacticalKatana.com

Philip originally started Tacticalkatana.com as a fun project with his friend Ryan; it has since then become a zombie apocalypse weapons and products recommendation catalog. The website serves as a guide to the best zombie weapons that can be purchased through the internet. Kind of ridiculous, but a lot of fun.

Philip’s biggest inspirations are his parents, who immigrated to the United States from China in the 1980s with very little, in search of opportunity and a new life. In the process, through dedication and hard work, they have built a prosperous life and family. Philip’s parents’ values of hard work, education, and financial discipline have inspired Philip to become an entrepreneur seeking to make a positive impact with his ventures.

“The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It’s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.” – Nolan Bushnell

Courtney Shaye Whittington – www.twidlife.com (under construction)

Her Online business is underconstruction – Its mission is to provide advice, laughs, products and services that help people! Blogging, video feeds, advice and products by herself and “very talented people I’ve met along my journey” all with one gib purpose: Helping women which in turn helps men who help women and so on. Sounds very interesting and should be lots of fun.

She lists her biggest inspiration as Mrs. Joan Averwater, Aka. G’ma Joan, which is interesting to hear. She says her grandmother has helped her believe in myself and is truly one of the most influential women to anyone and everyone that has ever had the pleasure of meeting her.

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.” – Audrey Hepburn

Abigail Johnson Akingbade – Veggieab.com

Abigail runs a lifestyle blog which provides inspiration, cooking and cultural advice to eat and live depression free. The focus of her project seems to be based around the idea of adjusting your diet to live depression free, which I’m sure you’ll agree, is a very unique take on a crowded niche, which may just help her to stand out and become a success.

She lists her biggest inspiration as Lisa Irby, and for those who don’t know, Lisa is a full-time Webmaster, blogger and affiliate marketer, who’s been working in internet marketing since 1998.

“Make the rest of your life the best of your life.” – Eric Thomas

Dainis Graveris – www.1stwebdesigner.com

1WD is an online magazine about everything web design related starting from inspirational articles, blogging and freelancer tips, to hardcore coding tutorials about WordPress, jQuery for example. It has grown to be one of the biggest design blogs worldwide.

His first inspiration was Yaro Starak with his blogging course, now there are a lot of great sources like Mixergy.com, Neil Patel, Glen Allsop from Viperchill and of course Michael Dunlop (his words, not mine). From the other side Steve Jobs has been always great inspiration about the way he thought; his biography left huge impact.

Favorite Quote is not surprisingly Steve Jobs words, from his speech at Stanford – “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”, he’s planning on having those words to be engraved on his hand as a tattoo.

Arianna Vacca – mybookfriend.net

Arianna’s website reviews and recommends books for Young Adult readers. The site is still in its early stages, but it’s well constructed, and looks to be very promising.

Not surprisingly, Ariana’s biggest inspiration is Jeff Bezos, from Amazon.com. Amazon started out as the world’s largest book store, which was met with criticism and a lawsuit from Barnes and Noble, but soon surpassed any question, and is the largest retailer of books in the world, and just like mybookfriend, it’s packed full of reviews.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – Maya Angelou

Matej Bešter – twitter.com/matejbester

Matej is a freelance web developer with over 7 years of experience helping individual to corporate clients grow their business online. Now exploring internet/affiliate marketing as an independent SEO specialist. He doesn’t have a website yet, but follow his twitter in the meantime. His biggest inspirations are Eben Pagan, Steve Jobs, Anthony Robbins, and Frank Kern.

“Go beyond. Way beyond what people expect. Way beyond what you’re paid to do. Way beyond what anyone else does.” – Eben Pagan

Dmitriy Kozlov – visiontechteam.com

Dmitriy’s website is all about marketing, web design, and social media services for entrepreneurs and small business owners. They strive to be a Triple Bottom Line company. Go check out his website, it’s clearly very well thought out and put together. Some pretty familiar names are listed as his top inspirations with the likes of Steve Jobs, Tim Ferriss, and Gary Vaynerchuk.

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something…almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – Steve Jobs

Chris Monery –  memorycardsuk.com

Memorycardsuk focuses on memory cards but also sells accessories, hardware, games and electronics. Chris doesn’t have a biggest inspiration per se, he’s simply inspired by anyone who started off in life with nothing and made it purely off their own back.

There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory – Francis Drake

The post Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s Underground 2012 appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

We have another great interview online for you.

Check out the: Catherine Cook of MyYearBook.com Interview

Catherine and her story is quite the inspiration – over 5 Million Members now – and still a teenager

As a teen, Catherine is a self-declared “nerd” and proud of it. She’s a varsity gymnast with a boyfriend and a 4.0 GPA who, in her dwindling spare time, attends events like the National Youth Leadership Forum in Defense, Intelligence, and Diplomacy.

WOW!

The post Catherine Cook of MyYearBook.com talks abour her online success appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

If your heading to Underground this year, let us know! Will be great to see everyone.

Top Young Entrepreneurs In The Making

Benjamin Jacques

My name is Benjamin Jacques and I’m the founder of MeltingWaves.com. I’m a graphic design student at the Savannah College of Art and Design and I live and breathe art. I created Melting Waves with the intentions of helping artists in college share their artwork and make a name for themselves so that they can be set when they graduate from school. If you look at any marketer that has products to promote and services to sell, you’ll see that there’s a talented designer behind them making everything look nice and marketable. Well what if designers themselves learned how to create their own products and services to sell and really jumped into the “make money online” business? They wouldn’t have to hire anyone else to design for them because they already have that knowledge! I created Melting Waves to show designers that they have a tremendous advantage in this industry and that they can get started a lot faster than anyone who doesn’t have design knowledge. I really just want to see artists do well because they bring so much creativity to the world and they would have such an advantage over the crowds trying to make money online if they just knew where to begin. That’s where Melting Waves takes them by the hand and shows them how to use their skills to their advantage, to make a name for themselves, increase their incomes, and dive into online marketing industries that they have probably never considered before. I want to bring more creativity into an already beautiful world, and I know I can do that by giving aspiring artists a helping hand when it comes to creating success.

Eddys Velasquez

Eddys Velasquez always knew that the 9 to 5 job was not for him and because of this he decided to take massive action and become his own boss going from $0 to $60 per hour within 1 year, at the age of 15.  He then stumbled on a twitter post that introduced him to online marketing where within a few short weeks he made his 1st $1,500 online in a span of 3 days.  Soon after that he discovered that his passion was to help his friends achieve the same success doing what they love to do and that’s why he decided to start IncomeBoss.com

David King

I started off in myspace marketing when myspace was still cool and built a business using myspace and myspace groups.  As myspace faded away I evolved as the web did and started using facebook, twitter and youtube and blogging.  I began affiliate and info-marketing through search engine optimization and social marketing and haven’t looked back since.  I have been working full time from home online for 2 years now and love every minute of it.  I have info-products in the health markets and in the internet marketing/biz markets and will continue to create more. Consistency and persistency really pays off!

Kirsty Price

My name is Kirsty Price and I am 20 years old, from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. I am in my final year of studying Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. I started my first business at the age of 19 and I jumped head-first into entrepreneurship to help me pay my rent! At that time, I set up my first ecommerce site and I also dabbled in ebay for a while. This first site was a failure because I really had no idea what I was doing, so I went back to the drawing board and learned from my mistakes. A few months later I started my second business. This time I was determined to succeed. This was another ecommerce site called Mademoiselle Boutique which sold luxury adult products primarily to females. This business did much better because I went away and studied everything I could find about online business in my spare time. I loved running it, but I still wanted something more that my ecommerce site wouldn’t allow for. Before I became interested in online business and entrepreneurship, I wanted to be a teacher. I realised that I still wanted to teach and inspire, but not in a classroom. Thanks to the internet, I could! So in late 2010, I moved on from my ecommerce business and I decided to combine my passion for teaching and online business to create my current business, Laptop Rebels! Laptop Rebels is still very new, but it will soon sell information products and online courses for other young (primarily twenty-something females) people looking to learn the basics about starting an online business so they can avoid working a 9 to 5 job they have no passion for.

Brian Moran

Created Get10000Fans.com after making it big on Facebook in the baseball industry. Using Get 10,000 Fans to teach other small business how to use Facebook to actually grow their business, increase sales, and build a huge following of loyal fans.

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Dusty Reron

My name is Dusty Reron and I am from Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada). I’m the founder of iJailbreak.com, a leading web blog covering everything latest about jailbreaking/unlocking Apple’s iDevices, Sony and any other revolutionary device that can jailbroken. We provide in depth tutorials, app and product reviews, and have been featured on many popular sites. It’s a blog that stands out from the crowd with our focus on building a community that you need to see to understand.

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Jaden Easton-Ellett

My name is Jaden Easton-Ellett and I am from Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada). I am currently 16 years old and I am the Co-Founder of a technology blog called iJailbreak.com. Where we focus writing in-depth news, how-to’s and reviews on electronic devices such as the iPhone. Our blog is also a leading promoter of jailbreaking (opening up electronic devices to user driven modifications), where we share our knowledge and help other users jailbreak their devices. Ever since we started iJailbreak.com we have been big believers in running a culture based blog that cares about our readers; not just our profits. This has lead to the success of our blog and has brought us phenomenal results in only 3 months that you need to see to believe!

Molly Dunkle & Katie Barstow

Katie and I started our company together in 2006. We began with a hobby for making lip balm and turned it into a full business. We are just revamping our company website (www.sweetscosmetics.com) this month, and we are hoping to have it finished by March! Our goal for this conference is to learn some techniques and tips for selling online. Looking forward to meeting everyone and networking! Thank you again for a wonderful opportunity, it is going to be a great trip!

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Jack Cascio

I am Jack Cascio and I run an online business “Jump Out The Gym”.  I started this business with the former strength coach/physical therapist of the New York Mets (Jeff Cavaliere).  My business is dedicated to increasing an athletes vertical jump.  I have seen continuous growth with this business and am looking to get into other niches (speed, quickness, etc) as well as releasing my own workout supplement line.

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James Sun

My name is James Sun and I am a Grade 10 high school student at Earl Haig Secondary School who has a passion for business and entrepreneurship. I also am very involved with sports,public speaking, DECA and I also chair a Student Advisory Board for a new non-profit organization called One Prosper International. I first started doing business last year as the President of a Junior Achievement company called RAWR which sold gift baskets and candy kebabs. We had our ups and downs and I learned a lot from the mistakes. This learning experience got me excited to do even more business!

As a result, after our company liquidated, this year, I became the President of another Junior Achievement company named Top-Out. This company has twenty student employees from over the Toronto area. Our slogan is “A Story Behind Each and Every T-Shirt” because we sell unique hand-made customized t-shirts. What really distinguishes us from our competitors is that our products are considered affordable artwork created by students.

Freeman LaFleur

I am the twenty three year old cofounder of LoDo Magazine, Denver’s alternative lifestyle and entertainment source. I’ve been involved in a variety of different startups since the  age of seventeen, including a clothing line, a non profit, and multiple websites. I am a strong advocate of entrepreneurship and personal branding because I know how life changing your first sale or client can be. My eventual goal is to coach others through DIYPersonalBranding.com on how to take their business or service to the next level by getting it online, promoting it effectively, and automating it. I truly believe that we are about to see a massive jump in the number of entrepreneurs over the next few years, as people begin to realize that it has never been easier to start a business and that digital marketing is the biggest game changer in history.

Mattis Weiler

My name is Mattis Weiler, I’m 20 years old and a starting internet entrepreneur based in Munich, Germany, I had the pleasure to meet Michael at the Awesomenessfest in Costa Rica before Christmas. Since I had always been madly into 3D graphics and animation, but was not keen on working 60h+/week on a feature film production as an average paid specialist only following orders and fulfilling somebody else’s dream, I was looking for alternative ways to get make some money with my passion. So I started freelancing and did some minor project work, but it still didn’t fit for me. When I got to meet Michael in December, I was highly impressed of his techniques and the lifestyle he had, and decided to work out a plan of combining my two passions, 3d animation and the internet, and my desire to work where I want, whenever I want.

My website ww.cgiant.com is going to provide a free video tutorial search engine and recommendations covering (3d animation, video, web and photo as categorys)to allow users on specific skill levels to gain quick refferal to the most suitable instructions on their needs. I also plan on providing interviews and reviews to various products like training, software and other goodies related to the making of computer graphics.

Daniel McClure

Daniel McClure is a young entrepreneur that is working towards his dream of running a digital empire that can be run from anywhere. Currently based in the UK, he serves clients from around the globe developing membership websites and blogs that enable business owners to share thier vision with the world. Whilst initially only offering one-to-one web development and marketing services you can now find everything from; review sites based upon real experience, through to marketing focused WordPress skins amongst his digital portfolio.

The post Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s Underground appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Hi Everyone,

Today I am featuring the BackPocket COO – Cameron Herold in one of the best videos I have ever watched on being a young entrepreneur and inspiring parents to raise entrepreneurs. Cameron is one very smart guy who also just so happens to mentor my friend Yanik Silver. I have heard Yanik mention Cameron a number of times now – and having watched this video I can see why Yanik is so positive about his mentor.

The video is just over 20 minutes long but it jam packed from beginning to end with inspiration, great ideas and LOVE for entrepreneurship. Like so many of us, Cameron got started very young and his pride and enthusiasm for Young Entrepreneurs and being an entrepreneur is abundantly clear.

Check out Cameron’s website at: BackPocketCOO.com

For over 20 years, Cameron Herold has been coaching, speaking to, and helping entrepreneurs on five continents build their companies. He started BackPocket COO to be able to coach and mentor young, fun companies, and help them make their dreams happen.

Cameron mentions that great Ayn Rand book; Atlas Shrugged in this video. It contains one of my favorite Life Quotes of all time:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine

Powerful words and inspiring words.

Enjoy the video – I really cannot rate it highly enough. You will be inspired!

To Our Success

Michael

The post Cameron Herold – Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.