Rohail Rizvi

Alex Morrow, young serial-entrepreneur, has just launched an exciting new forum with extraordinary features I myself have never seen before. Alex certainly put a lot of work into T-MobileSignal.com and I am confident in its success.

1) What is your inspiration for getting into business and what makes you get out of bed every morning?

Honestly, it’s the potential to do something great. I always try to picture myself changing the world with a business idea, kinda like Youtube did. Like most entrepreneurs, I’d like to make an impact in the world that improves the lives of everyone.

2) What was your first venture and is it the one you are most proud of?

When I was 18, I founded a computer education company called Computer Educators. I focused on training senior citizens and disabled individuals how to use their computers. My favorite venture is top secret, but I’m still working on it from time to time.

3) What are you working on now?

I’ve recently launched a website for T-Mobile customers called T-MobileSignal. It’s the best place for T-Mobile customers to discuss news, products, and services.

4) What advice can you give to up and coming entrepreneurs?

Make sure that you truly believe in your idea and that it’s not just about the potential profit.
Check out T-MobileSignal.com to take a look at Alex’s cool new venture.

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Dave is the founder of MindPetals.com, the number one place for young entrepreneurs to network and learn. He was generous enough to answer these questions. Take a look because you always learn something new with Dave and he truly loves helping and motivating people.
1) What is your inspiration for getting into business and what makes you get out of bed every morning?

Thinking about all of the lives that I can change. All of the people who I can positively affect. All of the minds that I can spark with enthusiasm and a zeal to do something great in life. I devote my life to making those sort of changes in the world. It invigorates me. It empowers me. It not only gets me out of bed in the morning, but pushes me harder than any other force I’ve ever experienced — pushes me to continue on no matter what, through the ups and the downs. It’s not a business to me, it’s a life.

2) What was your first venture and is it the one you are most proud of?

My first venture was a site that allowed students to sell notes to one another. It was called Cash Campus. The one
I’m the most proud of is Mind Petals, Inc, which is the business behind Mind Petals — the official community for Young
Entrepreneurs worldwide.

3) What are you working on now?

I’m working on a social platform that will revolutionize the way young entrepreneurs stay connected and share ideas to realize goals in life.

4) What advice can you give to up and coming entrepreneurs?

The number one person you need to listen to is yourself. Everything else, other people’s opinions, other people’s expectations for you, etc, should be secondary. Follow your heart. Follow your passions. Push through and make something happen with your life. Realize that you can be great. That you can change the world. That you can attain your wildest dreams.

Check out MindPetals.com, the number one place for YEs to learn and network, and be sure to check out this very motivational post by Dave at CashCampus.com.

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This week I’ll be interviewing young entrepreneurs from around the world to give you insight from the brightest and most promising young entrepreneurs today.

Josiah Mackenzie, young entrepreneur and a good friend of mine, and notably the founder of Young Wealth Weekly, an e-magazine for young entrepreneurs, sheds some light on his entrepreneurial past and gives some great advice for entrepreneurs just starting out. Thanks, Josiah!

1) What is your inspiration for getting into business and what makes you get out of bed every morning?

My inspiration is to complete my list of 100 life goals <http://www.josiahmackenzie.com/100-goals/ >.  For me, business is a way to accomplish what I want in life and have fun doing it.

2) What was your first venture and is it the one you are most proud of?

My first venture was a web design & programming firm I started in high school.  Earning $40/hour can make you feel pretty proud when your friends are working for minimum wage.  I’ve been involved in a variety of ventures since then, but that was my first taste of the freedom you can achieve by working for yourself.  I feel most satisfied when I’m helping other young entrepreneurs grow their businesses, so I’m very proud of my involvement with Young Wealth Weekly.  Currently, I’m working on a book with 2 incredibly talented young entrepreneurs, and am very excited to continue sharing information this way.

3) What else are you working on now?

I’m in the beginning stages of forming an investment company with several partners.  In the beginning, we plan to acquire smaller, web-based businesses, but in the future plan on expanding into niche cafes, restaurants, and hotels.  There are so many industries I want to be a part of, and I see investing as the only logical way to do this.

4) What advice can you give to up and coming entrepreneurs?

Ideas are worthless.  Execution is everything.  It’s impossible for one person to do everything, so get a team of good people around you.  You probably don’t need funding from the beginning (especially if you’re doing business online), instead rely on bootstrapping and focus on getting sales as soon as possible.  Make sure your target customers are willing and able to pay for the product you’re offering.  Get started now, and learn as you go.

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On Monday I met with the one and only Randal Pinkett, winner of The Apprentice and author of Campus CEO. I have to say that just from meeting him for a few minutes that he is a really cool guy. I shook his hand and then told him about I had learned of his book from the Campus CEO competition a couple months ago and decided to pick it up after David Askaripour of MindPetals told me we got mentioned in there. I told him I wrote for MindPetals and he was really impressed and asked me to write a review for his book on my blog and try to get some coverage on MindPetals about the book. I told him sure thing, without a doubt. He was cool enough to sign my copy of Campus CEO and I gave him a card for Walamu and told him about how I started it at Rutgers last semester and he seemed pretty impressed. This is considering Mr. Pinkett also went to Rutgers and started his business here all while graduating with a 3.9 GPA and being on the track team. Mr. Pinkett is truly an inspiration to me and I’m sure to the many others that will pick up a copy of his new book, Campus CEO.

To get started on building your own business empire while still in college, get your copy of Mr. Pinkett’s book here: Campus CEO.

P.S. I have an extra copy of Campus CEO since my order from Amazon came in a day after Randal was at the signing. If you have any suggestions on what I should do with this extra copy by means of some sort of crazy give away competition, leave a comment.

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Fear is probably one of the greatest obstacles in entrepreneurship. However, there is another great obstacle that can hold you back almost just as much. That obstacle is outcome dependency. If everytime you get rejected or a client doesn’t like your ideas and you take it out on yourself, it means that you are still outcome dependent. The only way to succeed is to completely kill your outcome dependency. The way to do this is to go all out. Pitch that VC you’re sure is going to shut you down. Ask that girl out with the most ridiculous line and keep going until you’re almost certain you’re going to get slapped. Screw it…screw what they think. This is YOUR problem and not their’s. You’re just using them as a crutch to get over your HABIT of taking it out on yourself when something doesn’t go your way. The only way to fix this is to become immune to rejection and realize that there are other factors at play and it’s not just YOU. So quit blaming yourself, control the factors that you can, and pitch hard.

Some people, including myself, become extremely disheartened when something doesn’t go their way or if someone doesn’t like their ideas. The reality is that if you keep blaming yourself on things outside of your control and view every failure as inherently caused, then you’ve already lost the game. You will only continue to set yourself back and damage your confidence and faith to keep going forward. Thus, it is extremely important that no matter how many times you fail or what criticisms you get from some big shot exec, continue to move forward until you see your vision through. This is not to say that you should not take contructive criticism and apply it, but rather that you should not take failure and criticism as a reason to stop trying and start blaming yourself. Just keep choppin’ as we here at Rutgers like to say.

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I was looking for a way to display the books I found that are most essential for young entrepreneurs and figured I might as well sign up with Amazon’s affiliate program and create an aStore to display the books. These books helped me tremendously along my entrepreneurial journey and will continue to do so as they are focused more on the entrepreneurial mindset rather than tips, tricks, and techniques. These are absolute must reads for any young person trying to make it in the entrepreneurial world (or world, for that matter).

aStore: Essential Readings for Young Entrepreneurs

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With a total of 130 page impressions on Sunday, I had absolutely no clicks on my AdSense. I was really surprised about this, and I’m sure you are too. This is why trying different placements is absolutely essential in optimizing your AdSense earnings. In an effort to better my placement and avoid intrusion on content, I’ve decided to add a horizontal leaderboard on top. Hopefully, this will result in a better (or actual) CTR.

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One of my recent posts, “Be Unique,” was featured in this week’s Carnival of Entrepreneurs hosted by www.startupspark.com. The Carnival is a great way to meet new entrepreneurs, find some great posts, and share some link love so join in.

From the site:

The Carnival of Entrepreneurs is a weekly event, where we bring you the latest, greatest in the world of entrepreneurship. Our goal is to collect awesome content, link it up and briefly review it for you so each Wednesday you can find a plethora of stuff that will interest you.

Submit your own entrepreneurship-related article for January 10, 2007, click here.

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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve probably noticed a couple changes in the recent past. For one thing, I went with a new blog theme because I felt it was about time and have received a lot of compliments on it. More significantly, however, I’ve decided to place Adsense and TLA on the site and have tried to make these ads as unintrusive as possible. My need for funding has pushed me to go this route and has also forced me to learn more about creating good content and focus on my reader’s needs. You may remember that this blog started off as more of a journal on my entrepreneurial experiences. While that aspect of this blog will certainly remain, I will try to update this site more frequently with entrepreneurship-related entries that you may find useful.

I must say, however, that the potential and reach of this site is really being noticed as in less than two weeks I’ve achieved four sponsors by way of Text Link Ads and have amounted $46 in revenue. This is an 820% increase from November when I only earned $5 via Adsense. There are only four more spots left on this site so if you’re looking to get some targeted traffic you should act quickly. Needless to say, if anyone owns a site or blog, I highly recommend signing up with Text Link Ads. It only takes a second and remember to use my referral link to sign up here.

To purchase a link on this site, go to Text Link Ads and search for “Rutgers.” This blog, “Entrepreneur in the Making,” will show up.

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In order to optimize your ad revenue you have to avoid restricting yourself to a single ad provider. This may seem obvious, but with the recent advent of text link ads and other advertising venues, there is no reason not to expand your revenue reach to other ad providers.

1. Expand your revenue means. Look to other ad providers such as Text Link Ads or Yahoo! Publisher Network so long as whichever advertising networks you choose to publish are compliant with each other. Usually this means you are allowed to place ads of different types (text link ads and Adsense are allowed to be displayed on the same page), but placing Adsense and YPN on the same page probably isn’t a good idea (Check with your specific terms of service).
2. Test your ad placements. Optimizing your ad revenue means finding out what placement works best for you. Refer to guides provided by your ad provider such as Google’s guide to improving performance located here.
3. Become an Affiliate. You can really make a killing by becoming an affiliate for products your blog or site is related to. For example, consider becoming an affiliate for Amazon, which produces one of the largest affiliate programs on the Internet.
4. Sign up with ReviewMe or PayPerPost. These relatively new services allow bloggers to earn money for writing reviews on products or services that normally they would write reviews about anyway. This is probably the easiest way to monetize your blog or site. The sites offer varying levels of flexibility in how self-opinionated the review can be, but they both pay pretty well. Also, a recent FTC move is making it more difficult to post about a service without indicating an affiliation and so that may be something to keep in mind.

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