Rohail Rizvi- Entrepreneur in the Making

Now that I don’t have “school” anymore, I have a lot more time to do the things I’ve always wanted to do.

Here are some of the business and personal goals on my agenda.

Business

• Get to $100 per day with affiliate marketing by June 15th.
• Get to $200 per day by August 15th.
• Kick start Walamu again for Fall and maybe upgrade it’s features.
• Teach one other person how Affiliate Marketing works and have them earning as much as me.

Personal

• Visit London in the next few months.
• Get in the best shape of my life.
• Start being financially responsible and practice budgeting.
• Cook for myself (related to #3).
• Eat more healthy- Do a detox and start eating right.

Those are my goals for now. Doing a little bit everyday helps.

Oh and since it’s obvious that I’m in affiliate marketing, I want to assure everyone that I wouldn’t promote anything on this site unless I really believed in it. BANs and Wealthy Affiliate are two products that have my highest recommendation.

I have a bunch of things going on right now from personal to business and I don’t really want this to be an aimless rambling of my life. If you guys have any ideas as to posts you would like to see, please let me know. It could be about anything from being an *ex*-college entrepreneur, affiliate marketer, traveler, whatever.

As entrepreneurs, most of us have more important things to worry about than health. Things like

how many clients we have, how many users, and how much revenue for the month. There is often a lot of discussion about keeping in good health and managing the stress that comes with being an  entrepreneur. I personally haven’t cared much for health since the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey although I know I should. In fact, I intend to start caring now. This is actually because I

used to think doing proper maintenance on your body wasn’t important, but it’s apparent that it is. A lot of what Healthy Body, a regular commenter on this blog (Gina?), has said has also made me think about taking care of oneself as well. I plan to change my diet, do some detoxing, and start hitting the gym. I just got myself some of that Kombucha tea. What are some things you, as an entrepreneur, do to keep in good health or keep yourself motivated to take care of your body?

Today’s society no longer considers Pluto a planet, and if you’re Wendy’s you no longer consider “small” as a menu size option. With the recent “war against obesity” featuring documentaries such as Super Size Me and slogans such as “Say No to Biggie size,” Wendy’s has taken a clever turn. While ordering a number one classic single with cheese last night at the student center, I was asked if I wanted a medium or a large. I went with medium, although usually I go for the small if it’s there. However, since the cashier never mentioned “small,” I didn’t bother to ask. The person next in line ordered the same thing as me and was asked the same question, medium or small? At first, he said medium, but then had to ask if there was a small option. The cashier said yes and put in an order for a small. This is pretty clever by Wendy’s and I don’t even think it’s that ethical. If you’re going to ramble on about giving your customers choice, at least reveal all your menu options. Now I don’t mind that I got a medium because I finished all my fries and my soda, but that’s just another way of ripping customers off and not letting them have what they really want. This is just another way of corporations like Wendy’s not caring about the health of their customers, but rather trying to improve their margins in sneakier and sneakier ways. So remember, next time you go to Wendy’s and want a small, make sure you tell them.

Yesterday, while sitting at the student center re-reading Micheal Simmon’s, The Student Success Manifesto, a 30-something year old Korean man randomly decided to sit down in the chair across from me at my table. I look up from my book without tilting my head up with a confused look on my face. I’ve approached people before, but never with the directness this guy just has. He starts rambling about something about how his English isn’t very good and how he is looking for a student to edit his paper. He sees me still with my confused look and says “I’m sorry, can I get your name?” and we shake. He says that he needs someone to edit his “paper.” I figure it couldn’t take more than a few minutes and college essays are hard enough as it is, especially for international students. After I start reading it I notice the mass amount of religious material and Biblical quotes in the “paper.” I start to question whether this is for real or not. He further explains that it is a prayer that he has written for his Bible study class. The “prayer” kept mentioning how he is “thankful for the opportunity to bring 12 RU students to the light of the Bible.” I tell him that I’m not a religious person and that if he expects to sell me anything he is wasting his time. He insists that he is not and just needs someone to edit his paper. I continue on editing the very few mistakes that there were with a couple stops in between reiterating my position as the paper continues to delve in religious material and seems to be aimed at changing one’s mind. After I finish editing the piece, he begins to ask me questions about my faith and starts talking about Jesus and how if one believes in him that they are granted eternity, whereas if they do not they will perish. I feel extremely angry at this point after realizing that my hunch was in fact true. This man used the pawn of having me edit his “paper” as a bridge to try and convert me. However, I then took a look at it from a different point of view. I really wanted to give this person what he had coming for using such a deceitful tactic. I then realized though that this was just another form of marketing. He was trying to sell me a religion just like Clorox is trying to sell me detergent. Albeit, it was ironically not the most ethical ways of doing so, it comes down to making the sale or not and this was his tactic. Religion, when it comes down to it, is probably the best marketed product on the planet, right?

Well, it’s been a week of underachieving for me, and I have to say this is working out pretty well. Not only do I feel more relaxed, but I working faster towards my goals and not slower. I have been talking to one new person a day on campus since Wednesday (I’m back home for the weekend so I won’t get to resume that until Monday). I have also been able to go to sleep close to midnight and somehow wake up right around 9am automatically. I think subconsciously my mind was thinking 9am because of that blog post and that’s why I woke up then (with no alarm). Nine hours is more than enough so next week I will focus on cutting it to eight hours. Blogging once a week hasn’t been too difficult as you can see. The “going to the gym” thing totally didn’t work out. I didn’t hit the gym not once. As far as doing one small thing to promote Walamu, I was doing well until I promoted Walamu too much one day without noticing and got banned for a week from the Internet in my dorm room. So no Internet until next Thursday. I did get a lot of attention from a one day run of Facebook flyers at Rutgers promoting Walamu (30,000 ad impressions). I am going to try out real flyers again for next week and start promoting the Classifieds portion of Walamu now since the textbook season is kind of over.

Speaking of Walamu, I have recently received a number of emails from my major competitors concerning partnerships or liquidation. It is too early to decide on this matter and certainly too early for liquidation.

The next thing I need now is some sort of inspiration. I feel like I’ve been running in the hamster’s wheel for the past six months and I need something new. I think I’ll go snowboarding for the first time or something.

I apologize for the lack of updates this week. I got too carried away with trying to monetize this blog during the first few weeks of winter break and decided it would be healthy to take some sort of break for the last week of break. Today was the first day of classes for the spring semester at Rutgers so it’s only a matter of time before we’re back in the swing of things.

The first day of classes also means tons of students looking to buy/sell textbooks. Walamu’s popularity here at Rutgers is skyrocketing mostly as a result of word-of-mouth. Hits are going up and people are posting their books everyday. Competition is stiff, no doubt, with the bookstores using their megafunds to plaster huge ads in the university newspaper. There is also competition from other much more established websites such as half.com and bigwords.com. The longer I’m in this business, however, the more I realize that my target market isn’t even college students–it’s a certain type of college student–and I think realizing that makes a significant difference.

Speaking of college, I’m finding myself at a sort of crossroads as to what I want to do in regards to my eduction. The question- “Is college really worth it?” tends to keep coming up. Here are some routes I’m currently considering:

• Study abroad for the fall semester next year at City University in London.
• Take a semester off (not likely, as business school starts next semester) If I were to take a semester off it would have been this semester, but I was not in a position to withdraw.
• Take a leave of absence, work on Walamu, and build multiple streams of income.
• Work on Walamu, other businesses, and go to college at the same time (again, is it really worth it?)

I’d been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks before Trizle posted this today. If you’re a regular reader you probably noticed my lack of posting and I apologize for that.
But as a blogger, and especially as an entrepreneur, you eventually come to ask yourself: Why are you doing what you are doing when you could be using that time to do something more productive? This isn’t to say blogging isn’t productive because I’ve met countless people since the start of this site and it’s kept me going and has motivated me to keep striving and achieving as opposed to being idle.

I’m not saying I am going to stop blogging any time soon. I’m just taking a retrospective view of doing what I’m doing. Trizoko does hit the spot when they say no one cares what you are doing. And to a certain extent that’s true. Sure I have readers and maybe even a couple fans out there, but for the most part no ones depending on my blog for their well-being.

I don’t find myself as being a talented writer and nor do I come up with brilliant business philosophies that readers love to eat up (unlike Trizoko). Sometimes I feel it’s a burden to write something by readers will find useful. But truth be told, the reason I started blogging was to keep track of my ventures and aspirations and to keep myself moving towards my goals. And if readers enjoy that then great, but I can’t promise anyone mind bottling business advice.

All in all, I’m an 18-year old kid chasing a dream and that’s what this blog will remain about .

I have a huge amount of expenses I have to cover in the next few weeks. The main one of course being funding my current project. I need to come up with at least $500 to keep that running. In addition to that, I may be making a trip to California for a couple weeks and tickets for that run at about $300-$400. As for now, however, my main focus is to come up with the $500 for this project. So I’m giving myself 15 days to come up with $500 without any type of formal work. Here are the primary ways I’m looking to achieve this funding:

• Fix computers (Halo Tech Squad).
• Adsense (www.mesosource.blogspot.com)
• Possibly sell on my new Shopify site.

So, I have until June 27th to come up with that amount. I know I don’t have a wide range of sources at this point, but I’m confident I’ll be able to come up with it.

It seems like they just keep going higher everyday. I just filled up my 20-gallon tank for a whopping $50, the highest it’s ever cost me. Well, I’m not exactly paying for it, but still. The highest price in the U.S. according to www.gaspricewatch.com is $3.69 per gallon at Chula Vista, CA. The lowest is $2.43 at Ozark, MO. The national average is $2.85.

The debate over rising gas prices is on-going and somewhat over-emphasized among the other political issues at stake these days. The war on Iraq, the recent tax-cut to the wealthy, or even the alleged scandal in the Haditha deaths seem to be less talked about than rising gas prices. Perhaps it’s true that people really only worry about things when it hurts their pockets.

I’m curious as to know how gas prices are where you live and how you plan to cut back if that’s the case.

That’s right. I walked right into the boss’s office and told him I’m resigning. Well it didn’t quite go like that. I told him I wouldn’t be able to work anymore and he says fine. Then I ask for resignation papers to sign so I can make it official and all of a sudden he starts cursing at me saying he doesn’t have resignation papers. I tell him I’m not trying to make him upset, I just want to make things official. He remains the crybaby that he is and puts on his headset claiming he “has to take a call.” Hilarious. Truth is, I didn’t like the ethics of the company. I found out that they were featured on NBC 10 investigators and subsequently quit as I didn’t like the idea that I might be working for a company that steals people’s money. In fact they have a picture of my former boss online at the NBC website where a former client comes in to get his money back and is subsequently faced with my former boss calling in the cops claiming the client was trying to steal his money. What scum.

On the other hand, I now have much more time to work on my ventures. The first thing I want to do is hold a couple entrepreneurial experiments, if you will. Now the first one is more of an attempt at an actual business. I am starting a spyware removal service and will first try to get clients in my neighborhood and if things go well I will expand to other nearby neighborhoods. I think a fair share of people with computers have problems with spyware and have no clue how to get it out. Further, considering how annoying spyware is, I’m pretty sure people are willing to fork over some dollars to get rid of the problem.

Now my second experiment some of you are going to laugh at. Quite simply, I’ll be attempting to pick up women. Yes, now you may think that I’m doing this for my own benefit (somewhat true), but I think doing this could help my communication skills and confidence in an enormous way. There are so many tricks and trades to communication when it comes to approaching women and much of it (not all of it) can be applied to communications I may have in the business world some day. Concepts like mirroring and social proof are all part of communication and I want to master this. And who knows I might even get a few numbers (or more) in the process. Stay tuned, this blog is about to get a little more interesting.