#1 Profits Don’t Come Right Away

Since young companies need time to develop, they often require hours of labor with little monetary reward. Time is just like any other investment: if it’s well-spent, it will pay off.

In the case of Coca-Cola, John Pemberton lost $20 in his first year selling the syrup. He wasn’t making any money then, but he was laying the foundation for the next year’s profits (and the 100+ years after that).

#2 Failures are Stepping Stones

Every time you make a mistake, that means there’s one fewer mistake between you and success. The best way to learn how to do something is to totally fail at it – and then reflect on what you could have done differently.

There’s no point in feeling discouraged. Simply learn and change.

#3 Don’t Resist Change

Pemberton’s brain tonic was supposedly a cure for horrible-sounding ailments like, “Neuralgia,” “Hysteria…” and “Melancholia.” But there’s no way that Coca-Cola would be the huge corporation it is today if they hadn’t started marketing their beverage as a soft drink.

As an entrepreneur, don’t let carefully-laid plans blind your eyes to better opportunities.

#4 It’s Never Too Early to Start Branding

By sticking with a tasteful, timeless image, Coca-Cola has turned their logo into an icon. Your brand starts on the same day as your business – so be deliberate and consistent from the get-go.

Even if your business doesn’t have a logo or color scheme, you still have a brand to maintain. You’re building your brand every time you talk with a client or type out a tweet.

#5 Brand Big

Brands like Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola have permeated the collective subconscious by embodying big feelings and ideas.

Of course, those companies also have multi-million dollar marketing budgets and you probably don’t. But if you have a firmly set vision for what feelings and ideas you want people to associate with your business, it will show through.

The Biggest Brand in the World

Today, Coca-Cola is widely considered the biggest brand in the world – but it has something in common with even the smallest start-up: it began with just an entrepreneur and an idea. How will you apply the story of Coca-Cola to your own business?

Do you agree with Interbrand that Coca-Cola is the biggest brand in the world — or have tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple surpassed the Coke brand? Sound off in the comment section below.

To better understand how to build a world famous company, you need to dive into how other entrepreneurs have created theirs.

Here are ten of the world’s most gigantic businesses that started in garages.

10 Famous Garage Startups

#1 Amazon

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com in 1994 as an online bookstore. At the time, it was completely run out of his garage in Bellevue, Washington.

He sold his first book in July 1995 and issued his IPO two years later in 1997.

Today it’s the world’s largest online retailer.

Address: 10704 NE 28th, Bellevue, Washington

#2 Apple

In 1976, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, ages 21 and 26 respectively, started Apple Computers by selling 50 units of Wozniak’s Apple I Computer at $500 apiece to a local retailer. Jobs took the purchase order to a parts distributor and ordered the parts. “The Steves” and their small team hand-built 50 computers in 30 days from a garage in Cupertino, CA.

Today, Apple is the most valuable technology company in the world.

Address: 2066 Crist Dr, Los Altos, California

#3 Disney

About 45 minutes down the road from Disneyland Park in Anaheim, CA, there’s a house in Los Angeles where The Walt Disney Company got its start.

In 1923, the house belonged to Walt Disney’s uncle, Robert Disney. Walt and his brother Roy moved in with their uncle and set up “The First Disney Studio” in the one-car garage out back. There they started filming the Alice Comedies which was part of the original Alice’s Wonderland.

Today, Disney is the highest-grossing media conglomerate in the world.

Address: 4651 Kingswell Ave, Los Angeles, California

#4 Google

As Stanford Graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started what’s now known as Google from Susan Wojcicki’s garage in September 1998.

Soon the project was interfering with their schoolwork, so they tried to sell it to Excite for $1 million. Excite rejected the offer and now Google is the most trafficked site in the world.

Address: 232 Santa Margarita Ave, Menlo Park, California

#5 Harley Davidson

In 1901, 21-year-old William S. Harley drew up plans to create a small engine to power a bicycle.

Over the next two years, Harley and his childhood friend, Arthur Davidson, built their motor-bicycle out of their friend’s 10 by 15-foot wooden shed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was the equivalent of a garage because they didn’t have cars.

They officially founded Harley-Davidson in 1903 and today it’s the most well-known motorcycle brand in the world.

Address: Somewhere in northern Milwaukee, Wisconsin

#6 Hewlett-Packard

In 1939, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard founded HP in Packard’s garage with an initial investment of $538.

Their first product was an audio oscillator and one of their first customers was Walt Disney, who purchased eight oscillators to develop the sound system for the movie Fantasia.

The HP Garage in Palo Alto is known as the birthplace of Silicon Valley and HP is now one of the largest companies in the world.

Address: 367 Addison Ave, Palo Alto, California

#7 Lotus Cars

In 1948, at the age of 20, Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman started Lotus Cars by building the first Lotus racing car in stables behind The Railway Hotel in Hornsey, North London. Chapman used a 1930s Austin Seven and a power drill to build the Lotus Mark I.

Today Lotus Cars is one of the premier racing car manufacturers in the world.

Address: 472 Hornsey Rd, London N19 4EF, United Kingdom

#8 Maglite

In 1950, Tony Maglica moved from his war-torn home of Croatia back to America. Knowing very little English, he settled in Los Angeles and took jobs wherever he could find them.

In 1955, after saving $125, Tony put a down-payment on his first lathe. Then he started working out of a Los Angeles area garage to manufacture precision parts. He incorporated Mag Instrument in 1974 and released their first flashlight in 1979.

Today, Maglite is the standard issue flashlight for all police officers in the US.

Address: Somewhere in Los Angeles, California

#9 Mattel

Harold “Matt” Matson and Elliot Handler founded Mattel out of a garage in Southern California as picture frame company in 1945. To get the most out of their materials, they started using picture frame scrapes to create dollhouses.

Soon their dollhouses were selling better than their picture frames so they turned their emphasis to toys.

Today Mattel, Inc. is the highest-grossing toy company in the world.

Address: Somewhere in Southern California

#10 Yankee Candle Company

In 1969, at 16 years old, Michael Kittredge made his scented candle in his garage out of melted crayons as a gift for his mother. The neighbors took notice and expressed interest in buying Kittredge’s candles, so he started mass-producing them.

Four years later, Kittredge outgrew the garage so he moved the Yankee Candle Company to an old mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Today it’s the largest manufacturer of scented candles in the US.

Address: Somewhere in South Hadley, Massachusetts.

What’s the Point?

Everything starts as nothing.

It’s easy to look at the world’s largest companies and think, “I could never start something like that.” And you’d be right. Most of these companies took decades to get where they are today.

They didn’t start by trying to create Amazon, Apple, and Google. They started by creating an online bookstore, a computer, and a search algorithm.

Whether it’s a garage, a basement, or a dorm room, every business has humble beginnings. It’s not about where you start. It’s where you end up.

Post written by Retireat21 writer, Nick Tart.

Recently I have been looking at some of the worlds most success billionaires such as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs. Although only being 21 years old, I often feel like I’m not achieving as much as I really can, I look at other people who at my age are so much further ahead – sure in some respects I had to come further as I didn’t give a thought in the world to my education till a year after I had done my exams.

They Are The Best At What They Do

Look at Google, we use it because it gives us the results we are looking for quicker than any other search engine, the same applies to Facebook, we use it as it’s the most user friendly and has all our friends in one place. These are prime examples of businesses that just do it better than anyone else, and that is what you have got to do. Whether you are selling online toiletries or you are starting your own social network, it doesn’t matter, what does matter is that the business you own or run is working at full capacity with everything done the absolute best it can be done. Just try your hardest.

They Go For Mass Markets

No one has ever become a billionaire by targeting a small market, all the top companies have mass appeal such as Microsoft who’s aim is to have a computer in every house hold. Having said this, I do believe the best way to approach going to a mass market is starting small and being known for doing one thing great, like Zappos did. They sold only shoes when they started and once they became the worlds leader at selling shoes online, they branched out and started selling clothing and then later a whole lot of other things – that company later sold for $1,300,000,000!

They Use Their Time Wisely

Bill Gates wouldn’t go on Twitter and bitch about how his iPhone is broken or how one of his employees is an idiot, that would be a complete waste of time. Doing some quick maths I worked out that while working for Microsoft he would of made around $630,000 a hour so if he was to spend so much time like us just complaining and giving excuses then he would be a lot poorer. Time is money, it’s a phrase thrown around a lot but it is seriously true, think of it this way, how much do you think you are worth? $5 per hour? $10 dollars? How about $100 per hour and more? Are you really doing as much work as you think you are? Or more importantly are you using your time to do those things as best you can?

They Are Not Scared To Work Hard

The internet has made it easy for some us to work only a small amount of time a day and still be able to make more than enough to support ourselves (take me for example) – however if you want to be a billionaire, you need to work really hard, that means late nights, grafting all the time and no submission. You have really got to work at it around the clock whether you are part of a team or you are the team, the only way to become successful is to do things, and take action, how can you become successful if you are not prepared to work hard? Another thing is to believe in yourself because you will get many doubters and that’s okay, they are entitled to their opinion, you just need to work like crazy to become successful and to basically prove the doubters wrong.

High Profit Margins

Profit margins are something of a daunting area to get involved in, but basically the more the margin in profit the more money these billionaires make, which is why it is essential for them to have the best marketing and advertising campaign, the best quality in products and the best branding they can achieve because this all helps the sales. Imagine if Apple had just had a small advertising campaign and they had poor quality control issues, the profits would be non-existent, however because of the sheer volume of sales for Apple products (on most levels) and the high quality of the product, the money made is very substantial, however because they are a big company they can leverage getting the best deal for their raw materials and this means high profits.

They buy low and sell high so the profit Are Large

Sticking with the above example the larger the company is the more weight they can put behind them to get the best deals for their products and services, smaller businesses do use this method too, although it is usually on a lot smaller scale and usually depends on them buying a minimum amount of materials. The more bulk materials you buy the more items can be made for a lot less, the more items that are made for little the higher the profit margin, and the higher the profit margin, the deeper their pockets become. This isn’t to say that you too cannot get in on this technique you just need to build rapport with your supplier and use as much leverage as you can, whether that leverage is the length of time you have been a valued customer, how many people you send to them or whatever else you can think of.

They Take Risks

Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Henry Ford all have two things in common, they all dropped out of college, and they all became successful. In fact they become amongst the most successful people in the world and how did they manage it? They took risks, imagine where the world would be now if Bill Gates hadn’t started up his own software business? What would the world be like now if Henry Ford hadn’t built some of the first drivable vehicles in the world? What about if Richard Branson hadn’t started his own record label early in his career? The world would be a much less interesting place to be I think. The point is that they all took risks, and a couple of them still are taking risks. It’s like the SAS motto reads “He who dares, wins.” This saying is very true, do nothing, there will be nothing, no results, no money nothing. Try your hardest, and take some risks and you could see yourself end up successful.

It seems like only yesterday but it was back in 2006 that I came up with the idea for Retireat21.com. I was at Yanik Silver’s UK Underground Seminar, and I was just networking and discussing ideas with some other entrepreneurs at the event. I was aged 17 at the time and someone asked me if my friends were doing online marketing or if it was just me. I explained it was just me and that it was hard to find anyone young to network and share ideas with. About 20 minutes later with that ‘someone’ and several others we brainstormed the idea that was to become RetireAt21.com. I could hardly wait to leave the seminar and get started on my idea. (Indeed as I didn’t have a credit card at the time I had my father register the domain name there and then). The concept of RetireAt21.com – A Young Entrepreneurs website was 100% me, but it came out of that initial conversation I had with someone (a guy) – whom I have not spoken to since and whose name I don’t even know.

Lesson Learned:
Several Lessons actually — the main one of course being the power of the ‘mastermind’ and networking and attending events like The Underground Online Seminar but also the RIPPLE effect of that ‘someone’ asking me a question and how that question inspired me which in turn resulted in 1000′s of other young people being inspired to take action because of RetireAt21.com. Quite a Ripple Effect I think you will agree.

Since launching back in December 2006, millions of people have visited the site and have been inspired to make money online. I have heard from several top Clickbank vendors and affiliates that told me that RetireAt21.com was where it all started. (Ripple Effect again!) Right now you have the opportunity to do something really big, even if your goal isn’t to become rich, you can connect with and effect a lot of people.

PLEASE NOTE: Any website or service I talk about in this blog post, I have used and tested first, I’m not promoting them just to make money.

How I Created the 2011 Version of Retireat21

To save you tens of thousands of dollars and probably a thousand hours of hard work, I will skip all my failures and take you to exactly how we built the new Retireat21 site and how you can do it yourself for a lot, lot cheaper.

Firstly, before you do any website, you need to register a domain name which is basically the name of your website, for example Google.com is a domain name. Whenever possible I like to ‘explain’ what the site is about in the domain name. In the case of Retireat21.com the goal was to achieve financial freedom by aged 21, and my choice of domain explained that perfectly. Registering it is simple, go to GoDaddy.com and follow the instructions, make sure to grab a .com domain as they are by far the most brand-able and easy to remember. Once you have you domain you need to host it on the internet, once again this is a simple task, visit HostGator and pick the cheapest hosting account which is Hatchling, this will cost you $4.95 a month which is a very small price to pay considering I pay over $500 a month to keep my blog network online. Use the coupon code Retireat21 to get your first month for 1cent. Now you need to connect the two together and then install WordPress, here is a good (and short) video showing you how to install WordPress in 60 seconds.

Once you have WordPress installed, you want to choose a design/theme to fit your site niche, I personally use Woothemes for my blog themes because it gives me a better result then if I was to hire someone to build the site for you. This blog uses the Headline theme and when I started IncomeDiary, for the first year I used the BusyBee theme, these are the two themes I personally believe to be, by far the best out of the Wootheme collection. Buy and download your favourite theme, login to your WordPress Admin and click Appearance on the left side, followed by Themes then Install Themes at the top then upload. Find your theme on your computer and then click Install Now. Once the theme is installed all you need to do is click Active and your blog will now look like the theme you purchased.

Each theme you buy from Woothemes, you get something called WooFrameWork which makes it easy for people like you and I to build great sites. Features include, simple uploading system for advertising banners or Google Adsense, design options (over 10 different colors for each theme) and over 100 other great things.

In this screen shot you can see me adding advertising banners to my sidebar with the click of a button, no additional software required.

The next thing you want to do is install WordPress Plugins to make your blog run better, plugins can do 1000′s of different things so depending on your site and your goals for it, you may want to use different ones. Here’s a list of the ones I’m currently using on Retireat21:

• Popup Domination – a plugin developed by myself to allow me to add lightbox popups to collect email addresses (email marketing makes me the most money). Since launching this plugin over 5000 people have purchased it.
• Gravity Forms – this plugin allows you to add contact forms to your website, I have three, one on my contact page, one on a order page (great if your selling a server or consulting) and then one on my contest page.
• Broken Link Checker – this helps me a lot with my No Leakage Rule, if links are broken, then you either want to edit them so that they work or remove them because that site no longer exists. If people click them, realize they don’t work, it wastes there time and they may end up leaving your site.
• PS Auto Sitemap – when you begin to create more and more pages and posts on your blog, it’s import that search engines can navigate through them all, this plugin creates a sitemap page where every single page on your site is linked to, I link to this page on the footer of every page so that Google can find it.
• OptimizePress – probably my favourite WordPress theme/plugin right now, you can create squeeze pages, sales pages and membership sites. By far the best money I spent in 2010! You can see a review of OptimizePress here.
• YARPP – another cool plugin, if you go to the bottom of this post you will see related posts, this was produced using this plugin. Making it easy for users to find related content, means readers will visit more pages and make you more money.

I don’t use that many plugins, I only recommend using the ones you really need, the more you have, the slower your site will run. If your looking for more WordPress Plugin suggestions, check out this post.

Creating Content for Retireat21

Now it is time to start publishing content on your website, it’s kind of like Microsoft Word & Facebook, you type what text you want and click Publish. No one will come to your website without content, the day I launched Retireat21 I had over 4000 people visit the site and for the past two years although I haven’t published much new content, I still get over 1000 visitors each and every day. Here’s the three types of blog content that will bring you the most traffic, take the least amount of time but make you the most amount of money!

Top Lists

When I started publishing top lists 4 years ago, not many people were doing it and those who were, did it completely wrong. One of my first top lists was called The Young Entrepreneur Rich List and was published on Digg.com. I sometimes say this one list made me “Famous” online – certainly my online profile went up considerably after that list and the mentions I had all over the Web and I even ended up getting interviewed by a Brazilian Newspaper.

Here are the benefits of Top Lists:

• It’s simply research because of this, you can outsource this type of content writing.
• Easily scan able so people don’t have to take all day reading something.
• Extremely motivating, when people see my top lists, it makes them think “YES, I can do it”.

Here’s some examples of top lists so you can try it out for yourself:

• Top 30 Richest Young Entrepreneurs, (try: 30 Richest Female Athletes)
• 30 Most Influential Young Entrepreneurs, (try: 30 Most Influential Football Stars)
• 20 Reasons Why Your Website Is Crap, (try: 20 Reasons Why Your Restaurant Isn’t Making Money)
• 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be a Young Entrepreneur (try: 10 Reasons Why It Rocks To Be Tall)

Recently when starting a New Blog about things to do before you die, I simply did 10 top lists in a row, it already gets over 1000 visitors a day, this stuff works, try it, I make nothing for telling you that, I just want you to succeed.

Conduct Interviews

I started doing interviews big time when I was 19 and I had just got out hospital (Long story – I spent 1 week in hospital in Ghana followed by a further week in England). I had nothing I could do but sit in bed for a month, I decided to look at the top 1000 websites as well as all the big sites I visited often and ask them for an interview. Around 40% of people would say yes to doing an interview (remember every NO you get means you are one closer to a YES) and so I would simply write some questions and email them over to the owners of these top ranked websites. I remember when I got my first big time interview with a top 1000 website, I was so excited and rang my dad, I rang him 5 times more that day with updates on even bigger website founders who said yes to doing an interview.

Publish Guides and Tutorials

My very first high traffic blog was about website design and coding because that was what I was learning at the time (Mind you I never got very good at it and in the end preferred to pay other people to do it for me). I would also pay people to write articles about how to do stuff, such as “How To Code a Contact Form” and then publish it on my blog. I would then go ahead and submit to website directory’s and at the time it was really easy to drive traffic from those types of site, in literally a week I went from 0 visitors a day to over 3000. The best thing about writing tutorials and guides is that they are great at making money, look at this post for example, I teach you a lot of great stuff and in return if you take action you buy some stuff through my affiliate links.

Making Money From Retireat21

I have tried a lot of different things when monetizing Retireat21, for your benefit, I will break them down for you:

• Google Adsense – this is where I started, the site before Retireat21 was earning $50 a day from Adsense but because this site was a different concept it no longer worked and did not make much money so I quickly dropped it and tried something else.
• Banner Advertising – I have a love/hate relationship with banner advertising, benefits are it’s easy to bring in a chunk of money but in return for that money you have to spend your time working with advertisers and constantly need to be looking for more. Another thing which annoyed me was if I doubled my traffic from the previous month, I wouldn’t make any extra money because I had set my rate for advertising and couldn’t change it.
• Affiliate Marketing – something I would highly recommend because your earning potential is unlimited. How it works is simple: You promote other peoples products and if you sell any, you receive a commission for each sale, usually 50%. Pick the right product and you can make a lot of money.
• Email Marketing - Email Marketing goes really well with affiliate marketing because you build a highly targeted list of followers and then email those followers promotions. Another benefit is you can use you list to promote pages on your site and earn money from other monetizing such as Google Adsense and Banner Advertising.

So what should you do? To be honest, a bit of everything goes well, it’s very important to diversify your income so that you don’t keep all your eggs in the same basket. When you start you will find it almost impossible to sell advertising because you haven’t received much traffic yet and have little to no social proof that says “this guy or girl is worth investing in”. I highly recommend you place affiliate ads on your site to begin, this way you will earn only if the product owner earns, it’s a very fair system. Depending on what your niche is and what type of products you want to promote, your next steps are different, I recommend you read this post on Affiliate Marketing.

Going From Small To BIG With Blogging

A lot of people will only want to make a small amount of money, perhaps a few hundred or a thousand dollars a month, which is a great initial goal. But believe me, when you reach that goal, your soon find yourself wanting more and more – and not always because of the money but because the entrepreneur inside you wants it.

In my mind there is very little additional effort in making a HUGE site compared to making a SMALL site. The basics are all the same – it is only the application that is different. Here are my 7 Top Rules for creating big sites:

1. Model Yourself on Someone Else! This is simple, find a mentor or someone you like that is doing things big and copy them (to some extent at least). I find a lot of people are copying people when they shouldn’t because they are copying things that don’t work.
2. Stand Out From The Crowd! This is easy, just follow my content strategy, most people will focus on small quick blog posts daily, sometimes many times a day. Focus on 1 or 2 great posts a week, this will make you stand out, once you make enough money, hire someone to help you write 1 a day.
3. Invest In Yourself! Most people can’t do this until they are earning some money from there site, that’s fine, I was the same. Once you make enough money, hire a designer and get a custom site designed, this will make you stand out and allow you to customize things better so people stay on your site longer, rank better in search engines and of course make you more money.
4. Get Networking! In a 5 minute conversation you will very often think of a new idea or be told something new that will help you a lot. Take time to talk to your competition, friends and other online marketers.
5. Build a MASSIVE List! If you have a big email list or Facebook following, that means every time you have no content or something to offer, you can tell them and they can come back to your site, time after time. One of the most important and easiest ways to get traffic is to make sure the traffic you already had keeps coming back. I have people who have been following me since the beginning, appreciate them!
6. Always Be Trying Something New! I never stop, I always want to change something and improve something. I often call this bullet proofing, making sure my site is so perfect that nothing isn’t at it’s top performance. Put yourself in the mind of your reader, what would they want to see here, what products would they like to buy, why haven’t I visit this page, etc…
7. Never Think Your Better Then Anyone Else! This is something I’ve always believe, the second you think you are the best and become arrogant is also the time you stop learning. Everyone is a ‘teacher’ – even less successful people than you (even if if is only to teach you what not to do). I’ve told people often you should change this, add this, try that and so and they never listened, why? Because I’m 21 and they think they are better then me. I speak to friends, some who aren’t even that big with their online projects (yet) every week because I know I can learn them all.

Today I have tried to in as simple a fashion as possible explain what went into making RetireAt21.com a success – times and strategies do change but much of what I detailed here still works brilliantly (Top Lists, Interviews, Guides etc). Indeed I am very confident that if you follow a similar strategy even as we enter 2011 then you can achieve similar levels of success – even more success. One of my motto’s in life is to always be learning – you even learn from failure. You can even do BLOG POSTS on your failures and experiences as I have done here.

This morning my father shared with me a quote from a friend of his – John Carter – Frankly I think it pretty well sums up my own beliefs about trying something new:

As you head into 2011, just remember to take that risk. If you win, you will be happy. If you lose, you will be wise

Wishing You Huge Success and Happiness in 2011

Michael

Today I would like to welcome you to the new Retireat21.com! It’s been around a year since I have really worked hard on the site, to cut a long story short, HUGE programming errors and so we finally moved the whole site over to WordPress. For those of you who want to make sure they start their blog the right way, check out this FREE guide.

For those of you who are asking which Wootheme we are using, it’s Headlines Theme.

It’s quite funny looking back at the old site and the old posts, my spelling has come a long way (if I do have errors in this post, feel free not to point them out), my writing style and just my maturity in business. The reason we are giving this site a new look and a lot more work is because so often I hear from now successful entrepreneurs and they tell me that they in fact started with this site. This is where they got inspired and this where they come back to when they have a hard day. For most of us, this “make money online” thing doesn’t come easy, take a look at this post just to see how long it took me. The great thing about this site is it shortens the time to success, you get to learn from other people’s mistakes and you get the best information up front and for free!

Retireat21 has gone through a lot of face lifts over the 3 years, 4 months, 23 days the site has been live, here are some of them:

December 2006

May 2007

September 2007

December 2007

I hope you enjoy the new site, let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions for updates and new features.

To Your Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. The site is still very much new, we know there are a few errors, we are fixing them.

PPS. Where have I been all this time? Launched a new site called IncomeDiary.com over a year ago and it really was just easier to use because it was run on WordPress. LEARN FROM THAT MISTAKE!

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

Hi Everyone,

This has been a month of travels, a month of learning, a month of FUN and two great Internet Marketing Seminars.

First I was attending Ryan Lee’s Continuity Summit in Stamford, Connecticut and then 11th – 14th March I was in Washington DC for Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar

I learned so much from these events – and I will be relating much of this learning in coming posts both here at Retiareat21.com and also at IncomeDiary.com but for this post I just wanted to take a few moments to sit back and consider the many wonderful opportunities that have come my way over the last few years – and all because I attended Yanik Silvers Underground Online Seminar 2 back in March 2006.

Back last September Yanik asked me if I would be interested in helping organize the Underground Pre-Day event which this year would have the theme of a Young Moguls Day. That would also include organising the Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship which allowed 10 Young Entrepreneurs to get free passes to the event plus mentoring from speakers and members of Maverick Business Adventures.

Now, I will be honest, at the time I didn’t give it much thought and just said, sure Yanik – I can do that. As it turned out there is quite a bit more work to organising this than may be imagined – finding Young Moguls to speak, sifting through all the applications for scholarships etc is actually more intense than you may imagine – but I am so glad that I did it. You see, one day I would like to organize some events myself and getting an opportunity to jointly organize the Young Moguls Day along with Yanik has given me more experience and more knowledge and skill with which to tackle my own events.

Yet, way back in 2006, when I first Attended The Underground Online Seminar 2, I could not have for one minute have imagined I would be ‘partnering’ with Yanik Silver.

It is quite amazing where small steps – can lead us to down the line

The Power of Comparison! – Look at these two photos:

Back in March 2006 I was the youngest attendee of the Underground Online Seminar – indeed, Yanik Silver awarded me his Copywriting course because I was the youngest in the room.

Michael Dunlop At Yanik Silver’s Underground 2 – March 2006

But in 2010 this has all changed – many more Young Entrepreneurs attend the event – thanks to Yanik’s generous Young Entrepreneur Scholarship’s and also I think a little bit to do with me and the success that I have had online and especially with how RetireAt21.com has established itself as one of the leading Young Entrepreneur websites.

Michael Dunlop and Vishen Lakhiani Enjoying Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar Speakers Dinner

One of the speakers to have the most impact on me at Underground 6 was Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley.com. Vishen really inspired me when he said he was a C+ Student and actually many successful entrepreneurs never did that well academically – I even did a post on that over at IncomeDiary.com

Vishen is a great example of someone who has taken advantage of every opportunity that has come his way.

Getting stuck in and working with Yanik to pull of the Young Moguls Day and organising the Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship is something I could so easily have thought was beyond me – but fortunately I seized the opportunity and just went for it!

How often have you turned down a life changing opportunity?

Orison Swett Marden has a great quote about Opportunities which I really like:

Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great. Weak men wait for opportunities; strong men make them

If there was one theme more than any other that I got from this Underground Seminar then it is that we must seize THE OPPORTUNITY and also the more you get out there and interact with other entrepreneurs the more OPPORTUNITIES there is.

Finally — Thomas Edison had a greate quote about opportunity:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work

As you know — I am a great FAN of the Internet Lifestyle, working the hours I want in the locations I want on my terms – but when all is said and done any long term success requires consistent effort and diligent WORK.

Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners

In future posts I will be focusing on some of the young entrepreneurs who won Scholarships – what an impressive bunch of young people. I can only imagine what some of these individuals will achieve in the next few years!

One in particular who has also become a good friend is Aaron Darko from London and http://millionaireat24.com

We managed to grab a short interview with Aaron in DC and in this clip he explains why he became an entrepreneur and in particular the inspiration he got from Robert Kiyosaki and the Rich Dad Poor Dad book.

I expect to hear a lot more from Aaron in the coming months and years – so watch out for his name.

To Our Success

Michael

PS: Let us have your comments below – and in particular what you are doing with the opportunities coming your way.

Hi Everyone,

This video features one of my favorite young entrepreneurs Cameron Johnson – whom I have been fortunate enough to meet and also to have interviewed in the past.

Cameron Johnson has been featured in over two-hundred newspapers, magazines and television stations worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today, The New York Times, The New York Post, Time Magazine, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC, and dozens in Japan as well.

Also in this video is Ashley Qualls, the head of whateverlife.com – who I have also interviewed in the past.

Enjoy the interview – it is one of the most inspirational Young Entrepreneur videos on YouTube

Any your comments are welcomed — especially if you are a Teen Entrepreneur or started as a teen entrepreneur.

Michael

Cameron Johnson – on The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet on FOX, sharing secrets from his book on entrepreneurship, You Call the Shots

A couple of weeks ago I did a post at my IncomeDiary.com website titled: The True Story Of My Overnight Success

Partly confessional and partly inspirational the post got a lot of good responses. You see a lot of people seem to think that successful people ALWAYS were successful or they are in someway different from everyone else, yet I have discovered that just about every successful Internet Marketer was unsuccessful first. Most of us made a few false starts before we hit the Big Time. I know I did

Likewise today’s featured Young Entrepreneur, Adam Horwitz had a few interesting starts before finding something that really would make him money.

At age 18, Adam is one of the brightest young entrepreneurs I know and it was my pleasure to interview him for IncomeDiary.com recently. You can see Adams interview including podcast here

I think the secret that Adam and so many successful entrepreneurs have is that they just keep trying – they never give up and therefore eventually the do succeed.

Ben Franklin made a great quote which I admire:

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions

That is something I try to remember.

Below is a short video from Adam explaining how he got started online.

ADAMS WEBSITES:
http://www.adamhorwitz.tv
http://www.tycooncashflow.com (Watch the Introduction Video – look how Adam connects with people, builds rapport)

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Young Entrepreneur, Catherine Cook of MyYearBook.com reveals the secrets of how she got 5 Million Members on Myyearbook.com. Talk to Catherine Cook for any length of time and you get the distinct feeling you don’t need to remember this girl’s name because you’ll be hearing it often in the years to come.

Catherine Cook Interview

Catherine Cook  of  MyYearBook.com reveals the secrets of how she got 5 Million Members on Myyearbook.com

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.

Catherine Cook Interview

Thank you Catherine for agreeing to an interview, we really appreciate it.

First Question – What gave you the idea to create MyYearBook.com ?

When I was 15 and Dave (David Cook – fellow founder)  was 16, we got the idea for MyYearbook while just flipping through a normal high school yearbook in March 2005. We were relatively new in our high school and we just wanted a better way to get to know our classmates.  When we first go the idea we started brainstorming a general idea of what we wanted: superlatives, profiles, classes, groups. We picked the name myYearbook, and I added smiley faces in the O’s (which is still our logo) and MyYearbook was born.

What advice would you give someone who wants to make a social networking website?

I would tell them to stay true to a certain core group.  Now that their are two giant mass market social networking sites, the easiest way to succeed is to offer users something more specific then “finding friends.”  For instance, myYearbook goes for teenagers with our specially designed core features like Battles and Quizzes. Other sites like LinkedIn, for example, have other targets like professionals.

You have over 2,000,000 members, how did you manage to grow your website so fast?

myYearbook now has more than 5 million members and we are growing by 20,000 members/day.  The way we achieved this growth is by engineering virality.  We did this by widgetizing all of our content and listening to what our users want.  Any new feature we make for myYearbook, can also be posted on a number of other sites like Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc. thereby spreading the word about our site and the quality of our features.  The ideas for our features come straight from the users.  We organize what our members want and are sure to add them to the site.  One of the most popular features on the site, Battles, actually started as on of our users’ ideas.  By listening to our users and making viral features, myYearbook was able to gain the members it has today by word of mouth.

What do you spend all of your hard earned cash on?

Actually, I’m a not a big shopper or anything.  I wear mostly hand-me-downs.  Right now all my cash is going towards trains to go back home and work on the site and textbook, and I try to keep as much money as possible in the website.  Since I live at home (or now technically in a dorm), I really have no need to pay myself all that much.

Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?

I think it is something that can be learned, but only if you have a suitable mentor that can give you advice and help you out once in awhile.  I had my older brother, Geoff, to go to for business advice, and I know it would have been many many times harder to raise the venture capital and deal with investors without his help and experience.

Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

I guess the person I look up to the most is my brother Geoff.  He started his first company as a sophomore in college, and while I was growing up I watched him turn it into a successful business and always wanted to be an entrepreneur myself.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

Probably to never give up.  Sometimes it was really hard to keep up with the site along with my school work and other responsibilities, and just being told that somehow I’ll get through I’ll the work I have helps.

What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?

To never be scared of asking for advice and to use all available resources to find their way.  Now almost anything can be found on Google.  I think it’s important to look for answers, and if you can’t find them yourself, to get a friend to help you out.

What are your plans for the future?

I want to grow myYearbook as far as I can, and after that I guess I’ll graduate college.  I definitely want to start something else after myYearbook.  Running the site is just so exciting, and I don’t think I’ll be able to give up being an entrepreneur.

Find out more about Catherine at www.MyYearBook.com

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