Our 14th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Marcel Sim from GetEntrepreneurial.com. You can read what he had to say about us in his blog post: YoungEntrepreneur.com.

According to Sim:

“GetEntrepreneurial.com helps the aspiring entrepreneur (you!) with small business advice, business tips and info, and entrepreneur resources and opportunities. Whether it is about creating a compelling business plan that investors simply cannot resist or putting together a cost-effective marketing campaign which reaches your target consumers or leveraging on technology to improve the bottom line, whatever help and info you need for your small business is all here at GetEntrepreneurial.com. It’s time to leave the fears behind and bring out the entrepreneur in you!”

Thanks for the review Marcel! If you are interested in doing a review, check out our Review Our Blog initiative for instructions.

Evan Carmichael

On February 8, 2007, millions of viewers tuned in to The Oprah Winfrey Show to learn about applying The Secret and the Law of Attraction. According to Oprah.com, “The concept says that the energy you put into the world—both good and bad—is exactly what comes back to you. This means you create the circumstances of your life with the choices you make every day.

According to James (one of The Secret teachers), there is scientific evidence to back up the spiritual practices and laws defined in The Secret. “Science tells us that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body, your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under a high-powered microscope, it’s just a field of energy and a rate of vibration,” he says. “And so are we. So if you think you’re this meat suit running around, you have to think again.”

One way to describe this energy is by comparing it radio waves, “The frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what you have a tendency to manifest in your life,” Michael says. “Whether those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter.”

This means that if you are sending out the same negative energy over an over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract like energy back to you. James says that when bad things happen people might ask, “Oh, God, why me?” “Because it is you,” he says.”

I’ve recently seen a number of startups now trying to capitalize on the success of The Secret and helping people apply it to their daily lives.

One such company is Chartering Success.

The people at Chartering Success believe that success is achieved with three powerful principles:

1. Desire to create success…you already have a strong desire
2. The willingness to change and become successful… you’ve already taken the first step
3. The right tools to help you achieve the results you desire

They’ve also created 150 programs to help people apply The Secret and the Law of Attraction to everyday life. The programs range from Body Image to Financial Abundance, to Fear of Automobiles. You can either purchase one program or a subscription to the site and get access to all the programs.

Personally, I have not had much exposure to The Secret and am amazed at the tremendous popularity and growth surrounding the new industry that has been created as a result from the exposure on Oprah and other popular t.v. shows.

I would love to hear your experiences with The Secret - Have you heard of it? Has it worked for you? Would you use a service like Chartering Success?

Evan Carmichael

It is no secret that Google’s search engine is driven by links. The more links you have to your website the greater chance you have of ranking #1 for the keywords of your choice - but not all links are created equal. Here are some tips to get the most out of the links that are being sent to you.

1) Get High Ranking Pages Linking To You

The higher Page Rank that the page linking to you has, the more valuable the link is for you. One link from a Page Rank 6 or 7 page is worth more than hundreds of Page Rank 0’s and 1’s. Also remember that each page on a domain has its own Page Rank. Just because the homepage might be a 6 it doesn’t mean that the page with your link on it will also be a 6. Try to get your link on the page with the highest Page Rank possible.

2) Get Relevant Links

Google has recently put a lot of effort into checking into the relevancy of the links you get. If you get a link from a page Rank 6 page that has nothing to do with the content on your site then Google will not recognize the value of the link. If, for example, you have a website about fishing you are best off getting links from fishing related websites as supposed to ones which discuss computers, houses, or any other unrelated topic.

3) Get Quality Anchor Text

The anchor text in a link is the blue text that is underlined and when you click on it leads to your page. Usually it reads something like click here or learn more. Google considers whatever the anchor text is to be extremely valuable in determining the relevance of the link. Try to recommend a number of different targeted keywords for your link partners to use in their anchor text to help increase your rankings.

4) Make Sure The Link Does Not Have NoFollow

Google introduced a ‘nofollow’ tag that webmasters can use on links that allow people to click through on the but sends a message to Google that they do not want to pass on any credit to the website they are linking too. Many bloggers have turned on nofollow on their links to prevent people from spamming their blogs with comments. If your link has the nofollow attribute then Google will not recognize that you have received a new link. Ensure that with all of your link partners they do not have the nofollow listing for your link.

5) Submit Your Link Pages To Google

Whenever you get a new link to your site you want to let Google know that the page exists. Google can often be very slow to pick up new pages and sometime they don’t pick them up at all if the site you’re on is poorly structured. To make sure you get the credit you deserve, submit the link to Google by using the Add your URL to Google tool. It’s a surefire way to make sure that the hard work you put into building your links pays off in higher rankings.

Building links is an important part to any SEO strategy - just make sure to follow the above five rules to get the most from your link building campaign.

Evan Carmichael

In continuation of my post last week, Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!, I wanted to discuss how we’ve successfully used delegation here at my office.

Delegation has become increasingly important for my business. As we take on more projects and continue to grow the company, I am frequently becoming the bottleneck. Decisions don’t happen without me and people can’t move forward because they don’t have the training or responsibilities to do so.

Here is what I have done to try and lighten the load. So far it has worked well and has freed up my time to focus on the bigger projects!

1) Give up some control - I liked having everything come through me. I could ensure that the right decisions were being made and provide my input. Unfortunately this can only work for so long. If I have a busy week of meetings or media interviews I’m not here to support my staff and give them feedback. With two of the people who work for me I have now given them significant control over what they do. They can make decisions without me and have the power to implement it themselves on our website. I had to train them to make sure they understand how to use our system properly and they are now ready to go.

At some point you have to have the confidence that you have the right people on board and give them the ability to run with their ideas. So far they have both made great strides and have done so much more than when they had to pass everything by me. They are happier, I’m happier, and we’re getting more work done.

2) Give them an incentive - The two people I gave significant responsibilities to also share in the profits that are made from their work. They do not have an equity stake in my business but they do have a profit share for their divisions. Because my business is online, it’s easy to measure the revenue that is generated section by section.

I give them updates every day on how much traffic they are generating and monthly reports on how much money we made. They know that the more they work, the more money they will make. It has helped get them up and running as well as drive more profitability for my business as a whole.

3) Stretch their responsibilities - I have mentioned a few times about the importance of bringing on student interns as a way to cheaply expand your business. We currently have high school interns working alongside our staff. They are online savvy, energetic, and don’t cost us a dime!

I have assigned two of the interns to one of my staff members. He has been responsible for training them and is their manager while they are here. It has been a great experience for him because he has never had this kind of responsibility before. It’s a cheap way to upgrade the skills of the people who work for you and stretch their capabilities. So far it has worked out very well - his team is getting more done and I have two less people to manage than I did before!

Any entrepreneur who wants to avoid buying herself a job needs to look at delegation. Even if it’s outsourcing a small task that lets you focus on building your business in a more strategic fashion, until you start delegating responsibilities you will not enjoy the freedom that can come with being a business owner.

Evan Carmichael

Born on September 16, 1875 on a small farm in Caldwell County, near Hamilton, Missouri, James Cash Penney Jr. was the seventh of twelve children born to James Cash Penney and Mary Frances Paxton. His father was a Baptist minister and a farmer whose yields were modest. In fact, the family was so poor that only half of Penney’s siblings would survive into their adulthood. Impoverished as they were, the Penney family was rich in religious values. James and Mary raised all of their children to believe in God, self-reliance, and the Golden Rule.

Penney bucked the family trend and achieved success as an entrepreneur opening the J.C. Penney Company.

In 1920, the J.C. Penney Company had over 197 stores along the West coast. Just nine years later, that number had grown to more than 1,400 stores across the country; new stores had been opening at a rapid rate of almost one every three days. Today, the company has grown to be one of the nation’s largest retailers. By the time Penney died at the age of 95, sales for the company he had helped grow finally reached the $5 billion mark.

What were his rules for success?:

When this business was founded, it sought to win public confidence through service, for it was my conviction then, as it is now, that nothing else than right service to the public results in mutual understanding and satisfaction between customer and merchant. It was for this reason that our business was founded upon the eternal principle of the Golden Rule.

The friendly smile, the word of greeting, are certainly something fleeting and seemingly insubstantial. You can’t take them with you. But they work for good beyond your power to measure their influence. It is the service we are not obliged to give that people value most.

The store that sells its wares for less but pays little attention to the service it renders does not meet with the success of the store with courteous employees. The public is not greatly interested in saving a little money on a purchase at the expense of service. Courteous treatment will make a customer a walking advertisement.

Are you going above the call of duty to help your customers? As a challenge for the next month, every time you speak with a customer try to go the extra mile to make sure they have an outstanding (not just a good or even great) experience with you. If you don’t see an increase in your customer base from referrals you’re doing something wrong!

Evan Carmichael

Are there any young entrepreneurs out there with a flair for graphic design who want to help us out and gain some exposure to our blog audience?

Over the past month I have been writing a new series once a week called Entrepreneur University where we connect with an expert to get some advice to help small business owners improve their companies.

So far we have put up four posts which have been well received:

• How To Create A Sales Incentive Program
• 20 Tips To Manage Your Time - Entrepreneur University
• 50 Benefits Of Joint Ventures - Entrepreneur University
• 6 Steps To Getting Referrals - Entrepreneur University

Each post, as you can see, has its own graphic associated with it but I would like to create a logo specifically for Entrepreneur University.

The logo will appear with each Entrepreneur University post and the creator will be credited with an entire post as well as a link in our Young Entrepreneurs section which appears with each blog post.

Do you have what it takes?

Email me with your design ideas!

Evan Carmichael

Here is a truly unique company run by a couple of young entrepreneurs: Happy Worker.

As co-creators and co-founders of Happy Worker and The Toy Agency, Shirley Yee and Kris Schantz create fun for big kids… and try their hardest to turn all working stiffs into happy workers.

The duo first came up with the idea for a geek action figure in early 2002 while working in the IT industry after the dotcom collapse. Shirley was working as a web developer, and Kris was creating products and managing marketing for entrepreneurial Internet companies. Through some persistence and an abundance of nerdy love, the pair joined forces with other toy-minded people and turned a little napkin drawing into a real live toy – the GeekMan Action Figure hit retail shelves and office cubicles in mid 2004. (More about the making of GeekMan at http://www.happyworker.com/geekman/makingof.html)

Since their firstborn toy Happy Worker has added other original action figures, including BossMan – mighty manager, SuperMom – mini mommy heroine, and MoneyMan – your friendly neighborhood financial hero. Happy Worker’s toys are now available in 6 countries and have made over 250 media appearances.

“We had to try our hand at inventing toys… we had all these crazy toy ideas burning holes in our heads, and we needed to let them out. But like most things, with toys coming up with crazy ideas is the easy part. Turning them into reality… takes real passion and business sanity.”

One of the challenges they faced was that neither had any real experience in the toy industry. They invested all the free time they could find on evenings and weekends towards researching the toy business… first via books and online, then by attending Toy Fair in New York, and finally by making contacts in the industry. “The learning process was a lot of fun… and a lot of homework. But after about a year of research we’d learned as much as we could about the industry without actually making a toy.”

After seeing their retail toys, in early 2005 Yahoo! asked Happy Worker for creative toy ideas to add excitement to their upcoming marketing campaigns. Together they launched a line of exclusive HR related action figures for Yahoo!’s HotJobs division. “The action figures were introduced at the world’s largest HR trade show, and Yahoo!’s booth was crazy busy with people clamoring for the toys. Before the show was over they’d run out of action figures, and more importantly recorded a huge increase in booth traffic and show sales over previous years.” The companies have worked together for the last 3 years.

Since then Happy Worker has completed a number of successful custom toy projects for other brands, and created a separate division, “The Toy Agency by Happy Worker”, focused on designing and producing tailor-made toys and gifts from scratch for companies and marketing agencies.

Evan Carmichael

BusinessWeek recently published an article on search engine optimization called How to Make SEO Work for You. I have already discussed many of the points in the article but I thought I would share some of the highlights - sometimes it’s good to hear things from a different perspective.

On what is SEO?:

“Search engine optimization (SEO) just means your site is as accessible as possible to the search engines to improve the chances that they will serve it up when your potential customers type in specific search terms. The more easily search engines find your site, the higher up it appears on their results pages.”

On the importance of your website structure:

“Structure your site properly, code it cleanly, and use necessary keywords. Sites that have the proper architecture in place, and are not slapped together, have a better chance of getting picked up by the major search engines.”

On selecting the right keywords to optimize for:

“Try to think from a user’s perspective. You may sell hats, but your customers may call them caps, lids, or fedoras. If you’re not sure, ask your clients how they got to your site. The most effective page titles are about 75 characters long and include the most important keywords at the beginning. On each page, keywords and phrases should represent 2% to 3% of the total content. If a search engine’s algorithms interpret your site as a keyword hog, it will pass it by.”

On getting links for your site:

“You’ll want to link your site to other sites, which will both increase traffic overall to your site and boost your search engine rankings, since the search engines pick up on the number of times people link to and from your site and rank you higher accordingly. So do things like listing your site with online business directories, even if you think no one will find you through them. Those links may not produce any direct leads, but they could bump you up in the search engine rankings, especially if they are popular or highly visited sources.”

On submitting your site to search engines:

“Research shows that older audiences still like AOL and professional audiences tend to like MSN and Google, while younger audiences often like Yahoo. Only about one-third of users use one search engine consistently. Knowing your audience will help you decide which search engines to optimize for. Go to their home pages and search “how do I submit my site?” to get easy instructions.”

On Flash versus text websites:

“Use plenty of text on your site, even in your drop-down menus, your headers, and your footers on each page. Text is what the search engine crawlers are looking for. Text within Flash-based components won’t help, however. This text is not accessible to the search engine site crawlers, and will not get picked up. Flash looks great, but it won’t help boost your search rankings.”

On the importance of SEO:

“Consumers trust user-generated search engine rankings more than paid advertisement rankings by a wide margin, as much as 70%. And optimizing your site gives you a huge competitive advantage. Even now, only 25% of the Fortune 100 businesses have completely optimized their sites in this way. If you act now, you’ll have an edge over competitors who haven’t optimized their sites.”

Evan Carmichael

If you want to build a company of any substantial size you need to learn how to delegate. It can be a difficult process for many entrepreneurs because it means they are giving up some degree of control but you can only do all the jobs in the business for so long. Here is my advice on how you can successfully delegate some of your work:

1) Delegating tasks versus functions

The first aspect of delegating to understand is to know what you can delegate. The two options you have are tasks and functions. Tasks are specific requirements such as write a press release, follow up on sales leads, and create a marketing flier. They are lower level responsibilities that require you to tell your employee what to do. Functions are higher level responsibilities that give your employees a greater degree of control. Examples are putting someone in charge of marketing, human resources, or sales. Instead of assigning specific items to do you give them a goal, a budget, and let them come up with the plan of action and then execute on it.

2) Know which option is best for you

Chances are if you’re bringing on your first employee you will need to delegate tasks and not functions. You will have to train your employee and keep a close eye on them to make sure they are performing. As your company grows and your employee(s) gain more experience you can look at delegating functions. Delegating functions will also free up your time to focus on the strategic direction of your company.

3) Focus on the low value tasks

You will gain the most from delegation by looking at where you are making money and where you are spending your time. If you making $50 / hour, for example, when talking with clients and then are spending half the day doing a job that you could hire someone to do for $10 / hour you are missing out on some serious earning potential! Look at the tasks you are doing that are the lowest value to the business and delegate them out so you can get more value from the time you are spending and focus on the higher paying tasks.

4) Focus on the tasks you don’t enjoy

If you don’t enjoy what you do then you likely won’t be good at it and there are tasks in every company that the business owner wishes he / she did not have to deal with. Find someone who loves doing those tasks so you can focus in on what drives you and makes you happy. It will make your company stronger and give you a greater sense of joy and excitement.

5) Start small

You don’t have to hire someone full time right away. Most entrepreneurs think that they can’t afford to hire someone at the start because it requires a full time salary. You can start very small - hire someone for a couple of hours per week at $10 / hour. The first person I hired was for one hour a day, five days per week. As I grew my company I was able to afford to give him more hours and raise his salary. Starting small also gives you the experience of managing employees so you won’t be new to the game when your company begins to expand.

6) Look at interns

Another great way to start small is to bring on student interns. They are often free and can provide some excellent ideas, work, and energy for your business. I’ve worked with foreign language students who are university educated to come into my business and work on specific projects. I am also starting this week to bring on high school student interns who are looking for work experience as part of a co-op program. It’s a great way to test out the waters with specific tasks. If you see a return on the time spent then you can look at potential hiring someone on to handle it after the internship is up.

To grow your business you will need to delegate out some of the work. Delegating can be fun, can help you focus on the tasks that bring you the most joy and the most money, and can take your company to the next step. Follow these simple strategies and you will begin down a path to tremendous growth. Find a way and start small today!

Evan Carmichael

You can have the greatest idea in the world, a market ready to accept it, and all the connections and luck one could ask for but starting a business will still come down to are you willing to put in the work to make it a success?

Sooner or later (for most much sooner rather than later) you will face multiple challenges with your company. You will face rejection, have partners, customers, employees and investors leave you, and have many moments when you question why you got into this in the first place.

One of the important factors that separates successful entrepreneurs from everyone else is pushing through and keeping going when you face serious challenges. Take, for example, Sean Combs.

Born on the dangerous streets of Harlem and exposed to violence at an early age, the odds were stacked against Sean Combs, a.k.a. Diddy, from day one. Nobody believed he would amount to much, let alone go on to become one of the most successful and well-known musicians, producers and entrepreneurs of our time.

How did Combs achieve his success? Through a lot of hard work!

According to Combs:

“I’m trying to be somebody. I didn’t come into this business saying, I’m gonna look like the biggest black music man; I was like, I’m gonna be the biggest. I’m gonna go down in history as being one of the best music men and businessmen in entertainment.

I admire Andre Harrell and Berry Gordy the most, the people who came up from the black community. But the people that I’m going to be greater than are Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Clive Davis.

I’ve never been surprised about what happened to me. I’ve put in hard work to get to this point. It’s like when you become a lawyer - if you’re bustin’ your ass, you’re not surprised when you get your degree.

I came in to win, you know. This is why I stay up late while other people are sleeping; this is why I don’t go out to the Hamptons.”

The next time you are faced with a significant problem, just think about the fact that every entrepreneur who has made it was once in your position. The reason why they got to their level of success is that they kept going, faced the problem head on, and continued building.

How much do you want to succeed?

Evan Carmichael