According to YoungEntrepreneur.com readers, here are the Top 21 Celebrity Entrepreneurs:

#1 - Richard Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. Branson’s first successful business venture was at age 15, when he published a magazine called Student. He then set up a record mail-order business in 1970. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores and rebranded as zavvi in late 2007. With his flamboyant and competitive style, Branson’s Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.

To learn more about Richard Branson check out the 5 part series we did on him last year:

• Lessons From Richard Branson - Part 1 - How to Identify an Opportunity
• Lessons From Richard Branson - Part 2 - Don’t Do It For The Money
• Lessons From Richard Branson - Part 3 - Focus On The Business
• Lessons From Richard Branson - Part 4 - Build A Solid Team
• Lessons From Richard Branson - Part 5 - Create A Brand

# 2 - Simon Cowell (born 7 October 1959) is an Emmy-nominated English artist and repertoire (”A&R”) executive for Sony BMG in the United Kingdom and a television producer, more commonly known as a judge on television programmes such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent. He is also the owner of the television production and music publishing house Syco.

#3 - Bill Gates (born 28 October 1955) is an American entrepreneur, software executive, philanthropist and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 9 percent of the common stock. For more information see our July post on Bill Gates: Are You Ready To Jump Off The Cliff?

#4 - Donald Trump (born June 14, 1946 in Queens, New York, New York, United States) is an American business executive, entrepreneur, television and radio personality and author. He is the CEO of Trump Organization, an American-based real estate developer, and the founder of Trump Entertainment, which operates several casinos. He received a great deal of publicity following the success of his reality television show, The Apprentice (in which he serves as both executive producer and host for the show). He is the son of Fred Trump who was a wealthy real estate developer based in New York City.

#5 - Jay-Z - Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969) better known by his stage name Jay-Z, is an American rapper and former president and CEO of Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records. In addition, he co-owns The 40/40 Club and the New Jersey Nets NBA team. He is one of the most financially successful hip-hop artists and entrepreneurs in America. Known for his flow and blending of street and popular style, he can compose lyrics without the use of pen and paper. His critically acclaimed album The Blueprint was allegedly written in only two days. After announcing his retirement from recording music in 2003, he returned in late 2006 with the album Kingdom Come which sold 680,000 copies in its first week, Jay-Z’s highest-selling album in a one-week period.

Here is the rest of the list from #6 to 21:

#6 - Warren Buffet
#7 - Ted Turner
#8 - Mary Kate and Ashley
#9 - Morgan Freeman
#10 - Robert Redford
#11 - Prince

#12 - Steve Jobs
#13 - Oprah Winfrey
#14 - Michael Dell
#15 - Sean Combs

#16 - Simon Fuller
#17 - 50 cent
#18 - Robert Kiyosaki
#19 - Robert Allen
#20 - Gene Simmons

#21 - Paul Newman

I’ve received a number of comments in previous posts about how to improve your Google rankings through SEO.

I wanted to try out a new initiative by opening up the opportunity to submit your site and get SEO advice for how to improve your results.

If you are interested in getting my thoughts as well as the opinions of the community please email me at evan@youngentrepreneur.com with “SEO Advice” in the subject line.

It will be an opportunity to receive targeted advice as well as expose your site to our readership and get a link back to your url.

From the emails I will pick one site to review and showcase it in an upcoming post in the Internet Marketing section of the blog.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you!

Think Vitamin recently put out a post about how to name your company. Their top five characteristics for what makes a good name are:

1) It’s easy to remember

2) It’s easy to spell and requires no explanation

3) It describes your business category

4) It describes your benefit

5) It describes your difference

They also suggest sticking to a few constraints including:

1) It has to be one or two syllables long - no more

2) Each syllable starts with a strong consonant (B, C, D, G, K, P, Q, T)

3) It’s fun to say (”…that just rolls off the tongue”)

Their examples of good names are: PayPal, Best Buy, and QuickBooks.

So how does YoungEntrepreneur stack up?

YoungEntrepreneur is easy to remember, does not require an explanation, is pretty easy to spell (although some people do misspell entrepreneur), and describes the business category. I would also argue that it describes the difference (targets young people who are entrepreneurs) and to some extent the benefit of being involved.

In terms of the constraints, at five syllables it is over the two to three maximum and it does not start with a “strong consonant”. Is it fun to say? I’ll leave you to be the judge.

I would add a few more items when considering a company name such as

• Is the domain name available?
• Are my keywords in the company name?
• Do I have a chance of ranking for these keywords?

Any entrepreneur thinking of starting a new business has to factor in the online components of choosing a business name.

YoungEntrepreneur.com does, after all, rank #1 in Google for the important keyword “young entrepreneur” and also ranks on page 2 for the keyword “entrepreneur”. It would have been a lot harder to rank if the Toren brothers did not pick such a great domain name!

Here is how a few famous companies got their names:

• Microsoft is the combination of MICROcomputer with SOFTware. It was originally named Micro-soft and the - was later dropped.
• Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” but the founders insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”
• Sony is the combination of sonus, the Latin word for sound, and “sonny”, a popular slang term used in American culture when the company was named.
• Hewlett-Packard was named when the founders filliped a coin to determine if the company should be called Packard-Hewlett or Hewlett-Packard.
• Apple was the favorite fruit of Steve Jobs. He threatened to name to company Apple if his colleagues did not come up with a better name by end of day. The name stuck.

How did you go about picking your company name?

On January 29, 1954, the woman that would make a meteoric rise to become not only the richest female in America, but also the first ever African-American billionaire was born.

“What I know for sure is that if you want to have success, you can’t make success your goal,” says Oprah Winfrey. “The key is not to worry about being successful, but to instead work toward being significant – and the success will naturally follow.”

Today, Harpo has 263 full-time employees, modest turnover (10% to 15% a year) and earns $275 million in revenues. It is a media powerhouse that competes with giants like Lifetime and AOL Time Warner. And, Oprah remains as committed as ever: “I believe I’m just getting started.”

Oprah’s success has not come easily, but rather as the result of a number of crucial factors:

“I always knew I’d be a millionaire by age thirty-two. In fact, I am going to be the richest black woman in America. The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if you’re willing to work. If you believe you can only go so far, it is an obstacle.

Be quiet. Part of your responsibility is to honour the quiet inside yourself so you can hear the call. Take five minutes to centre yourself in the morning…set your intention every day…if you don’t have five minutes, you don’t deserve to have the life of your dreams. Follow your instincts. That’s where true wisdom manifests itself.

You get in life what you have the courage to ask for. Always continue the climb. Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand. You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.

Energy is the essence of life. Every day you decide how you’re going to use it by knowing what you want and what it takes to reach that goal, and by maintaining focus. You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more. The right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it.

Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites you. I said I knew how to edit when I didn’t. I said I knew how to report on stories. When I went to my first city council meeting, I wasn’t quite sure of what to do, but I told the news director that I did.

It’s not just about being able to write a check. It’s being able to touch somebody’s life. Making other people happy is what brings me happiness. I have a blessed life, and I have always shared my life’s gifts with others. I will continue to use my voice and my life as a catalyst for encouraging people to help make a difference in the lives of others.

What I know is, is that if you do work that you love, and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. And, I truly believe, that the reason I’ve been able to be so financially successful is because my focus has never, ever for one minute been money.

You can be pursuing a profession because your parents say it’s the best thing. You can be pursuing a profession because you think you will make a lot of money. You can be pursuing a profession because you think you are going to get a lot of attention. None of that will do you any good if you are not being honest with yourself.

You become what you believe. You are where you are today in your life based on everything you have believed. I don’t believe in coincidences.

I don’t care about being bigger, because I’m already bigger than I ever expected to be. My constant focus is on being better. Should I be doing multimedia video production? Or seminars on the Internet? How can I do what I’m already doing in a more forceful way?”

This week’s Entrepreneur comes courtesy of John Brennan. John is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. John shares with us his advice on how to avoid the most common mistakes made when pitching an idea or project:

1. Don’t try to sell someone on an idea. Instead give them information to help them come to their own conclusion. Use phrases like, “Here is an idea,” “What do you think,” or “Here is something to consider and why,” in order to avoid coming on too strong.

2. Don’t be too self-deprecating. Being too humble and modest in your body language or voice tone destroys credibility. Aim to strike a balance between openness and credibility.

3. Don’t tell your story before you hear the other person’s story. Their story governs their behavior. Find out what they are telling themselves about you and your idea ahead of time so you can determine their values and predict any objections.

4. Don’t start trying to convince before you connect with your listeners. Talk first about what you know is important, the problem your idea will solve, and why it is important.

5. Don’t rely on Power Point to convince your audience to say yes.Build your case using a mixture of Power Point, story, examples, and even live demonstration if possible.

If You Blow It, Can You Pitch Your Idea Again?

Surprisingly, the answer is often yes. Don’t assume the topic is closed because of a setback. How you proceed depends on the specific situation. For example, Charvet advocates, “Phone the decision maker after a few days and leave a message like, “You know what we discussed the other day? Well, I’ve been thinking and I have another idea,” as a way to reopen the topic. You create curiosity about the issue. But don’t tip your hand in the phone call by giving the listener something to resist.

What if you choked because of nerves? Use a coach to help you examine self-sabotaging behaviors and figure out how to maintain your equilibrium. “I talk to my coach three times a month. When my life is in balance and I’ve had a good night’s sleep, I can gracefully hear a “No” from a decision maker. I can then proceed to ask good, non-defensive questions to satisfy my curiosity that “No” was the best answer,” says Simmons.

A coach will also emphasize the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. Anxiety may tell you that you should go over the data and figures one more time, but anxiety is not your best friend when it comes to maintaining equilibrium. Getting a good night’s sleep is a legitimate way to prepare for an important presentation. People will trust you when you are relaxed and calm.

At its essence, avoiding resistance is a matter of finding out what objections are likely to block your path, and what story the decision makers are telling themselves about you and your idea. With that information in mind, you are well equipped to position your presentation in a way that is meaningful to the values and concerns of the key decision makers. After all, “It’s not about you, it’s about them!”

We created a poll at YoungEntrepreneur to determine who is the top celebrity entrepreneur. There has been much discussion as to American Idol’s Simon Cowell and whether he deserves to top the list as an entrepreneur.

So far the top vote getters are Simon Cowell, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and Richard Branson.

Here is how Wikipedia introduces our top four:

Simon Phillip Cowell (born 7 October 1959) is an Emmy-nominated English artist and repertoire (”A&R”) executive for Sony BMG in the United Kingdom and a television producer, more commonly known as a judge on television programmes such as Pop Idol, The X Factor, American Idol and Britain’s Got Talent. He is also the owner of the television production and music publishing house Syco.

William Henry Gates III (born 28 October 1955) is an American entrepreneur, software executive, philanthropist and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft he has held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and he remains the largest individual shareholder with more than 9 percent of the common stock.

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946 in Queens, New York, New York, United States) is an American business executive, entrepreneur, television and radio personality and author. He is the CEO of Trump Organization, an American-based real estate developer, and the founder of Trump Entertainment, which operates several casinos. He received a great deal of publicity following the success of his reality television show, The Apprentice (in which he serves as both executive producer and host for the show). He is the son of Fred Trump who was a wealthy real estate developer based in New York City.

Richard Branson (born 18 July 1950) is an English entrepreneur, best known for his Virgin brand of over 360 companies. Branson’s first successful business venture was at age 15, when he published a magazine called Student. He then set up a record mail-order business in 1970. In 1972, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, later known as Virgin Megastores and rebranded as zavvi in late 2007. With his flamboyant and competitive style, Branson’s Virgin brand grew rapidly during the 1980s - as he set up Virgin Atlantic Airways and expanded the Virgin Records music label.Honorable mention so far in the poll goes to:

• Warren Buffet
• Ted Turner
• Mary Kate and Ashley
• Morgan Freeman
• Robert Redford
• Prince
• Steve Jobs
• Oprah Winfrey
• Michael Dell
• Jay-Z
• Sean Combs
• Simon Fuller
• 50 cent
• Robert Kiyosaki
• Robert Allen
• Gene Simmons

Do you have a favorite celebrity entrepreneur? Vote for them in our poll to help us determine who is the top celebrity entrepreneur!

Two weeks ago I discussed falling AdSense earnings and if it was a trend that webmasters could expect to continue. I reported that while my impressions were up year over year, my click through rate (CTR) had dropped 40% and my page eCPM (how much you make for every thousand impressions) fell by 30%. I decided that I would look at why my January 2007 was so much better than January 2008 (in terms of CTR and eCPM, not overall earnings) and make a few tweaks to hopefully improve my AdSense income. For full details please see the post Has Google AdSense Lost Its Mojo?

2 Week Update

When I looked back to my template in January of 2007 my content was cleaner, had less pictures and the AdSense ads really stood out. They were slightly higher up on the page and were obvious to anyone who visited my site. Over the year I changed the template a few times to add graphical elements that made it look more professional. The battle between having a website that looked good and that produced results was on!

I decided to run a sample test on half of my pages by changing the format to one that looked similar to my January 2007 layout. The other half I kept as is. This would give me sample data to compare against to make sure that any increase or decrease was because of the layout change. I have over 45,000 pages of content overall so I was confident that I would have enough data to make the test meaningful.

What Happened

After two weeks the click through rate on the pages with the layout change rose by an amazing 22%! Just by tweaking the layout on the pages I now have 22% more people clicking on my Google Ads - and I’m not doing anything against Google’s Terms of Service such as asking people to click on my ads.

So how much more am I making? My eCPM jumped an even greater 41%! This means that for every 1,000 people that visit my pages, I’m now making 41% more money than I was two weeks ago.

How did the pages without the layout pages do? After all, if they increased by the same amounts over the two weeks then I haven’t proven anything with the layout change. In looking at the numbers the click through rate on the pages without the layout change actually fell by 5% while the eCPM fell by 14%!

If you are not getting the results you want from Google AdSense why not tweak your template to improve the performance? While my test was only for two weeks, it was run on 45,000 pages of content and had over 100,000 visitors - enough to make the results meaningful.

It’s safe to say that I’ll now be looking at updating the rest of my pages in the coming weeks to reflect the new template.

What have your experiences with AdSense been?

On August 10th, 2007 we did a profile of Fraser Doherty. At the time he was an 18 year old student a Strathclyde University and entrepreneur. His company, SuperJams, had already a million dollars in sales and he was only looking forward to greater success.

Forbes recently caught up with Fraser to get his advice to young entrepreneurs on how to make a million dollars before turning 20. What did the 19 year old have to say? “Have an attitude of adventure, and enjoy the journey.”

Other young entrepreneurs were also asked for their advice. Cameron Johnson ran Surfingprizes.com which paid web browsers $0.20 per hour to surf the Internet with a browser which contained advertising.

“I was 15 years old and receiving checks between $300,000 and $400,000 per month. Before my high school graduation, my combined assets were worth more than $1 million.” The company was later sold to an unidentified buyer. Cameron’s advice? “Put yourself out there. Don’t be afraid of rejection. Don’t be afraid to ask anything.”

Do you have a million-dollar idea? Why not check out the Young Entrepreneur Forums and get some help to build it?

Some interesting ones that people are talking about already are:

• Math Celebrity - a fully automated math tutoring site that also shows you the line by line homework
• T.U.L. clothing - a clothing line in need of advice and financing to successfully take off
• Webucation - a direct sales entrepreneur with $185k in profits and an 18 year old owner

What is your million-dollar idea?

He has been called the Warren Buffett of Latin America, but on the most recent Forbes list of the world’s richest people, the Mexican born Carlos Slim Helu bumped the great American investor down to third spot.

With an estimated net worth of $67.8 billion, Helu is the richest person in the world. He is known for never cracking a smile, but Helu’s current monopoly over the telecommunications industry in Mexico must surely make him one happy businessman.

With his hands now in all of the retail, banking and insurance, technology, and auto parts manufacturing industries, Helu shows no signs of slowing down.

There is no one in the world quite like Carlos Slim Helu. Until his recent jump to the top spot on the Forbes’ list of the world’s wealthiest, he was something of a mystery to the business world.

He worked in relative isolation, with no computers in the basement of his drab two-storey office building. But, his seclusion should not be mistaken for a weakness. Indeed, his power is so great, that when he did suffer a weakness in the form of heart surgery a few years back, his companies’ shares actually began to tremble.

So, just how did this son of Lebanese immigrants become one of the wealthiest people in the world, and a household name across an entire continent?

“When you live for others’ opinions, you are dead. I don’t want to live thinking about how I’ll be remembered.

Technology is going to transform people’s lives and society everywhere in the world. I spend most of my time studying new technologies. My main task is to understand what’s going on and try to see where we can fit in.

I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. We think that there will be an ‘entrepreneurial reconversion’ of many companies that have lived in the industrial era and now are becoming part of this new [digital] civilization.

It’s not a question of arriving [at a new company] and putting in a whole new administration but instead, arriving and ‘compacting’ things as much as possible, reducing management layers.

We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don’t believe in having big corporate infrastructures.

I’ve always said that the better off you are, the more responsibility you have for helping others. Just as I think it’s important to run companies well, with a close eye to the bottom line, I think you have to use your entrepreneurial experience to make corporate philanthropy effective.

When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out and that’s when we are interested in getting in.“

For this edition of Entrepreneur University we turn to small business expert Don Doman. Don is a published author of self-help books on small business. He and his wife own Ide as and Training, which supplies business training products to organizations around the world. Don and Peg also own and operate PNW Video Productions, which produces video productions for distribution and internet viewing.

Don shares with us his secrets to being able to write a business plan in 10 seconds:

“Quite a few years ago I needed a used pickup truck . . . well, I wanted one anyway. The need wasn’t urgent and I wasn’t searching daily for one, but periodically I would drive past the used car lots and see what was available. Then I found one. It was a few years old, in good condition, and the price was right.

Now, finding a truck and buying a truck are two different things. I knew I could buy the truck, but I what I really needed was to justify the purchase to myself and my to wife. I thought about it. Within ten seconds I came up with a business and marketing plan . . . for my wife.

My wife had just quit a job that she liked, but where she was vastly underpaid. She was looking for another job. She had a friend in similar circumstances: both young housewives and mothers looking for spending cash. I bought the truck and drove home. As I was driving I tweaked the plan a little bit and prepared my presentation.

I walked into the house and told me wife, “I’ve got a business for you.” She just looked at me. I said, “You know how hard it is to find people to clean out stuff left behind in our home rentals?” She nodded. “Well,” I said, “You can form your own business to remove trash and help people get debris out of their yards. You can go partners with your friend. All you need is a truck, and I’ll buy that. You pay for the gas, any dump fees (which you can charge to the client), and the advertising in the community classified newspapers. You can name your company Lump It and Dump It. Your slogan can be You Call, We Haul. And you two can probably split $25.00 to $30.00 an hour (you can see this was quite a few years ago). It’ll give you some exercise, some money AND you can almost choose your hours.

My wife recognized the opportunity and immediately called her friend, who accepted the proposal. We went and picked up the truck.

They placed ads in the small local papers and began making money almost from day one. Eventually, competition did them in, but for over a year they had a business that made them spending cash. My wife made more than twice what she had been getting, and her friend made much more than she had been receiving for baby-sitting, her previous money source.

Now, your business is probably more complicated than Lump It and Dump It, and it’s going to take more than ten seconds to make out your complete business and marketing plan, but if you can’t write down your core information in a little over ten seconds you have a problem.

There are basically four major aspects of the ten-second business and marketing plan:

1) What product or service you are offering?

2) How it is going to help people?

3) What are you going to call your business?

4) How are you are going to reach your customers?

After you’ve got those four questions answered, you can branch out to more heavy duty planning, but if you can’t answer those questions quickly and explain them to anyone with seconds, you better take more time and examine your business so you can do it.”

What is your 10 second business plan?