Depending on who you listen to, Firefox is closing in on 20% market share in the browser wars. A recent report from Janco showed that Firefox has 19.95% of the market while Internet Explorer has 60%. Netscape has 9.68% to round out the top three.

For those of you who are Firefox users, here is a list of useful shortcuts to help you save time online.

ALT + D

Typing this in immediately takes you to the navigation bar of your browser. I can’t tell you how many times I use the navigation bar in any given day. Using this shortcut will help shave time off every time you need to type in a new url.

CTRL + T

This is probably my favorite shortcut. This one helps you load a new tab in firefox without having to use the mouse. It also automatically takes you to the new tab so you don’t have to use the mouse to click on the tab at the top.

CTRL + SHIFT & T

Accidentally close a tab that you need back? Use this shortcut to load the most recently closed tab. It can help save a lot of time if you navigated deep into a site, closed the tab and then realized that you needed the information again.

These are my three favorites. Do you use any other ones that could be of benefit to the Young Entrepreneur community?

Home mortgages, auto loans, installment credit – they may be taken for granted today, but before this son of Italian immigrants came along, such things didn’t exist. Amadeo Peter Giannini – A.P. to his friends – revolutionized the banking world by focusing on “the little people.” Giannini passed away in 1949 at the age of 79. By that time, the bank he had founded, the Bank of America, had become the largest bank in the world, with $7 billion in assets and more than 525 branches in over 300 American cities. Today, Giannini stands out as one of TIME Magazine’s Builders and Titans of the 20th century – the only banker to make this list of the century’s most 100 important people.

He never dreamed of being a banker when he was a child, but today, there is nary a student of retail banking who does not know the incredible story of this determined entrepreneur. A son of poor immigrants, Giannini helped build the first national system of banks for the ordinary person, all the while fueling California’s economic development and inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs. What were Giannini’s secrets for success?

Giannini was born in 1870 in San Jose, California, to the son of recent immigrants from Genoa, Italy. His father, Luigi, was a farmer who had grown up in Ligure, a small village that today is home to just 500 people. His mother, Virginia Demartini, married Luigi when she was fourteen years old and he was 29. Together, the two decided to leave Italy and head to America in the hopes of making a fortune. With the little money they had collected from relatives, Giannini’s parents rented a house with a few rooms. After six months of renovations, they had transformed it into a functioning inn with over twenty rooms. It was in that inn that the young Giannini was born.

The family inn continued to grow and eventually became a hotel. Luigi sold it after a few more years and bought a 40-acre plot of land. It seemed that the family was finally living their dreams. That is until one day, when Luigi got into an argument with an employee over a simple one-dollar debt and wound up getting killed. It was a massive blow for the seven year old Giannini, who witnessed the tragic event before his very own eyes. In that instant, his 22 year old mother had become a widow.

Virginia later remarried to Lorenzo Scatena, who was both a farmer and the owner of a small produce grocery business. She convinced her new husband that produce was more profitable than farming, and so the family moved to San Francisco in 1882 in order to be nearer to the port. When Giannini was 14 years old, he left school and went to work full time for his stepfather.

For the next five years, Giannini devoted himself to the store. He took on the job of public relations, writing letters to all their potential clients and suppliers and following up in person. When he was 19 years old, Giannini’s stepfather rewarded his hard work by making him a partner in the thriving business. Giannini now owned half of Lorenzo Scatena & Co. It wasn’t until he reached the age of 31 that Giannini decided to get out of the produce business. He made an announcement that he was “retiring”, but few believed he would be gone for very long. Indeed, the next phase of his life was when his real career would begin.

At the age of 32, after making a handsome profit in produce and having stepped back from the business world, Giannini thought he would have more time to devote to his own interests – reading, traveling and the like. But, fate would have other plans. He quickly began receiving offers from other businesses eager to snap him up, but there was one in particular that caught his attention; the Columbus Savings & Loan Association asked Giannini to join their board of directors.

The Columbus S&L was a modest bank headquartered in the Italian section of North Beach. Giannini decided to accept their offer, in the hopes that the position would allow him to both hold a prestigious title and also to help society. For the next two years, Giannini devoted himself to the bank and things seemed to be progressing smoothly. That is, until he began to encounter difficulties with the association’s other directors.

Giannini wanted to help hardworking immigrants like his parents, but the Columbus S&L had little interest in extending loans to anyone except businessmen and the already wealthy. In other words, you could only get money if you already had some money. This didn’t make sense to Giannini. However, his pleas to lend to the working class fell on deaf ears. And so, in 1904, Giannini raised $150,000 from his stepfather and ten other friends, and opened the Bank of Italy.

The Bank of Italy was located in a converted saloon right across the street from the Columbus S&L; even the saloon’s bartender was kept on in the role of assistant teller. It might not have been the most professional of ventures – he solicited business door to door at a time when doing so was considered unethical – but that didn’t matter. The Bank of Italy allowed Giannini to fulfill his dream of helping the working class. Within one year, deposits to this ‘bank for the little guy’ were exceeding $700,000.

By 1906, deposits to the Bank of Italy had surpassed $1 million. Giannini seemed to be on top of the world when disaster struck. On April 18, 1906, San Francisco was hit by one of the largest earthquakes in the city’s history; much of the city was destroyed. Whereas other banks took as long as one month to reopen, Giannini had reopened the Bank of Italy in just six days. He may have been operating from just a plank stretched across two barrels in the street, but for those who needed loans – and now, more than ever – that he was operating was celebration enough.

Over the next ten years, Giannini would open several other Bank of Italy branches throughout the city. In 1928, he approached the President of the Bank of America, Los Angeles, about a possible merger. When the merger was finalized, Giannini remained chairman of the new institution, but agreed to keep the name Bank of America as it was symbolic of the new bank’s broader mission.

Under Giannini’s leadership, the new Bank of America quickly became one of the only banks to reach beyond a single city. He founded TransAmerica as a holding company for his widening interests, which even included some overseas banks. TransAmerica was also the controlling shareholder of the Bank of America for a period, until the U.S. Congress stepped in to break it up.

He may have gained many opponents on his rise to the top for his use of unconventional tactics and his focus on the working class, but even as his monopoly expanded, it was hard to make the case that his actions were against the public interest. Today, as banks continue to diversify the range of services they provide, they are carrying out the legacy that was left behind by Giannini.

For this edition of Entrepreneur University I turned to strategic planning consultant Glenn Ebersole. Glenn runs The Renaissance Group, a multi-disciplinary and strategic thinking consultancy firm. They offer a unique approach to a wide range of strategic planning, management, marketing, public relations, and communications assignments through our team of independent professionals.

Glenn offers his advice for how to improve your use of email:

“The number of business emails we send and receive continues to grow at an amazing pace. And from my personal experience, more and more of my clients that prefer email communications as a preferred communications mode.

Email can be a very effective and efficient means of communicating. However, how many of the emails we send and receive can we honestly say are effective and efficient? And what can we do to improve our email communication?

Looking at those questions, Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach developed a short list of six (6) strategic steps to take to improve your email communications.

Strategic Step #1: Write a title for your email as if it were a “headline” in a newspaper or a strategic marketing communication. The email title must grab the recipient’s attention and should describe the content and a benefit to make the email recipient curious enough to open your email.

Strategic Step #2: Use an email address that is recognizable to the recipient so your email will be opened and not automatically deleted or deleted quickly by the recipient.

Strategic Step #3: The opening sentence of your email must also grab the attention of the email recipient so they will read on.

Strategic Step #4: Be very clear in the first paragraph about what you are offering, providing, inquiring about, etc. and why there is value for the recipient to respond to you or to take some requested action.

Strategic Step #5: Include a call to action for the reader that specifically tells the reader what you want the reader to do next.

Strategic Step #6: Make it very simple and convenient for the recipient of your email to respond.”

How do you use your email?

We’ve started collecting a list of the top mistakes that start-up entrepreneurs make so that you can hopefully avoid making them yourself.

To cast your vote and add to the list you can check out the forum post we created on the topic here. We would love to see what you think!

Here are the results so far. The top four that made the list are:

1. Not having enough money
2. Trying to do it all alone
3. Not seeking mentors
4. Not having a business plan

Other start-up mistakes that have made the list are:

• Not hiring right away
• Getting to year 1, past year 2
• Not getting involved in the community
• Surrounding yourself with people who don’t believe in your success
• Working in your business instead of on it
• Not thinking survival
• Losing momentum
• Doing it just for the money
• Going wide instead of deep into your niche
• Building sites but not driving traffic to them
• Not using email marketing
• Expecting that customers will come to you
• Over enthusiasm and unrealistic goals
• Failure to carry out your plan

What makes your list of top start-up mistakes? Once again, we’ve created a new post in the YE Forums and I look forward to hearing your thoughts! To cast your vote click here.

Last week I offered free SEO advice for Publiside. I’m going to continue my SEO Advice series today by helping out another YoungEntrepreneur.com blog reader, Brian from the Stratford Heights Church of God.

Stratford Heights Church of God - http://www.shcog.com

SEO Advice - I have designed a site for my church www.shcog.com and I would love some SEO advice on it. It was created using PHP, CSS and JavaScript

Brian

My Recommendations

1) Get some links!
Right now you have a Page Rank of 1. This means that Google has recognized your website and has given it the lowest score you can receive (unless you have been penalized in which case you get a 0). If you don’t have some kind of authority in Google’s eyes then you won’t get traffic. Get Page Rank by building your links. How about asking your parishioners to link to your website or getting your Oasis Youth group on a link building campaign as a start?

2) Create more content

You want to have pages with at least 300 words of content if you want to get ranked in Google. Most of your pages do not fit this criteria. You should also consider adding new content that you can drive traffic to. A good place to start would be converting some of your sermon audios into text files. Google doesn’t pick up audio but there is a lot of information here that if you turned into articles would help drive traffic to your website.

3) Optimize around important keywords

Right now you rank on the first page for Stratford Heights Church but unless someone is specifically searching you out, they won’t find your website. You should consider which keywords will help drive more traffic. Perhaps optimizing for Middletown Church (Middletown is the city where the church is located) would get more people finding you. Once you’ve picked your keywords, put them in your title tags and make sure to use them throughout your pages.

Good luck Brian! I hope the advice helps!

Readers, what do you think about the Stratford Heights Church of God website?

To learn more about how to get SEO tips for your website please read my post: Need SEO Advice? Submit Your Site!

In a move to try and become a relevant online publication Time Magazine put out a list of the top 50 blogs that you can’t live without.

Here is how they rank 5 of the blogs:

The Huffington Post: All hail HuffPo, the political blog against which all others are now compared. HuffPo has become one of the most popular and widely quoted sites on the web, its influence easily rivaling that of many mainstream media outlets.

Lifehacker: Sometimes, life throws so many problems at you at once that you just want some quick and dirty solutions. Lifehacker is full of tips, shortcuts, downloads, web sites, do-it-yourself projects, and how-to’s for getting small things done and moving on with life.

Metafilter: The venerable — okay, crusty — community blog has been around since 1999, an eon in webtime. While the typical blog is written by one person wearing sweatpants reclaimed from the hamper, Metafilter lets any user — regardless of what they’re wearing — contribute links and brief commentary highlighting interesting stuff he or she finds on the web.

TreeHugger: In a green world, it’s clear that the Internet has a huge advantage over the tree murdering print media in championing sustainability with a straight face. TreeHugger is the most complete of the hundreds of grassroots green blogs; think of it as the Wal-Mart of sustainability, if you can imagine Wal Mart being sustainable.

PostSecret: PostSecret is one of those rare one-note blogs that actually works, mainly because the note is so beautiful and resonant. The blog is an ongoing community art project in which ordinary people mail in a personal secret written by hand on one side of a homemade postcard.

The top 25 that made the list are:

• Blog di Beppe Grillo - http://www.beppegrillo.it/
• Ace of Spades - http://ace.mu.nu/
• Engadget - http://www.beppegrillo.it/
• Freakonomics - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/
• Gigazine - http://www.gigazine.net/
• Radosh.net - http://radosh.net/
• Gawker - http://gawker.com/
• The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan - http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/
• Velveteen Rabbi - http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/
• Boing Boing - http://www.boingboing.net/
• TechCrunch - http://www.techcrunch.com/
• Web2.Oh…really? - http://2ohreally.wordpress.com/
• The Sartorialist - http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
• Daily Kos - http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com/
• The Consumerist - http://consumerist.com/
• Indexed - http://www.indexed.blogspot.com/
• Wired’s Threat Level Blog - http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6
• Regret the Error - http://regrettheerror.com/
• Bad Jocks - http://www.badjocks.com/
• The Reverse Cowgirl - http://reversecowgirlblog.blogspot.com/
• Slashdot - http://slashdot.org/
• Jim Cramer Blog on Realmoney.com - http://www.thestreet.com/p/index.html
• Ars Technica - http://arstechnica.com/
• Nicholas Kristof On the Ground - http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/
• I can has cheezburger - http://icanhascheezburger.com/

What do you think? Did Time get it right? What are your favorite blogs?

“Most people live and die with their music still unplayed,” Mary Kay Ash once said. “They never dare to try.” Ash was not one of those people. Raised in a time when few women were in business, let alone successful in business, Ash broke down barriers on her rise up to creating a multi-billion dollar operation.

Today, Mary Kay Cosmetics Inc. continues to be a leader in the industry, with outlets in over 30 countries that are staffed by 1.6 million employees.

Ash once said that “people fall forward to success.” In her case, it seems she didn’t fall so much as she ran towards her dreams. With ambition and determination, Ash created not only a successful billion-dollar company but also one of the few to be featured three times in Fortune magazine’s “The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America.”

How did Ash break through the glass ceiling of gender discrimination to become a household name around the world?

“Our Company was begun with only one objective, that of giving women the chance to succeed, an opportunity that simply did not exist in the early ’60s.

Many women have made the mistake of changing their beliefs to accommodate their work. It must be the other way around. Those men didn’t believe a woman had brain matter at all. I learned back then that as long as men didn’t believe women could do anything, women were never going to have a chance.

I knew that I had been denied opportunities to fulfill my optimum potentials simply because I was a woman. These feelings were not mere indulgences of self-pity, because I had personally known so many other women who had suffered similar injustices.

You can do it! So often a woman comes to us who desperately needs to hear that. Frequently she is a housewife who has been out of the job market for many years, or who has never worked outside the home. When I see a woman like this, I want to do for her what nobody did for me, in the way of providing opportunities. 

I believe that most successful people are ordinary people with extraordinary determination. You cannot keep determined people from success. If you place stumbling blocks in their way, they will use them for stepping-stones and climb to new heights. Those who are blessed with the most talent don’t necessarily outperform everyone else. It’s the people with follow-through who excel.

Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm. If you act enthusiastic, you become enthusiastic. A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one. 

You can have anything in this world you want, if you want it badly enough and you’re willing to pay the price. Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve. 

I was taught to put my best effort into anything I did, and I can honestly say I’ve always done that. Still, there were many times when I failed, many times when I was disappointed. We didn’t set the world on fire from the first day: disappointments, setbacks and work have created the Company as it is today. 

Every failure, obstacle or hardship is an opportunity in disguise. Success in many cases is failure turned inside out. For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.

When you reach an obstacle, turn it into an opportunity. You have the choice. You can overcome and be a winner, or you can allow it to overcome you and be a loser…Refuse to throw in the towel. Go that extra mile that failures refuse to travel. It is far better to be exhausted from success than to be rested from failure.” 

For this edition of Entrepreneur University I turned to the joint venture expert, Robin Elliott. For more than 19 years Robin has worked with small business owners helping them attain success through joint ventures. You can learn more about him at his website: JVWisdom.

Robin shares with use three examples of easy ways you can joint venture your business to success:

“When people think Joint Ventures are complicated or difficult, it’s good to review some simple examples of real Joint Ventures that I have recently done. Here are three of them:

A Member of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Forum (I only deal with Members) set up a meeting with a well-known seminar leader, who agreed to have me speak at one of his seminars. Out of the 30 people attending (each was paying $3,000 to attend the program), 14 signed up as Members. This is an unusually high percentage.

Anyway, the seminar leader and the Member each made good commissions. This seminar leader has 3,500 people in his database and the next step is to arrange a more formal relationship and also to use a teleconference to sign up more Members. This is a win/win/win/win scenario, done with no cost or risk and very little time.

The Member and seminar leader will naturally get good commissions on any of those new Members who attend Bootcamps in the future, as well.

Another Member, who is involved in a local church, is arranging for me to present a Bootcamp at the church as a fund raiser. We have agreed on a minimum amount payable per delegate, and all the money will go to the church. I will receive a tax receipt equal to the amount of money raised.

We expect, given the amount of church members and the demographic profile, to raise between $5,000 and $10,000 for the day. The church incurs no cost or risk and uses very little time. I sign up new Members and the Member who arranges the JV gets paid on all Members that sign up. In addition, his own business will get great exposure. Everyone wins. This can work for service clubs, sports clubs and societies as well.

A third Member has linked me up with a well connected and influential entrepreneur in another country. All it took was a simple phone call. Any resulting bootcamps or business will make the Member serious money, and as I haven’t worked in that country before, the sky is the limit.”

How have you used joint ventures to help your business grow?

We have been preparing some great questions for an ongoing series of Entrepreneurial interviews with some up and coming entrepreneurs and also some very successful entrepreneurs. On a recent brainstorm with my brother Matthew he asked me: Are you going to send any of the interview questions to our members of YoungEntrepreneur.com?

That was a great idea! We have almost 35,000 members on our forum and over 600 subscribers to our Blog and many of you are already running successful companies and contribute to your own Blog as well. The answers that our members and readers provide will most definitely be very interesting and make for a great read!

So, here is the challenge for you!

Answer the 20 questions we wrote below on your own Blog. Add one other interesting question you wish you could ask other entrepreneurs (this is question #20). Talk about the various entrepreneurial adventures you have been on recently! Then link back to us here at YoungEntrepreneur.com/blog and comment so we can all go and check out your answers on your Blog.

We will then compile a complete list of the entrepreneurs who participated in the Questions and Answers and do a brief spotlight on the top 10 most interesting responses! Matthew, Evan and I will then pick one lucky person with our favorite overall interview and one person who came up with the best original question not on our list and buy you each one iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED™ Special Edition, 8GB – Personalized with Congratulations from YoungEntrepreneur.com (engraved on the back.)

Without further adieu, here are the questions:

List the name of your company and website.

1. What ignited the spark in you to start a new business venture or to make significant changes in an existing business?
2. What is your definition of success and has your company achieved it?
3. To what do you attribute your company’s recent achievements?

4. How important have good employees and team members been to your success?
5. What three pieces of advice would you give to high school or college students who want to become entrepreneurs?
6. What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?
7. Describe/outline your typical day?
8. Where did your organizations funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it?
9. What stops you from throwing in the towel and giving up when you are frustrated?
10. Do you believe there is some sort of pattern or formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur?
11. Who has influenced you most and been your greatest inspiration?
12. What book has inspired you the most?
13. How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
14. In one word, characterize your life as an entrepreneur.
15. Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
16. How do you achieve balance in your life? Or do you?
17. Where you see yourself and your business in 5 years? 10 years?
18. What’s your exit strategy?
19. If we could introduce you to anyone, who would it be and why? (you never know who we know!)
20. If you were conducting this interview, what question would you ask?

To your success,

Adam Toren

Thinking of starting a business this summer to earn some extra cash? Here are 14 ideas for businesses you can set up and run over the summer months.

1) Lawn Care / Landscaping

It’s a perfect seasonal business that can pay well and make you enough money to cover your expenses during the year. The startup costs are relatively low and you get to work outdoors. It can also be a repeat customer business for the next year.

2) Cleaning Service

People are always using the summer to clean out their garage and other rooms in the house. Offer your services to help customers organize themselves and haul away the garbage.

3) Dog Walker

If you love dogs and the outdoors, what better way to make some extra money and work on your tan? It could also give you a part time business for the rest of the year to earn cash on the side.

4) Car Washing

Everyone needs their car washed at some point in the summer and your startup costs involve a bucket, soap, and a few rags. Consider adding extra services in like detailing and interior cleaning.

5) Yard Sale Organizers

The start of summer also leads to countless yard sales around the country. Most people just want to get rid of their junk and don’t want to do the work. Offer to help them organize the yard sale and promote it for a fee or percentage of sales.

6) Sports Equipment Rentals

Rent bikes, scooters, rollerblades, and other summer-related sports equipment to people looking to have a day of fun. The startup costs are higher as you need to get the inventory but you can pick up used equipment for cheap to get you going.

7) Computer Helper

Are you a computer expert? If so why not offer your help out to people who aren’t? Many adults could use help in learning how to use their computer and the Internet. You could also help them solve specific problems and offer a maintenance package.

8) Window Cleaner

Another low cost idea is to become a window cleaner. With all the summer parties people throw they will need to have their houses looking in top shape - including the windows. Also look at commercial stores where they need clean windows to promote a professional appearance.

9) Sell on eBay

Starting an online business can take a while to turn a profit but with eBay you can get other people’s junk and sell it for an immediate return. One person’s junk is another person’s treasure!

10) Run Errands

With people being busier than ever and wanting to enjoy their summers as much as possible, why not offer to run errands for them? It can be as simple as picking up groceries, dropping off dry cleaning, and delivering packages. Also look to help seniors who aren’t as mobile and need help on a regular basis.

11) Offer Guided Tours

Do many tourists come to your city in the summer? Why not learn about your local history and offer guided tours? They could be simple walking tours or you could rent a bus to take customers around. People always spend more when they are on vacation so why not take advantage of the opportunity?

12) Cater Parties

Are you handy in the kitchen? Why not create a catering service and offer to supply food for all the summer parties that people hold? If you have a few friends who need some extra cash you can expand by also offering to serve the food in addition to making it.

13) Instructor / Tutor

What are you really good at that you can teach others? Can you help summer students in a particular school subject or teach people how to play the piano? You’ll get to do what you’re good at and love while making money at the same time.

14) Painting Service

Summer painting has paid for many college educations and can help you earn additional income. You’ll need to have some basic painting skills but your startup costs will be minimal. The customer will pay for the paint - you just need the brushes and tools.

What are some of the summer businesses that you have started?

PS. We are excited to announce that the YoungEntrepreneur blog has been featured on Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop feed for startups. Thanks Guy!