As a young entrepreneur I am always looking to learn from others who have paved the way before me. I am a big believer in Modeling Masters - why struggle through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship when you can tap into people who have already made their mistakes and can give you guidance?

On a regular basis I update my list of people I want to connect with personally and learn about. This is the easy part - creating your list. The next step is to contact them and give them a reason to want to talk with you.

The angle that I have always used is my website. I go in to meet them to learn about how they built their companies and then I write a story about them on my website. They get exposure and a flattering story written about them. In the meantime I get to hear their secrets to success and ask questions that can help my business grow. I always look for the fastest growing companies in my city and target the founder of the firms. One of the people I interviewed just became one of the Top 40 Under 40 and I have learned a lot from his success.

If you do not have a popular website that carries a brand of some sort, go out and get one. Local newspapers and other websites, blogs, etc. are always looking for good stories and love to profile stories of achievement. Contact them with your idea and then go get the entrepreneur using the their name and reputation.

I have always been a fan of quality over quantity. It may take some extra work to get into meeting the people on your list but if they are the cream of the crop of people who can help you and give you advice it is worth the effort. You will get some good tips and also likely end up with someone who you can call on for advice in the future.

Evan Carmichael

Last month Google filed for two new patents: Document Scoring Based on Traffic Associated with a Document and Document Scoring Based on Query Analysis.

The two patents are in addition to the other patents that Google has filed. Some of the information represents new takes on existing data that is being tracked while other information is brand new and should paid attention to. The information that is being collected now includes:

• when the website was set up?
• how often and how extensive are the changes that are made to the site?
• what kind of search queries are being used to find the site?
• who links to your site, who uses text links, what the text links say, and when are new links being created?
• what is your overall traffic that Google sends you?
• what is the user behavior once they click through to your site?
• what kind of topics does your webpage cover?
• domain related information

Google uses this information to assign your website a score which represents the trustworthiness of your site. This score, along with the relevancy of the search query being made, will ultimately determine where your webpage will rank in Google’s index.

This information is not necessarily new to these patents but represents an expansion of what was already being collected.

New Data Collection

What Google is now tracking that can have an impact on where your site ranks includes:

• How many ads are shown on your website and how frequently are they changed?
• What is the quality of the ads? For example, an ad that links to a high PageRank page could get a higher score for your page than an ad that links to a low PageRank or, even worse, banned Google page.
• What kind of click through rates are you getting on the ads?

It is still unclear how heavily the advertisement data will be factored into Google’s algorithm but in light of all the various attempts people are making to monetize their websites, Google is now taking notice and is tracking such information.

Keys to the Game

With Google’s new updates it will be even more important to:

• Ensure your content (now ads included) are all related. You do not want to have a page about cars and then have links and advertisements that target a different market.
• Ensure you get quality inbound links and outbound link to quality sites. The first part of this equation has always been true but with Google paying more attention to who you are linking to and who your advertisers are it will be all the more important to carefully screen your outgoing links and sponsors.

Evan Carmichael

I was reading through the YE Forums today and noticed a thread on bootstrapping so I thought I would share a list of top ways to bootstrap your business. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, bootstrapping is the process of spending as little money as possible to get your business off the ground. It is equivalent to starting a business on a shoe-string or limited budget.

Ways To Bootstrap Your Business (in no particular order)

1. Work from home to save on rent, commuting costs, and you can deduct some of your home costs for tax purposes.
2. Get customers to pay upfront by selling membership, subscriptions, gift certificates, coupon books and other initiatives to get their money now and deliver later.
3. Lease or rent equipment and other major purchases instead of buying. Always try to push off payment to the future.
4. Get used instead of new equipment to save on the expensive price tags.
5. Barter your products / services in exchange for something you really need.
6. Get free publicity by contacting reporters with a story idea instead of buying expensive advertising.
7. Do a side job to make sure you have an income that lets your business survive in the early days.
8. Give sweat equity to employees / partners instead of paying a salary.
9. Take as little as you can out of the business and focus on growing the company so you can bring in more cash in the future.
10. Manage your cash flow and make sure there is more coming in than going out before you start spending money

Evan Carmichael

Mike Walker is 27 years old and is taking the surfboard industry by storm. Like many entrepreneurs Mike started his business as a hobby and worked out of his parent’s garage when he was 17.

“I started building boards during high school when my family was living in northern Baja. During my junior and senior years, I was home schooled and was able to surf every day. I couldn’t afford to pay retail for new boards so I bought the tools to shape my own.” He made many mistakes but through trial and error created a board that was pretty close to the ones sold in the retail stores.

After high school graduation Mike took a job with Pacific Surf Glass to learn more about the ins and outs of the industry. The company also let him use their shaping room after hours for his own business.

Mike quickly gained a reputation for producing high quality work and in 1999 produced his own line of products with his signature Walker label. Since then he has gone on to sell to some of the industry’s biggest and most well known brands and he is now looking to expand his product line by focusing on wakeboarding.

It just goes to show that if you are passionate about what you do it is possible to turn your hobby into a business success regardless of how old you are. Mike Walker started a business out of school and on the side when he was 17 and he is now producing over 30 surf boards per week for the top players in the surfing industry.

Are you the next Mike Walker?

Evan Carmichael

Now here is an opportunity I wish I had been given when I was in summer camp! This August a group of 44 young entrepreneurs aged 14 to 16 will be invited to join Carrefour Jeunesse-Emploi of Montreal.

It is a summer camp for young entrepreneurs where students will get a taste of what it is like to own their own business. They will learn the differences between working for yourself and working for someone else and will also get to hear from and meet guest speakers who are local entrepreneurs coming to share their experience and wisdom.

In addition, representatives from young entrepreneur organizations are invited to come to the camp and introduce what they do and how the students can get involved.

“What we are trying do is promote entrepreneurship among youth and create and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Katherine Korakakis, coordinator of last year’s inaugural camp. “As such, we have to come up with initiatives and activities involving this spirit, and since there’s no school in the summer, we came up with the camp idea.”

The students will also get workshops on the different stages of running a business and learn about financing, business planning, market research, and production. On the last day of camp the students have to actually produce a product or create a service.

While I enjoyed planning tennis and learning karate at my summer camps I wish this option would have been available to me when I was in school!

Evan Carmichael

Since this blog is an offshoot from the popular Young Entrepreneur Forums I thought it would be fun to profile some of the popular forum members and showcase what they are up to. Here is a list of the 6 members who have gone over the 1,000 post mark. That represents a lot of work and should be recognized!

Daniel Nerezov (akula)
Total Posts: 3,510
Join Date: 09-27-2005
Location: Sydney, Australia
Occupation: Full time hardass
Website: None listed

(NeeJam)
Total Posts: 2.983
Join Date: 10-25-2005
Location: England
Occupation: Entrepreneur, Student
Website: http://www.neejam.com

Daniel Briere (The Stealthy One)
Total Posts: 2,376
Join Date: 05-29-2006
Location: East Coast, USA - but for how long?
Occupation: CEO, iVentures.ws
Website: http://www.iventures.ws

Luc Arnold (Outta Hand)
Total Posts: 1,221
Join Date: 09-12-2004
Location: Outside of Toronto, Canada!
Occupation: Full time hardass
Website: http://www.commercecubes.com

Ryan Glasgow (mxer210)
Total Posts: 1,083
Join Date: 03-27-2004
Location: San Jose, California
Occupation: Student and entrepreneur
Website: http://www.goblu.net

Nathan Waters (nado)
Total Posts: 1,058
Join Date: 08-28-2005
Location: Wollongong, AUS
Occupation: Student/Entrepreneur
Website: http://www.nathanwaters.com

Congrats guys and keep up the great work!

Evan Carmichael

The next in my series on Google Filters looks at the Broken Link Filter. The backbone of Google’s search engine is based on links so it is no wonder that the Broken Link Filter is given a lot of attention. A broken link is when you link to a page that does not exist. Broken links usually occur as a result of either making a mistake in the link (ie missing a letter in the url) or the page expiring (it was up and was taken down and your link is still active. There are two kinds of broken links: internal and external.
Internal Broken Links

Google adds pages from your site to its index by crawling your homepage. The homepage links to subpages which in turn link to other subpages. As Google searches through these subpages, its crawlers makes a list and adds the pages. If your pages are not properly linked or if the links are broken then Google will not add your pages to the list. You can always create a sitemap that will help you, but again sitemap software uses the same crawling technology. I wrote a few weeks ago about the GSiteCrawler to help you build a sitemap. It is a free program that will also tell you when there are broken links. I use it every week to see which of the internal links I have on my site have broken down.

External Broken Links

External broken links are when you link to outside websites and they take their page down. You could, for instance, link to a fellow blog, only to find a few weeks later that the blog has closed and your link is now invalid. I have yet to find a good tool that will tell you when your external links are broken so if you have found one, please let me know!

Why This Matters

The first reason why the Google Broken Link Filter is important is obvious - if you are linking to your own pages and the links do not work, the pages will not be added to Google’s index.

The second reason why the Google Broken Link Filter is important is not as well known. Google wants to show high quality pages in their search results. The last thing they want to have coming up #1 for important keywords is a site that has old, outdated, and broken links. If your site is full of links that do not work you will be penalized for not having a high quality website and will drop in the rankings. This is especially important for your key pages. Make sure that none of your homepage links are broken and keep an eye on any links from the high Page Rank pages that drive traffic to your website!

Evan Carmichael

American Express ran a survey to find out if young entrepreneurs were really all that different from older entrepreneurs and it turns out that we are! The main findings were:

Similarities

• Optimistic about the U.S. economy (64% young, 62% old)
• Both agree that passion, rather than money, drives them towards success

Differences 

• Having fun is a priority in business (75% young, 66% old)
• It is “very difficult” to leave work and go on vacation (39% young, 26% old)
• Put in over 10 hours a day (66% young, 58% old)
• Like to take risks (72% young, 53% old)
• Started business right out of school (27% young, 9% old)
• Immigration is beneficial to the economy (52% young, 44% old)
• Are technology savvy (66% young, 47% old)
• Belief that older entrepreneurs have an edge (59% young, 88% old)

In total 602 small business owners were surveyed - you can read the full results here.

Evan Carmichael

I came across an interesting profile of Pete Petrondas and thought I would share it with you. Pete founded Eazyfone to sell mobile phone contracts to customers and quickly built his business to 14 employees and 250,000 pounds in revenue.

Then disaster struck. Pete’s supplier pulled the plug on him and he had to let go of all but one of his staff. While trying to decide what do to with his business he came across a realization: “It was surprising how many companies asked me if I knew how they could dispose of their old mobiles in an environmentally friendly way. I then did some research and found out there were around 90m old phones lying around, and soon realised I’d stumbled on a fantastic opportunity.”
Pete create a new business model to acquire old mobile phones and resell them to new customers. To get the phones he partnered with organizations like hospitals who were looking to raise funds and encouraged people to donate their old phones. In return he would donate 25% of the resale value back to the organizations.

“It proved a great success and, because the concept was environmentally friendly, we got a huge amount of media coverage, which then enabled us to get our message across to a wide audience.”

Pete’s business is now booming. He is expecting to make 5,000,000 million pounds in revenue this year with profits of over 750,000 pounds. “That figure is ahead of our competitors, but we need to donate as much of the profit as possible to the schools and charities, because if we didn’t, we wouldn’t have a business.” Not bad for a 30 year old entrepreneur whose business was all but destroyed only a short while prior.

Pete’s success demonstrates the power of effective partnerships. Find someone who can benefit while helping you and you can quickly take your company to the next level of success.

Evan Carmichael

Entrepreneur.com put out a cool slideshow that I just came across which profiles some of the most successful entrepreneurs under 40 years of age in America.

It includes people like Tina Wells, 26, founder of Buzz Marketing Group, a youth marketing agency specializing in research, events and promotions. She has $3.3 million in sales and offers the following advice for young entrepreneurs: “You can’t just buckle at the first sign of a minor disaster. You really have to keep your composure and realize at the end of the day we’re not fighting World War III here. Try not to take it so seriously.”

There is also Thomas Gorny, 30, founder of iPower, a web hosting and services company with over $40 million in sales. His secret to success? “I would say it’s drive. Nothing is good enough. Even when we reach a goal, I want a better goal.”

Another favorite is Corey Pitts, 37, founder of International Catastrophe Solutions, a $40 million disaster recovery for commercial enterprises business. His advice for young entrepreneurs is: “Surround yourself with positive people. When the days were rough and tough, [my wife] was positive [we should] keep going. I have stayed away from people that said, ‘Why are you doing it? You had a good job, you had vacation, you shouldn’t do that.’ I stay with positive people. Both sides of my family–her parents and my parents–were very positive and gave me that support.

It is a great collection of stories in a flash where you can then read more in detail if you are interested. I find reading success stories to be motivational and I always get a few new great ideas that I can implement into my own business. I hope you check it out and enjoy! Let me know what you think after you have a had a chance to go through them!

Evan Carmichael