In March I did a profile of Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon (Work Irregular Hours To Find Inspiration - Satoshi Tajiri). I wanted to continue the story today by sharing one of Tajiri’s closely held beliefs: Do It Your Way.

No matter where young Tajiri went as a boy, it seemed he never quite fit in. He collected insects when most of his friends were cramming for college. He spent his money playing video games when most of the other kids were saving up. And, he always remained just a little bit to himself.

Tajiri was an outcast, a person the Japanese called otaku. He had one or two obsessions which preoccupied his time, and he shut himself off to the rest of the world. Tajiri always preferred spending time with his insects more than with people, or playing video games more than living in reality.

But while Tajiri’s obsessions worried his parents, who were convinced that their son was a misfit and turning the wrong corners in life, refusing to change his ways for anyone else allowed him to go on to create what would become the Pokemon phenomenon the world knows today.

To this day, Tajiri maintains his reputation as a quirky game developer. Although he no longer physically goes on the hunt for beetles, Tajiri’s habits are still a sign of his uniqueness. For instance, if you do not see Tajiri around the office for an entire day, it is because he is sleeping. “It’s the way I work,” says Tajiri. “I sleep 12 hours and then work 24 hours. I’ve worked those irregular hours for the past three years. It’s better to stay up day and night to come up with ideas. I usually get inspiration for game designing by working this schedule.”

Tajiri has always shunned the limelight. Even after his tremendous success with Pokemon, he kept his company in the same office it had always been: two floors in a simple office building. But Tajiri was never worried about what anyone else thought of him or his habits.

That is the same attitude with which he approached Pokemon. Before then, Game Boy was host to a number of games, but all of them were about competition. “I liked competition too,” says Tajiri. “But I wanted to design a game that involved interactive communication. Remember, there was no Internet then. The concept of the communication cable is really Japanese: one-on-one. It’s like karate - two players compete, they bow to each other. It’s the Japanese concept of respect.”

In Pokemon, none of the monsters are really evil. As Tajiri describes it, “If a horse runs over you and you die, then the horse is bad. But if you’re riding the horse, the horse is your ally. So, if you have a monster in your collection, then it’s considered good. But if not, it’s still not considered bad, because it could be your friend one day.”

That is why when Tajiri first pitched the concept of Pokemon to Nintendo executives, they could not quite grasp it. But, just like he when he was a kid, Tajiri refused to give in. He stayed true to his vision and always insisted on doing things his way.

Are you doing it your own way in your business?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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This week’s Entrepreneur University comes thanks to Andy Marken. Andy has worked in front of and behind the TV camera and radio mike. Unlike most PR people he listens to and understands the consumer’s perspective on the actual use of products.

Andy has been a hit in the past for our blog having been featured three times before:

• Should You Start A Blog? - Entrepreneur University
• How To Do A Media Interview - Entrepreneur University
• How To Create A Sales Incentive Program

Today Andy shares his advice on how to write an effective business proposal:

“Unless you’re on the agency side of the business (which we are), you don’t think much about writing proposals. That’s for those people who have that job…you know sales.

Congratulations.

You just missed a major point of the book that can help you land a job, get programs/projects approved by management and assist you in showing your CEO and VP of marketing that you understand one of your jobs is helping to sell the company, the firm’s reputation, the organization’s products.

At the end of the day, you’re selling. You’re helping put dollars on the bottomline.

We’ve prepared and given probably hundreds of proposals in our 30 years in the business. And we’ve gotten our hands on an equal number of competitive proposals.

Surprisingly they are all pretty similar – an intro tailored to the prospective client with industry, competitive, company facts and figures. This is followed by a fairly boilerplate offering. Then it ends with a dramatic close – the contract/working agreement.

With today’s computerized operations the boilerplate approach is all too common. About as predictable and uninviting as the recommendations lawyers spit out of their systems for several thousands of dollars.

Of course that might be a little predictable since Sant is most successful for his development, sale and support of two widely used proposal automation systems: ProposalMaster and RFPMaster.

Fortunately, we’ve never used or even seen either of the programs. And after reading Persuasive Business Proposals we wonder why anyone would use them unless they were in the cookie cutter service/product business.

By reading, understanding and practicing the guidelines Sant has put forward in the book you realize that it is pretty easy for the recipient to spot a formula proposal and know that it wasn’t prepared just for them – boss or prospective client.

This edition of his book outlines the simple, effective techniques you can put into practice immediately to organize, write and deliver your proposals.

The professional proposal consultant lays out the secrets he has learned over the years and gives you a step-by-step set of guidelines you can use to develop a proposal that zeros in on the recipient and his/her wants and needs. It spells out how you can develop and present the value proposition.

In today’s internet-centric, global economy; Sant shows how you can develop/present an effective proposal without doing it face-to-face. He guides you through the development of PDF and HTML proposals that can be sent electronically.

Once you get past the idea that “you’re not in sales,” you’ll find the actual illustrations that he sprinkles throughout the book – good and bad – to be interesting, informative and useful.

In fact these are the portions of the book that we found most useful. Concrete examples of actual proposals where he painstakingly and clearly spells out what was presented, how it was presented and the strengths/weaknesses of the presentation and messages.

If you want to be humbled in regards to your own management or prospect presentations, you’ll find his Seven Worst Proposal Mistakes invaluable.

We read this section three separate times.

The first time was in passing, perhaps even morbid curiosity just to find out what others had done to “blow a deal.”

The second time was about a week later after reviewing a proposal our staff had prepared for a prospective client and recalling some of the stumbling blocks Sant had outlined in his worst mistakes section.

After reviewing the proposal again we went through Sant’s examples sections and compared good/bad examples with the presentation we were about to present.

With two of our associates we dissected and revised every section of the proposal and perhaps for the first time in 30 years viewed the information from the viewpoint of the person sitting on the other side of the table.

We did the same for an on-going client’s program for a project we thought they should carry out over the coming six months.

Suddenly we realized that the development and presentation of programs, recommendations and ideas wasn’t just an offshoot of our real jobs but was a key business function because if we couldn’t present the idea effectively to the client, we certainly couldn’t carry it out properly!

Granted at this point in our firm’s history we do very few proposals. Our clients now come to us because of our experience in our specific industries. Most of them come because of referrals.

But even then it doesn’t diminish the importance of developing and presenting proposals that zero in on the prospective client’s business needs and objectives. Even if you have broad credibility in your field accurate, effective proposal writing helps you reinforce that credibility with tailored reader-centric messages.

The book helps you think through the entire process from the first contact to the presentation to the follow up. And it lays the foundation for a solid, long-term relationship.

Since we are each selling ourselves every day, we believe Persuasive Business Proposals is a book you’ll want to pick up and read…a couple of times.”

What have you found works best in the business proposals that you’ve created?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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It’s time for another  poll here at Young Entrepreneur! This time time we’d like to know:

Who is your business role model?

Is it a relative? Is it an old family friend? Is it someone you’ve never met before?

Who do you look to for business advice and try to emulate?

I’d love to get your feedback and put together a list of the top role models for young entrepreneurs.

You can cast your vote by commenting below or by voting in our forums at: New Poll - Who Is Your Business Role Model?

Here is a list of our previous poll results:

• What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?
• Best Way For A Startup To Earn Revenue?
• Top Tools for Entrepreneurs
• When Is It Time to Go Full-Time?
  
• The 8 Best Ways To Raise Capital
• The Top 20 Startup Mistakes
  
• Top The 21 Celebrity Entrepreneurs
• Why Young Entrepreneur Start Businesses

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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It’s time for another SEO Advice post! Last month, I offered free SEO advice to 21st-century-boy.co.uk. I’m going to continue my SEO Advice series today by helping out another YoungEntrepreneur.com blog reader Kimmoy Matthews, from Teach and Still Grow Rich.

Kimmoy Matthews - http://www.teachandstillgrowrich.com/

Hi Evan,

I just came across your blog and have read straight through 4 pages so far - it’s good stuff! I don’t know where my website ranks let alone where I rank as far as those requesting your advice (number million and one in line?) LOL So, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping you would help me out. If it speeds up your response time, then you don’t even have to feature it on your blog, I’ll take your advice via email. I’m really just looking for advice.

My site is www.teachandstillgrowrich.com

Thanks a bunch!

Kimmoy

My Recommendations

1) Get Some Links (and some PageRank!)

I originally received an email from Kimmoy back in April about her website. At that time the site did not carry any PageRank. And now seven months later… still no PageRank! Kimmoy you need to get out there and build some links to your site. Google hasn’t even found it yet and until you build those links, you won’t get search engine traffic. Further reading for you: Links To Young Entrepreneur, How I Got 15,937 Links To My Site. This blog post gave you one link - now focus on building a few more!

2) Identify Your Top Keywords

Try to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What would they type in to end up on a site like yours? Right now you’re title tag reads “Teachers Start a Business Not a Second Job!” Are teachers really typing this in on a regular basis? Use the Google Keyword Tool to find out what people are actually searching for and then start optimizing your website around those keywords.

3) Put Your Blog On Your Domain… And Update It!

I see that you’ve created a blog at http://teachandstillgrowrich.blogspot.com/ which is hosted at Blogger. Blogs are a great way to drive traffic and rank in search engines because Google loves fresh content and you can get picked up by all the various blog search engines. However, the blog isn’t actually hosted on your website! With Blogger you can easily set up publishing rules so that the posts will go to a folder on your site instead of at Blogger. Don’t give away the links to blogger that you’re working to create! And speaking about working… what happened to the blog? It seems to have died out in May. Time to get posting!!

Good luck Kimmoy!

Readers, what do you think about Teach and Still Grow Rich?

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

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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A new study from a team of researchers at the University of California in Berkeley revealed that the response rate of spam emails is 1 in 12,500,000.

The researchers manage to get into the Storm network, a network which hijacks home PCs to send out billions of spam emails.

The Storm network had over 1,000,000 million machines in its network.

The team use ‘proxy bots’ to take control of 75,869 of the machines to run their own spam campaign.

The researchers had two typical spam offers - one for a fake pharmaceuticals site and the other for a libido boosting herbal remedy.

According to the results, “After 26 days, and almost 350 million email messages, only 28 sales resulted.”

The researchers estimate that based on this conversion ratio and the size of the network, the people who run Storm are making $7,000 per day, or $3.5 million per year.

As long as the spammers continue to make money by sending you junk mail, you can expect the flow to continue!

Are you surprised by the results? What steps have you taken to prevent spam buildup?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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He challenged the conventional teachings at business schools. He’s a 25 Top Visionary, one of the Top 24 Most Powerful Men In Business, and advises people to hang out with people who are better than you.

I wanted to add to the Warren Buffett story by sharing another valuable lesson from one of the world’s richest men: Never Back Down!

“You’re neither right nor wrong because other people agree with you,” says Buffett. “You’re right because your facts are right and your reasoning is right – and that’s the only thing that makes you right. And if your facts and reasoning are right, you don’t have to worry about anybody else.”

Buffett made a career out of taking the road less traveled. He is a value investor; he spends his time looking for securities whose selling prices are lower than their intrinsic value. He ignores the stock market, instead choosing to look at the overall potential of a company in the long term. Claiming that his favourite holding period is “forever”, Buffett’s conservative nature has distinguished himself from other investors.

Despite having many followers, value investing still has its critics. Taking this road less traveled was not always easy for Buffett, who has endured years of ridicule for his investment decisions, particularly during the dot-come frenzy. In 1999, Berkshire Hathaway stock grossly under-performed and analysts claimed that Buffett’s career was over because he had missed the technology boom. Wall Street thought he had committed the biggest mistake of his career and wrote him off. That is, until the dot-com bust in the early 2000s when his strategy proved infallible. “It was a mass hallucination, by far the biggest in my lifetime,” recalls Buffett.

Time after time, Buffett has listened to his gut instinct – and his vast research – to inform his business decisions. When others were acting and reacting to the stock market, Buffett was standing strong in his decisions. “You do things when the opportunities come along,” he says. “If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing…Much success can be attributed to inactivity.” His strategy is admittedly simpler than most investors feel comfortable with, claiming, “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” But, there is genius in its simplicity.

Having the confidence to follow his instincts, however, never meant that Buffett was willing to make an irrational decision. Buffett knew when he was in trouble and he knew when to walk away from something. “One’s objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over…your problem won’t improve with age,” he says. “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Buffett knew that no matter what move he made he would always have his critics. He decided early on, however, that regardless of what anyone else said or did, he was not going to break his stride. “The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes,” he says.

By marching to his own beat, Buffett was able to surpass his competition. He wasn’t afraid to try something new. After all, “if past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.”

Have you benefitted in your entrepreneurial career by never backing down? I’d love to hear your story!

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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This week’s Entrepreneur University comes thanks to Dave Turkin. Dave is the president of Accessible Business Consultants, a full service business consultant that has over 32 years of experience working with small-medium size businesses.

Dave shares his advice on how to perform an annual checkup for your business:

“It is important to do a Business Check-up annually and to do quarterly check-ups to continue to monitor progress and increase your potential for success.

Just as doctors encourage us to have an annual medical exam, your business should undergo a check-up too.

How can you possibly gauge the effectiveness of your business operational policies and procedures or your marketing campaign without analyzing the benefits of the bottom line.

Here are some of the questions you should be asking yourself to get started in analyzing your business:

(1). How do your sales for 2006 compare to 2007 and currently for 2008?
(2). What percentage of your business is repeat customers?
(3). How long has it been since you offered a new product or service?
(4). Do you consider your Marketing Program an expense or an investment?
(5). Do you use PR to portray a positive image of your company?
(6). What forms of advertising do you use and what are the results?
(7). Do you treat your regular customers better than one-time customers?
(8). How do your customers rate your company?
(9). How does your company rate against your competition?
(10). Are your employees happy and what is the turn-over rate?

After considering the above questions how do you rate your company on a scale of 1 to 10.

The first number that comes to mind usually is the correct one.

Anything below a 9 means there is need for improvement.

Now, do a survey with your customers and employees to determine their perspective and then design your strategy for the rest of the year.

It may also be more productive to have the survey completed by an outside independent company.

Never settle for no improvement is needed. Here’s to your good health in business.”

What do you think of the annual business checkup? Do you currently do anything in your business to keep track of its health on a regular basis?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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The results are in from our most recent poll! I asked you what the best business advice was that you ever received and you replied in full force!
Here are the results below. Thank you everyone for participating and I hope you find kernels of wisdom here that you can apply to your business:
“You cannot always stick around to see the results.”

“Don’t get caught up in making the best decision up front. Make a decision and make that decision the best.”

“Solve important customer problems. If you do that everything else follows.”

“A good many studies of research scientists have shown that achievement (at least below the genius level of an Einstein) depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity. .. It is more productive to convert an opportunity into results than to solve a problem- which only restores that equilibrium of yesterday.”

“There are two things I try and do in business: 1. I never try to beat any body. I only try and beat myself. 2. I try and do my job better today than I did it yesterday.”

“Ethics first, then profit. And… throw away your junk mail or you’ll waste precious time on the most unproductive activity in the world.”

“Our subconscious minds responsibility is to keep us healthy correct? Keep the heart beating, muscles working, body healing, and all of that stuff. Well when I set up a goal or an affirmation I then back track it to preservation of the body. When you can link whatever desire you have to, how will this preserve my body and keep me healthy? This carries much more weight than, I want a million dollars, or a new car, or house.”

“Choose your battles!”

“Market yourself in busy and slow times. (That includes today’s sluggish economy.)”

“If God brings you to it, God will bring you through it.”

“Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.”

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

“Don’t put all your eggs in one friggin’ basket.”

“Do atleast 1 thing towards your success each day!”

“JUST DO IT!”

“Do not trust anyone. Everything in business is business, never let it get personal.”

“If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.”

“Keep costs as low as possible and focus on getting revenues as high as possible. Don’t be wastefull and track EVERYTHING!”

“You must take the challenge whether you succeed or not - the most important thing is –at least you tried.”

“Never ever give up”

“You have to learn from your mistakes, which inherently means you are going to make mistakes. Just don’t keep making the same mistakes over and over again.”

“Some great advice here! Really liked “Make a decision and make that decision the best decision.” and “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.””

“Wow, cool advices. My favourite is “Just do it”.”

“Great list. I think “Just Do It” is one of the best. It conquers the hardest part of being an entrepreneur and that’s actually taking the leap. Just deciding to go down the entrepreneurial road is a huge decision. Once on the road there will be many times where you might feel uncomfortable or have to do things you don’t want but “Just Do It”!
It’s how the best get ahead.”

“Don’t be afraid to “fail”. It’s not a failure, it’s a learning experience.”

“The best advice I ever got was during the last recession. And since we are going through an even worse recession this time around, the advice should be valuable to everyone with a traditional or online business, as it applies to all businesses. When you are faced with a recession, don’t cut back advertising like most do, but double it. Nothing will get you through a recession more than good cost effective advertising. While your competition cuts back, here is your opportunity to step up and take away business from your competition.”

“Trust no one”

“Think Long Term”

“The best advice I have been given was to “Keep Your Day Job.” I am convinced that the key to success for the 99.9% of us who have wanted to start a business but did’t have the stomach (or savings) to quit a good job to commit full time is to find something you can do on a part-time basis. If you can wait for your part-time income to meet then exceed your full-time income before taking the leap and committing to your new business you will be that much more likely to succeed your first time around. It worked for us at Cornerstone Productions. We applied the same thought process when launching our next businesses, ensuring that the primary business (Cornerstone Productions) could support our “needs” while getting involved in other businesses with enormous potential.”

“You have two eyes, two ears and only one mouth for a reason so shut up and look and listen.”

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

“Learned this one from the school of hard knocks!”

“The early bird gets the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese. Meaning… the first rat gets killed in the rat trap and the second rat gets the cheese. Essentially meaning that you don’t have to be the first company to do something, you just have to learn from the first company’s mistakes and do a better job. Prime example Myspace.com copied Friendster learned from their mistakes and the rest is history.”

“Hello All, All of the posts above are great suggestions. I too was told not to worry about my competition. I always try to outdo myself and make anything that I have used better if I do it. Keep up the good work.”

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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On Thursdays I usually discuss Google and ways to get your website ranked at the top of the search engine.

Today I wanted to change course a little bit and talk about Alexa. If you’re not familiar with the company, they’ve created a ranking system to help display how popular websites are in relation to each other. For example, YoungEntrepreneur.com is ranked 60,657 as of publishing time. This means that out of all the websites in the world, YoungEntrepreneur.com is the 60,657th most popular. A webmaster’s goal is to get a low a number as possible because it shows the popularity of your site.

Please note that Alexa rankings have nothing to do with your search engine optimization but they do help increase your reputation online and help you qualify for a number of different programs which can help you monetize your website more effectively.

In June of 2007, Alexa was one of my 3 Free Web Tools I Can’t Live Without. At that time, YoungEntrepreneur.com was ranked #20,964. In April 2007, YoungEntrepreneur.com’s Alexa ranking was an amazing 15,430! Despite increased forum participation and growth in the blog, the site has fallen in Alexa. This is not an unfamiliar story with many other websites.

Now you might think, sure YoungEntrepreneur.com is growing but maybe other websites are growing more quickly and deserve to rank higher. Well according to Compete.com, an Alexa competitor which also tries to rank the multitude of websites online, YoungEntrepreneur.com has bettered its ranking position by almost 30,000 places in the past year!

What’s going on with Alexa?

A quick look to their toolbar download page reveals an interesting story. Alexa gets most of it’s ranking data from people who download and install their toolbar. If you go to their toolbar page, however, from a Vista operating system you get the following notice:

“The toolbar currently does not work with Windows Vista. We are working on a fix and hope to release it soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!”

As more and more people move to Vista, they are not able to install the toolbar and Alexa has less data to work with thereby rendering their results less accurate.

Alexa’s position is unacceptable in my view if they hope to maintain their reputation as a reliable source of information. Windows Vista was released two years ago in November of 2006. “We hope to release it soon” is not good enough Alexa!

What’s your take on this? Am I making too big a deal of it or am I justified in my anger?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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Well America has a new President, Barack Obama.

Some of Obama’s plans for small business include:

- Increase the minimum wage and index the rate to inflation so that it goes up every year

- Wants to eliminate all capital gains taxes for new business start-ups

- Give a $500 credit to business owners to offset the self-employment tax

- Proposes making the R&D tax credit system permanent

- Give a 50% refundable credit for employee health insurance premiums that are paid by the employer

- Suggests that entrepreneurship in rural America is critical - his solution? Create a small-business and microenterprise initiative where investors can get a 20 percent tax credit for $50,000 investments in small businesses

- Require all employers to automatically enroll workers in 401(k)s or IRA

- Keep the estate tax rate at 45% and increase the exemption limit to $3.5 million

What do you think of Barack Obama’s victory? Is it going to be a time of true change for America?

Do you think it will have an impact on your business in a positive or negative way?

Evan Carmichael
YoungEntrepreneur.com Blog Manager

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7 comments