entrepreneur

What It Means To Be A Teenager Entrepreneur

November 4, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

A new wave of entrepreneurs is coming. I want them to know what to expect. This blog post is for teenager entrepreneurs who’ve been at it for a while and for the people starting out.

This blog post is also for parents of those teenager entrepreneurs so they can better understand what it means to be a teenager entrepreneur. This blog post talks about my definition of what it means to be a teenager entrepreneur. After talking with other teenager entrepreneurs, I know this is a definition that many of us share.

The Beginning…

No one knows the beginning until years later. Part of the reason is because it takes a while for the teenager to recognize the entrepreneurial spirit within his/her soul. It starts out as a hobby. After the hobby becomes enjoyable and the word monetization gets thrown around enough, the teenager explores turning the hobby into a business.

My journey began when I created a blog about the Boston Red Sox as an 11-year-old. When I created that blog, I did not view myself as an entrepreneur. I still had no idea what I wanted to be. I wrote blog posts inconsistently because it was a hobby that I did not take seriously.

Then MLBlogs (the site that let me create the blog about the Red Sox) went over to WordPress. It was something that I initially didn’t think much about. The move opened the possibility to me writing blogs about topics other than baseball. I went ahead and created a blog about Yugioh Cards.

That eventually led to this blog.

The Natural Course Of The Beginning

The important thing to note about the beginning is that entrepreneurship was my choice. My parents didn’t force me to create that blog about the Red Sox. They suggested it and helped me create it.

I didn’t know anything about Twitter when my mom told me about it. She showed me how to create my account. I was not forced to get more Twitter followers or to promote my content. In the beginning and ever since, I have always had full control over my choices.

My advice to parents is if they see the entrepreneurial possibility within their teen, then guide the teen. Never take control of the steering wheel, but always offer optimism and support. The moment the steering wheel is lost, entrepreneurship is no longer fun.

The very act of becoming an entrepreneur is to take the steering wheel and to protect that steering wheel with your life.

With that said, as the teenager become a more serious entrepreneur, their work will become more important to them.

Environment Matters More Than Background

A teenager does not need a family of entrepreneurs to become a successful entrepreneur. All a teenager needs is the steering wheel in the right environment. The right environment requires being surrounded by the right things from a physical and mental standpoint.

The main reason for my success is that the people who surrounded me are very supportive. My family supports me in what I do while allowing me to retain the steering wheel.

I am a part of inner circles of people who help me become successful. I co-create training courses with other instructors who have more expertise than I do. I get to learn from them by creating a course with them. I learn from social media experts and actively communicate with them. These social media experts were very inspirational throughout my journey as a blogger.

The thoughts you surround yourself with are just as important as the people and events that surround you. You can either surround yourself with confidence or doubt. You can either surround yourself with all of your accomplishments or all of your disappointments.

The serious teenager entrepreneurs enjoy giving themselves big goals. They like to put themselves to the test every day and get as much accomplished as possible. They give themselves big goals for the year and hope to achieve all of them.

In my experience, not all of the goals would get accomplished. When I first gave myself these goals, not accomplishing a goal I wrote down would frustrate me. I’ve changed since then and have learned to enjoy the journey.

I prefer surrounding myself with my accomplishments than with my disappointments. My accomplishments give me more inspiration and let me acknowledge a record of success. Surrounding myself with my disappointments would mean ignoring all of the accomplishments. When surrounded by disappointments, it is difficult to tap into more success since you surround yourself with the complete opposite of success.

I have disappointments, but they don’t stop me.

Support and Inspiration

A teenager entrepreneur needs a lot of support, especially in the beginning. The support I received was essential for my success. I learned that I can be successful at a young age and be what I want to be.

My family was the first form of support I ever received. I receive that support to this day. The two other types of support I receive are reading inspirational case studies and my inner circles. The case studies of bloggers making six figure incomes got me interested in making money with my blog. My inner circle of Udemy instructors allows me to learn more about course creation and marketing.

Support and inspiration never get old. They are always needed.

Getting Through The Roadblocks

Disappointments do come. The final result only means as much as you make it out to be. 10% of our lives is what happens to us and the other 90% is how we react to what happens.

If your goal was to get 10,000 visitors for the month, but you only get 3,000 visitors for the month, there are two ways to look at the outcome.

This is terrible. I didn’t accomplish my goal. What is wrong with me?
This is bad, but it is not the end. I will use this as fuel and perform better next month.

One response creates a sense of self-pity. The other response creates action. The two responses create very different outcomes.

The roadblocks teenager entrepreneurs (and entrepreneurs in general) encounter are meant to strengthen the entrepreneurial backbone. I have survived through numerous roadblocks to get to where I am today. Some of those roadblocks temporarily shook my confidence, but they did not knock me down.

School and Teen Life

In “teenager entrepreneur” there are two words. At daytime, teenager entrepreneurs are teenagers. They go to school with a backpack and books just like anyone else. I talk with my friends at school and almost never bring up my entrepreneurial work. The only time I bring it up is when people ask me about it.

I never brag about what I do. I see bragging as a method of gaining superficial confidence that will never be a suitable substitute for real confidence.

One lesson I have learned about being a teenager entrepreneur is if you spend too much time on the entrepreneurial side of the coin, your work becomes your life. I love my work, but my work will never consume every part of my life. Then I’d miss out on what it means to be a teenager and a person.

In school, it is essential to become a part of extracurricular activities and/or sports. If you are not a part of those, you risk getting alienated from the student body. At that point, it is difficult to get the teenager experience combined with the entrepreneurial experience.

I chose to run in cross country and track. Practices are always after school and meets are on the weekends. Sometimes I go with my teammates to upstate New York and places out of New York to run.

To a teenager entrepreneur, time is a very valuable resource. They get their homework done as quickly as possible so they can go back to entrepreneurial work—the work which, to them, matters the most. When I first joined the cross country and track teams, I thought it would be a crisis for my business. I thought I wouldn’t have any time left over.

But I needed to do an extracurricular to get friends and have a fun time in high school. So I gave it a try anyway. It wasn’t just the best decision I ever made in high school. It was one of the best decisions I ever made for my entrepreneurial journey.

My work didn’t consume me as much as it once did. I was able to stay unplugged longer. Once I get replugged into my work, I would approach it with more vigor. I stopped watching TV so I could commit more time towards my entrepreneurial work. I recently gave up video games as well.

When teenager entrepreneurs lose time, they find a way to make the time they have work. They learn time efficiency quickly. They ask themselves what is really important to them and start eliminating the things that don’t matter as much.

Defining “Serious Teenager Entrepreneur”

To be a serious teenager entrepreneur simply means having the fire within your heart. It doesn’t mean making the full-time income. All teenager entrepreneurs are serious entrepreneurs well before they make full-time incomes from their efforts.

My Advice To All Teenager Entrepreneurs

Love the work that you do. It’s the only way any entrepreneur becomes successful.

My Advice To All Parents Of Teenager Entrepreneurs

Always support your teenager entrepreneur. Give them encouragement, and once you see potential, start giving some financial support. Slowly stop lending financial support once the teenager entrepreneur makes money. One of the most rewarding feelings of my entrepreneurial journey has been paying for the services and products that I use.

In Conclusion

The new wave of entrepreneurs will come sooner than later. I wrote this blog post to let readers know how I view what it means to be a teenager entrepreneur. The benefit of becoming an entrepreneur as a teenager is that teenagers have a strong sense of invincibility.

Combine that strong sense of invincibility with entrepreneurial flare, and the results are bound to be incredible.

Have any questions about what it means to be a teenager entrepreneur? Or the parent of one? Do you have any other insights to add about this topic? Sound off in the comments section below.

10 Social Media Tips For Entrepreneurs

November 28, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Social media is one of the most powerful avenues for traffic and connections. The only problem with social media is that it is also a giant maze. Not everyone knows where they need to go, how to get the connections, how to grow an audience, and what they want to be known for.

Each time another person becomes successful or well-known because of social media, entrepreneurs are seeing the importance of social media more and more. The truth is that every entrepreneur only needs two things to become successful on social media:

Guidance
Dedication (the will to implement and make it happen)

Although all of the dedication comes from you, I will provide you with the guidance you need to have a smoother journey on social media. Here are the 10 social media tips that you can utilize to be more successful.

#1: Identify Who Your Target Audience Is And Focus On Them

One of the most important things you need to do before anything else is identify who your target audience is. There are many people who make identifying a target audience much harder than it needs to be. I am going to break it down into two questions:

What do you post about often (what is your niche and expertise)?
Who would find those posts valuable?

Answering these two questions will allow you to find your target audience. The main benefit of identifying your target audience is that you now know which types of people are going to retweet, favorite, and engage with most of your tweets. Having an engaged audience is critical towards success on any social network.

Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to be successful. The person with 50,000 targeted followers is doing better than the person with 100,000 non-targeted followers that rarely engage.

#2: Engage With Your Audience

Engagement is a two way street. You want to build an audience that engages with your content, but you also want to engage with your audience. Engaging with your audience allows you to see more than just a number.

Regardless of how many followers you have, it is important to individually know the followers who interact with you. I know a few people who comment on numerous blog posts (if you are one of them, you know who you are). I respond to all of these comments on my blog and respond to all of the people who share my content on my social networks.

Does this take up time? It definitely takes up about 30 minutes every day, but this interaction allows me to know my audience. Knowing your audience allows you to realize what type of content they like. In addition, some of the people I interact with have subscribed to this blog and bought some of my products.

Interaction allows you to get a friendship going, and friendship in itself is a two way street. That’s why, “I owe you” is a common phrase. If one of your friends does something good for you, chances are you will do something good for that friend in return. Being friendly to your audience and engaging with them may entice them to do something in return such as subscribe to your blog or tell their friends about you.

#3: Post As Consistently And Frequently As Possible

Many people think that posting often is a bad thing because it will annoy followers. I decided to give it a try and found the complete opposite. Posting more consistently and frequently has allowed me to engage with my followers more than ever before, and it has also resulted in my blog getting a big spike in traffic that never seemed to go away.

For the tweeting in particular, I send out one new tweet every 15 minutes. Some people may think I would be annoying my followers at this frequency, but that is not the case. The truth about social networks is that many people are simply using social networks to check their activity for a short period of time.

The average Twitter is never on the social network for more than 20 minutes at a time. That means most of the people who go on Twitter only see one of my tweets unless they log in again or scroll through my timeline. It is okay to post often, and it is also recommended.

#4: Use A Universal Avatar On All Of Your Social Networks

If you think of a business, you think of their logo. When you think of Apple, you see the white apple that someone took a bite out of. When you think of Twitter, you see the blue bird. Similarly to how people think of the logo associated with the business, the people in your niche who think of you will think of your avatar.

Using a universal avatar for all of your social networks will make it easier for people to remember who you are. The easier it is for someone to remember you, the more often that person will visit your blog and see what you are posting on your social networks.

#5: Do not be afraid to promote yourself often

There are many social media users who go by the fear that promoting yourself too often will make their followers become unfollowers. This is a concept that many experts use to tell marketers to avoid over-promoting their products on social media. If you are using social media for that reason, it’s not going to work out well.

However, it is okay to promote yourself. In fact, it is okay to promote yourself often, but only if you promote yourself the right way. The right way to promote yourself is by promoting your blog posts on your social networks. It is entirely okay to tell people about the same blog post twice as long as the two social media posts are spaced out for a long period of time.

On Twitter, I go by a 4-7 day cycle depending on how my spreadsheets are organized, and I send out over 100 tweets every day. Someone would have to scroll down for a very long time to find any social media posts that repeat themselves.

As long as your blog posts are valuable to your followers, they will not mind that you promote them often. On the contrary, some of your followers will be eager to read the other blog posts that you share on your social networks.

#6: Focus On One Social Network

There are many social networks to choose from, and that’s the problem. Many people create accounts on numerous social networks and have small audiences on all of them. It is better to have a large audience on one social network than it is to have a bunch of small audiences on a bunch of social networks.

When I started my social media journey, I decided to focus most of my time and energy on Twitter. It paid off nicely, and Twitter now brings in a bulk of this blog’s traffic.

However, it is important to have multiple social networks with big presences. The best way to approach this is by taking another social network seriously after you master one social network. After I mastered Twitter, I went over to Pinterest. Now that I have over 15,000 Pinterest followers, I am now finding time to focus on YouTube.

The main takeaway: you need to eventually be on multiple social networks, but in order to have large audiences on all of them, take it one step at a time.

#7: Identify Where You Want To Be Month By Month

Many people do better on social media by giving themselves goals. The reason why goals are very effective is because they create a sense of direction. You need to have some kind of an idea of where you are heading.

What are some of the things you aspire to do on social media? Maybe you aspire to get 100,000 engaged followers, or you aspire to get more blog traffic.

The aspiration is a starting point towards social media success. After you give yourself the aspiration, you need to identify the steps you are going to take to get there. It is important to take give yourself steps that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve.

Gaining 100 followers every week is a great start. It’s not far out there, but it’s not incredibly easy either. If you are at that point already, raise the bar to 150 followers every week and keep on raising the bar as you accomplish the goal. Then, once you identify the aspiration and give yourself the steps you will need to get there, all you have to do at that point is implement.

#8: Be on social media every day

Just like everything else, social media requires practice. The more you show up and do the right things, the more likely you are to have the big audience. “Do the right things” is in bold because most people are already on social media every day. However, not all of that time is being used effectively.

Some people who use social media are using it to procrastinate. There are many videos and social media accounts to choose from. In essence, social media can either be your best friend or your worst enemy.

When I say be on social media every day, I mean you are utilizing it as an entrepreneur who interacts with the audience, not someone who procrastinates. Definitely use social media, but use it wisely.

#9: Do not let social media consume too much of your time

Social media is a great tool to grow your business and get more traffic. However, you need to have a good business and valuable content so all of the work you put in on social media was worth it. Just because you have 100,000 followers does not mean you are going to make a full-time income.

Having that many followers does significantly help out in the process, but you need more than a big audience. You still need to find a good chunk of time in your day to create products and work on big projects for your business. That way, when you grow your social media audience, you can lead them to places that can bring in more revenue.

You should constantly be trying to perform the same activities on social media is a shorter amount of time. If you can do something in 15 minutes instead of 30 minutes, then make that change. I use HootSuite Pro and am able to schedule hundreds of tweets per day in just five minutes instead of a few hours every day if I had to manually schedule tweets.

#10: Be patient

This last tip is a tip that commonly appears in numerous articles, and it appears in this one as well. Being patient is the most important tip on the entire list. Sure I went into more detail in the other tips about growing an audience and boosting numbers, but none of those changes happen overnight.

It took me 993 days to reach 100,000 Twitter followers, and most of that big change happened in the last year of that span. For more than half of that time, I was lost and had no idea what to do. I was struggling to grow my audience and was stuck at 1,667 followers for many months. Then, methods started to work, I modified them along the way, and now I have a large, engaged Twitter audience.

There is no such thing as an overnight success. All of the leaders in your niche got to where they are after years of work. By not giving in and learning new techniques along the way, you may become a big player on social media.

In Conclusion

Social media is a powerful way to get more traffic and build an engaged audience. There are many entrepreneurs in various niches who have utilized social media and seen their traffic, subscribers, and sales jump up. Patience is the key to success on any social network, and the more time you put into the learning process, the better you will become.

Do you have any social media tips for entrepreneurs? Which of these tips was your favorite?

Better Than Expected

September 7, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Some things are expected. A person who pays for coaching expects to be coached. A person who pays for someone to mow their lawn expects their lawn to be mowed efficiently. Those are expectations.

When the coach in that session decides to give a free book to you, that’s better than expected. In order to be effective, having an extra surprise will help you out a lot. This is the concept of over delivering which is important for your business.

The problem for most people is that they give everything away. We knew everything there was to know about the iPhone 5 before it was sold. We knew the price before we paid. Those are expectations, but these people aren’t over delivering.

They’re just delivering. The iPhone 5 is an incredible iPhone (as they all are), but people are quick to say that the only difference is a bigger screen which we all knew about. Maybe a surprise could be more space on the phone, applications getting installed as soon as you press the install button with no hassle.

Apple will continue to succeed for a long time because they create quality products. For most products, it is very difficult to have a surprise. For Apple, the media revolving around the iPhone 5 could have been the reason there weren’t any special surprises.

The advantage of being an entrepreneur with your own business is that you can easily have surprises. If you coach someone and receive $50, surprise the person you coached by giving them one of your free books (or something like that). You still get a profit, that person is happy because you gave them a surprise (over delivering), and in this case, the person would read your book. They’re even more likely to remember who you are.

The surprises and extras you hand out will only result in one giant surprise waiting to be given out to you. Free is better, but only for the consumer. If you can give someone a product for free while making a profit (similar to the coaching session), that is your gold mine. Exceed expectation!

LinkedIn Gives Teenagers Access. The Teenager Revolution Continues

September 2, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

You don’t have to be 18 years or older to access LinkedIn anymore. Now, you only have to be 13 years or older. In 10 years, I predict that many teenagers will have their own online businesses.

The revolution continues. Soon enough, for anything related to having an online business, 18 years or older will be cut down to 13 years or older.

When hearing about young teenagers being able to manage their own businesses, some people are quick to think about the Second Industrial Revolution in the 20th century, but this kind of work is different.

The issues with the Second Industrial Revolution were that young teenagers and kids had dangerous, low paying jobs that they had to do in order to bring the money back home. Some of these teenagers and kids also had to give up on an education.

This revolution is different. It hasn’t quite blossomed yet, but the seed is growing in the soil. LinkedIn poured some water into the soil, and others will do the same.

The main problems of the Second Industrial Revolution don’t exist in this one. There are no dangerous or life threatening jobs. Education and school don’t have to be sacrificed, and neither do extracurricular activities or sports.

Another problem with the Second Industrial Revolution were the choices. All of the choices involved brick and mortar buildings where injuries were common.

I’m not making millions of dollars yet, but I can easily say I make more than the minimum wage. Ten years from now, teenagers will be creating their own online businesses. Does it go as far as having a conversation during lunch period about business? I’m not sure about that.

Creating a business is much easier now than it was back then. For an online business, there is no commute. The risks and dangers of having an online business are minuscule compared to the Second Industrial Revolution.

The Teenager Revolution is coming. The only problem with the resolution is that there will be laggards. Most teenagers are going to jump into the revolution at the same time. Right now, being a teenager entrepreneur is rare, special, and unique.

In ten years, being a teenager entrepreneur will still be special, but it won’t be so rare or unique anymore. Encourage your teenager or a friend’s teenager to start just before the revolution takes full effect. Then, they’ll be a step ahead of everyone else.

There’s Always A Way Out

August 5, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

But where are you going, and what are you trying to accomplish when you find a way out?

The entrepreneur who needs help finds a way out by looking at resources. This entrepreneur finds ways to promote his or her content and products as a way to get out of the situation they are currently in.

When you messed up, there is always the possibility of blaming one of your coworkers or someone else. That’s getting out of the fact that something was your fault. The blame game can be played all day, but in the end, everyone loses.

Let’s go back to the entrepreneur who isn’t getting the results he or she is looking for. There is a way out, and it doesn’t invovle turning the business around. It involves quitting and crawling back to a former boss. Don’t take that approach.

There’s always a way out, but what are you trying to get out of? An entrepreneur who is trying to escape a disappointing business by turning in around is the entrepreneur that goes far. However, by playing the blame game and quitting, entrepreneurs refuse to take responsibility or go the extra mile.

When entrepreneurs go to the extra mile, success greets them at the finish line.

Trust Us

July 17, 2013 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

“You will be satisfied with our services. Trust us.”

Trust is something that we don’t give to a lot of people. Trust is valuable, and if we don’t know someone, we don’t give it to them right away. Trust takes a lot of time to develop. It may even take years to fully trust someone.

It seems like every company is saying how much you can trust them. However, what is there to trust? Some companies don’t even know who you are or what you look like. Other companies know what you look like, but their customer service is lousy. The few that can be trusted jump the gun by asking you to fully trust them right from the start.

Trust is something that develops over time. We choose the people who we think are the most trustworthy out of all of the other options, and if they are trustworthy enough, we show them that we trust them. We trust them with a pet or sibling. Then the other person starts to trust you.

It takes time to build trust, but companies are asking you to trust them overnight. It takes a lot of time to become a successful entrepreneur, but no one can be a successful entrepreneur overnight.

Entrepreneurs need to trust each other, but they must also trust the right people. The only way an entrepreneur can make a good decision about who to trust is with patience.