Tag Archives for " teen entrepreneurs "

16 Feeling Good / Feeling Bad Reflection

“Happiness is the feeling you’re feeling when you want to keep feeling it.”  Author Unknown

There is more to starting a business than deciding on what you are going to do, choosing a name for your business and setting up a website.  You have to develop the right mindset for starting a business, an entrepreneurial mindset which I address in my book, 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset.

The first step is making a decision that you want to have your own business.  Part of this decision making process should include taking stock of your life and giving yourself a reality check.  It requires complete honesty with yourself.  There is no point in trying to fool yourself into something that isn’t real because in that way, you set yourself up to fail.

The benefit of having a clear picture of what you are feeling about your life is that you can take steps to transform the things that are negative.  It is important to remember, that, whether you know it or not, believe it or night, it is TRUE that your thoughts create your reality.  The more positive your thoughts are the better chance you have at creating success.

Here’s the challenge I present to you now.  Look at the 12 areas in your life listed below.  Look at the words and ask yourself truthfully, which one describes you most closely?  Circle the one that most accurately describes your life, then answer the questions below.

      Feels Good                            VS.                              Feels Bad

1.  Lifestyle                                                                    1.  Student/Workstyle

2.  Balance                                                                     2.  Disorder

3.  Financial Freedom                                                   3.  Financial Stress

4.  Great Health                                                             4.  Poor Health

5.  High Energy                                                             5.  Tired

6.  Love                                                                         6.  Fear

7.  Spiritual Connection                                               7.  Spiritual Disconnection

8.  Living on Purpose                                                  8.  Lost

9.   Healthy Relationships                                           9.  Toxic Relationships

10. Mental Clearness                                                  10. Mental Confusion

11. Experiencing Life                                                   11. Being Stuck

12. Being Satisfied                                                       12. Being Frustrated

Look through your responses to this activity.  Now answer these questions:

Which column has more descriptions of your life circled?

What do your responses to this activity tell you about your life?

Now you have something things to think about.  What can you do to transform those things that are in the Feeling Bad column?  It would be a good idea to prioritize in terms of which would be easier to take action on to change as quickly as possible.

Marcia Wieder calls this process of transformation completion.  You do what you need to do to change, fix, clear out, whatever is keeping you in the negative column and you have completed those things and find yourself in the positive column.

What have you identified as being in the thumbs down column, what is making that so, and how can you transform that?

Have you read 31 Powerful Lessons: Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset?  If not, why not?

46 Can You Just Jump Into Business?

Many people have a tendency to make things a lot harder on themselves than those things need to be.  Are you one of those people?

When I started my business, I just took my life and work experience and merged them, wrote some copy for my website and viola, I was in business.  Okay, there was a bit more involved, like creating visibility.  That was more time consuming than it was difficult.  The difficult part for me was learning how to do all the online technical stuff like getting a Word Press site up and running.  I’ve never actually been a tech person so there was  a steep learning curve.

Learn I did though.  I learned as I moved forward with my business, never letting the fact that I didn’t know how to do something stop me.  I got help.

I’m a big believer in just jumping off the cliff into the abyss of whatever it is I want to do.  It’s scary, but it’s really exhilarating, sort of like skydiving or belaying down the side of a mountain.  (The caption on the picture, in case it’s cut off, says To jump off a cliff, he jumped).

There are certainly different degrees of easy and difficulty in starting a business, depending on what type of business you want.  Turning your hobby into a business is relatively easy.  Here’s a three step plan for becoming  a professional photographer:

Really, that’s good advice.  A teacher in my life used to say that “it’s just as easy to act as if,” meaning that you should just act the part that you want to play as if it’s already a reality and it will become a reality a lot faster.

So hone up on your acting skills and jump off that cliff into whatever business you want.

12 My Opinion on Youth Unemployment

One thing that I have no trouble with is expressing my opinion and I have a lot of them.  Today, because in the blog challenge our assignment is to write an opinion piece, I’m going to give my opinion on the job situation in the United States as it relates to youth.

I have a rule not to discuss politics in public too often as it usually has no bearing on my work.  Except that the current lack of employment for our youth weighed very heavily in my decision to change my business to focus on empowering teens and young adults to develop an entrepreneur mindset.

People are screaming at President Obama that he hasn’t created many jobs since being in office.  However, in the first quarter after the stimulus bill that he signed, the number of new jobs created was the highest it’s been in 30 years?  It’s just that so many jobs were lost during the eight years before he took office that it was impossible to create enough new jobs.

Also since he took office, the rate of the jobs lost has slowed so while jobs aren’t being created in large enough numbers, a lot of jobs have been saved and that’s something to be happy about.

And now with the worst congress we’ve had in my lifetime, the situation is worse and apparently, we might be headed for an even bigger recession.  Some on the right try to blame the high rate of youth unemployment on the Democrats for raising the minimum wage, however that is ridiculous.  The minimum wage has been raised periodically to help people as the cost of living rises.   If I were into assigning blame, I’d say the congress blocking all efforts to move forward to repair the economy in the name of politics is at fault.

When there are so many people out of work, we have folks with college degrees and a lot of experience vying for the same job that would normally be held by a young person.  That doesn’t bode well for our teens and young adults when it comes to being employed.

With that said, I believe that the only way many of our youth are going to be able to make a living is to create their own jobs.  This requires a mindset that will be a challenge to develop in some cases.  For whatever reason, we have a generation of children that are more hyper, have shorter attention spans and are easily distracted.  Often they have can’t hold a job once they find one for a variety of reasons.

We need to find a solution to this major issue of our time or we’re going to have a large portion of young adults unemployed, on social welfare and eventually, living with their parents, who in some cases aren’t much better off, or homeless.

It is incumbent upon us to encourage and support our children in developing an entrepreneur mindset as well as help them find the skills they need for marketing and doing business in the digital age if they are to have any hope of being financially self-sufficient.  The mindset is so important that I just wrote an ebook to help parents and others who work with teens and young adults to help them start thinking like an entrepreneur.  The book, Powerful Lessons Empowering Teens and Young Adults to Develop an Entrepreneur Mindset, will be on sale September 1.

What are you doing to help your children develop an entrepreneur mindset and prepare for the future?

21 What Can Your Teen Do to Earn A Million Dollars?

What talent does your teen have that could become their money tree?  What are they passionate about, what do they absolutely love to do and would do all the time if they could?  What bright ideas do they have?  Can they turn that into a profitable business?

Does your teenager want to be a musician or songwriter but they haven’t shown any musical talent?  What sort of businesses could they have around music?  How about selling music, either records, downloads, or sheet music.  What about musical instruments?  Start small by buying and selling on Ebay or Etsy.

Did you know that Richard Branson, now a billionaire who owns the Virgin companies started selling music from his home in London when he was boy?  He certainly parlayed that into a successful corporation.  He went from his home business to Virgin Records.

Recently on the show House Hunters International they featured a man who wanted to move to an island and work from home.  He started a business teaching piano on the internet using an online video platform so he could live where he wanted and teach piano to people all over the world.  He claims to have a multimillion dollar business and his home purchase seems to confirm that.  Granted he’s not a kid, but this is something a kid can do.

What skills or talents is your teen capable of teaching to someone else?  How about creating tutoring videos about math or history?  Teaching guitar by video or how to garden, how to can and preserve, how to crochet, how to scrapbook?

Have you heard about the tween who started a company called Man Candles because he was embarrassed to use perfumed candles?  They are masculine scented candles in a can.  The company grew from his home kitchen to become a real manufacturing company.

One young woman became a millionaire selling greeting cards she designed for teens because her friends complained that none of the cards in the store fit their age group.

Recently I saw a video about a 12 year old who was well on his way to becoming a five star chef because he got fed up with mother’s poor cooking skills.  He decided to teach himself how to cook.  He watched the food network, practiced knife skills then started cooking.  He turned his bedroom into a professional chef’s kitchen with money he earned and once a month he and his mother turn their home into a restaurant where he tests his skills on the neighbors.  This 12 year old is now apprenticing with some well renowned chefs and his goal is have his own 5 star Michelen restaurant in the near future.  You can see his passion when he talks about it.  It made me want to find out where he’s cooking and get an invite.

Another young man who is 11 was so repulsed by the effects of genetically engineered food that he has decided to become an organic farmer.  He is learning everything he can and is educating other young people along the way about healthy eating.

Ted Talks features a 12 year old boy who creates apps for android phones.  His apps are very popular, he’s earning a lot of money and has plans for a future in Silicon Valley.

And if you don’t think your kid can create a million dollar business around skateboarding, just google Tony Hawk and get back to me.

Kids are amazing and can accomplish awesome things when given half a chance and some solid support.  What are you doing to empower your kids to become an entrepreneur?

30 Create a List of Five “Daily Musts”

There should never be a moment during your working time when you don’t know what to do.  To avoid this situation, here is a simple little technique.  Create a list of five things you must do every day.  The idea is that as long as you get these five items checked off, you have successfully moved closer to reaching your goals.

Interact with your current community (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc, return emails)

Prospect to find customers (both online and at events in your area)

Prospect to build your list (contact people to joint venture with)

Create content (blog, create freemiums, write an ebook or report)

Increase your expertise (study your passion and learn more about marketing)

What are your five daily musts?

8 The 7 C’s of Success

Today’s lesson in the Empowering Young Entrepreneurs Series comes from Brian Tracy, one of the world’s leading authorities on personal and business success.

Brian studied top achievers and peak performers for more than 35 years.  He concluded that these men and women are unique and have, in most cases, mastered what he calls the Seven C’s of Success.

Those seven C words are:

Clarity – Eighty percent of success comes from being clear on who you are, what you believe in and what you don’t.

Competence – You can’t climb to the next rung on the ladder until you are excellent at what you do now.

Constraints – Eighty percent of all obstacles to success come from within. Find out what is constraining you or your company and deal with it.

Concentration – The ability to focus on one thing single-mindedly and see it through until it’s done takes more character than anything else.

Creativity – Flood your life with ideas from many sources. Creativity needs to be exercised like a muscle, if you don’t use it you’ll lose it.

Courage – Most in demand and least in supply, courage is the willingness to do the things you know are right.

Continuous learning – Read, at the very least, one book a week on business to keep you miles ahead of the competition. Organize your time so you spend 30 minutes a day exploring e-mail, sending messages, going through websites, because like exercise, it’s the only way you can keep on top of technology. If you get away from it, you’ll lose your edge.

How many of these C words fit you?  How many do you still need to develop?

23 Become An Inspiring Leader

Can you explain to people WHY you do what you do? What moved you to start your business? What makes you get out of bed in the morning?

Author Simon Sinek describes what he calls the Golden Circle of Communication. According to Sinek, communicating the why first is communicating from the inside out and “people don’t buy what you do, they buy WHY you do it.”

He presents this key to becoming an inspiring leader in a Ted Talk which you should listen to, it’s brilliant.

Sinek explains that your best customers and clients buy from you or hire you because they believe what you believe. He reminds us that Martin Luther King didn’t give an “I have a plan speech,” he gave an “I have a dream speech” and within that speech he talked about what he believed.

People didn’t necessarily connect with Martin Luther King the man, they connected with what he believed because it was the same thing that they believed. He believed that people should be treated equally under the law and that was his why.

The why that drives me forward is that I believe that all teens and young adults should have the opportunity to have the life of their dreams regardless of their life experience or current circumstances, and in light of the current economic situation, I believe we need to help them find alternatives to jobs.

Why do you do what you do?

7 Action: The Key To Success

The word action has come up a lot in the past few days so I thought it would be a good idea to look at why action is the key to success.

Adam Urbanski said, “The difference between successful people and the wannabes is simple: successful people do what needs to be done when it needs to be done – regardless of how they feel about it at the moment. The wannabes just complain and come up with all kinds of BS how life should be easy and everything we want should just effortlessly appear for us! Sorry, that’s not the way it works! If you want something – go get it!”

Nothing in business or life gets done unless you take some action.

Most of us know or have at least heard of the law of attraction.  Some people imagine you can just think positively and things will come to you.  This isn’t true.   It’s fantasy.  The law of attraction is not wishful thinking, nor is it just positive thinking.  Making your dreams come true and attracting what you want requires you to put energy into making it happen – taking action.  This is called determination.  Determination is the combination of time, energy and actions.  Without determination nothing happens.

The universe will not give you what you want without you taking some action.  When your action is inspired by your desires and dreams, you are demonstrating that you really want what you say you desire.  This puts you in alignment with the law of attraction and you will begin to see what you want start to come to you.  Action is like searching for buried treasure; you know it is there to find and you are digging with determination to find it.

Actions that are uninspired are time wasters.  Time wasters don’t create an alignment with our dreams and desires which means we aren’t going to get what we say we want.  This form of action leaves you with the wannabes that Adam mentioned.

My spiritual teacher once said that waiting doesn’t mean sitting around waiting for something to happen, it means doing something toward making it happen until it does happen.  So what are you “waiting” for?

“You are never given a dream without the ability to make it come true.  That ability includes your willingness to do what it takes.” Marcia Wieder

14 8 Patterns of Self-Sabotage

This post is inspired by the writings of Marcia Wieder of Dream University in her book Overcoming Failure in the Dream Movement Series.  She talks about these 8 patterns of sabotage:

Sabotage #1:  Negative self-talk and self-doubt are useless.

If you recall the three hurdles we talked about earlier in this series, lack of belief was number one, “I don’t believe I can do it.”   We identified three was to jump this hurdle: focus on your desires, focus on who you are being and take action.  If you are in action toward making your dream come true, there is little room left for self-doubt.

It is important to remember that our thoughts create our reality, so be aware of your thoughts, change them and you will change your reality.

Sabotage #2:  Putting your fears into your dream will kill the dream.

This is what Marcia recommends to transform this sabotage pattern:  “Any fears we have about our dreams are just part of the present reality.  Divide a piece of paper in half.  Label the top “My Dream” and the bottom “My Reality”. Honestly describe the dream and assess your reality about the dream. Include in the reality section, all of your fears about the dream. Now you can clearly see where you stand.  You can also decide (on a daily basis) if you are more committed to your dream or to your reality, which includes your fears.  Zig Ziglar, one of the world’s foremost motivational speakers, uses a wonderful acronym for the word FEAR: ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.’  Take a close look at how you are using your fear and at what’s real and what’s not.”

Sabotage #3:  Being vague about the dream will keep you confused.

We’ve talked about this in a previous post as well.  It is essential to have clarity about your dream.  Write it down, create a vision board, start telling people what your dream is and use their questions and comments as feedback to gain clarity.  Communicate it often.  Eliminate the qualifiers when you share your dream.  For example, don’t say “some day I’m going to be a successful business person.”  Do say, “I’m going to be a success business person.”  Do you see the difference?  One is more self-assured, the other leaves room for doubt.

Sabotage #4:  If the dream stays a dream, it will never become a reality.

You must be in action on making your dreams a reality because nothing happens without action.  If you have a really big dream, the first step is to ask yourself “how can I make this happen?”  Then break that down into projects or goals.  Set a date or time limit and start moving one step at a time toward completing that goal.

Sabotage #5:  Scheduling unrealistic deadlines will lead to disappointment.

Don’t schedule yourself into overwhelm.  I’ve been there and done that.  When I feel overwhelmed I usually want to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head; nothing gets done that way.  This is what the Get Stuff Done Tool was created for.  If don’t already have this tool, sign up in the box with the red arrows on the right hand side of this page and it will be sent to you.  We also discussed this in a previous post so you can review it there.

Sabotage #6:  Loss of perspective can send you into a tail spin.

Telling yourself that you will never make it, or how bad things are is a sure way to sabotage the dream.  This can even make the situation worse than it really is.  Or just as bad, we pump ourselves up pretending things are much better than they are.  Denial is a waste of your time.  Make a visual – create a chart or graph and show how much you’ve already accomplished, then look at how much there is left to do and break that down into smaller projects.  Remember, one step at a time leads to success.

Sabotage #7:  It’s so much easier to do it myself.

This usually comes either from ego or you are a control freak.  We’ve talked about having your dream team, or a success team.  They are on your team to help you when you need.  You just need to ask them.  Also, google whatever information you need and search for free training.  I learned so much of what I know and put into practice by watching free video trainings and attending free webinars and teleseminars.  If I had trouble putting into practice what I learned, I asked for help.

Sabotage #8:  If you kill yourself in the process, you won’t get to enjoy the dream.

Take care of yourself.  If make yourself crazy and overwhelmed, if you are stressed, you are wasting energy and putting yourself and your dream at risk.  Slow down, see what you need and provide that for yourself.  It’s okay to take a break or work less hours and take a bit longer to get things done.  After all, you want to be happy and healthy enough to enjoy your dream becoming a reality.

Which one or more of these patterns have you fallen into?

4 Laying The Foundation For Success

Building a business is like building a house or other structure.  You start with the foundation and build up.  You have to even out the ground, lay out the outline of the bottom floor and pour the cement.  When you are done, you have the foundation.  Then you build the frame of the structure, put the roof on, install the plumbing and wiring, finish the walls then get to the smaller details until your house is complete.

The next step is to turn that house into a home.  You need to decide on paint color, furniture and the like.  Once everything is in place, you have successfully built a new home.

In business, evening out the ground is equivalent to deciding what business you will have and doing the research necessary to make informed decision.  Laying out the outline of your business consists of making decisions on the name, what your URL will be, or whether or not to have a website or other tools.

Next, setting up the systems for your business, the website, an autoresponder and other systems is pouring the cement for the foundation.

To frame your business requires determining your sales funnel; what will your products be?  What will you give away to attract people to your business?

Creating your products and having them ready to sell is putting the roof over your head and finishing the walls.

Now to turn your venture into a real business, you need to find customers/clients; you must build your list and create and work a marketing plan.

Finally, to make your business a home, you need to invite people over.  Once your customers/clients start visiting, you can call your business your home and it is time to have a housewarming party.

Welcome home.