BiznessYoung mag

# 01 BiznessYoung SEPTEMBER 2009

10 AED

Entrepreneurship, Business & Money management for entrepreneurial young generation

What is Entrepreneurship Education? page 6

At age 16: Anderson Trail, Inc page 18 Want to keep more money in your pocket? page 26

...

SEPTEMBER 2009 English Edition

Bizness Young# 01

Entrepreneurship, Business & Money management for entrepreneurial young generation At Glance

04

Entrepreneurship education

Where’s creative thinking really taught? part 1

Missing 16

Minds&Minds

Think like an entrepreneur

Justin Avery Anderson: Anderson trail, inc. 18

05

What is entrepreneurship education?

06 Subscription

20

09

Set up your business Seven formulas for business success

Building Wealth part 1

21

(1) Wealth Creation: learn the language

22

Cash 10

What is a Bank?

25

12

Want to keep more money in your pocket? 26

Technovation Unlocking your creativity Editor in Chief Hanan Mohammad A. Bajjash, editor@biznessyoung.com Editorial Team Salvador Peratta, Vincent Godoy, Mark Spencer, Sarah Mandala, Wai Tai Chun.

15

Columnist

Newsdesk news@biznessyoung.com Advertising & Production Marcus Melatties, ads@biznessyoung.com Photos by Getty Images

The power to shape your future

29

eCommerce 7 ways to turn a profit online 30

Radar

Com.you Missing

34

# 01 BiznessYoung SEPTEMBER 2009

Columnist Missing

Show me up

Tuchman’s Tips for young entrepreneurs 33

Economy&Investment

Insight

27

Bizness Young Write us to PO Box 44315, Dubai, EFK1 8JA, Arab Emirates Tel: +44 (0) 20 3 122 2287 Fax: +44 (0) 24 0 417 7725 team@biznessyoung.com

ENGLISH EDITION

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WHAT IS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION? PAGE 6

AT AGE 16: ANDERSON TRAIL, INC PAGE 18

The views expressed are not necessarily the views of Bizness Young or its editors, and if they are they are likely to be wrong. It is the policy of Bizness Young not to engage in discrimination or harassment against any person on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, lack thereof, national origin, ancestry, incestry, age, marital status, disability, or unfavourable discharges. © Bizness Young 2009. All rights reserved.

At Glance Entrepreneurs are not “born”, rather they “become” through the experiences of their lives.

(Albert Shapiro, The Ohio State University) PHOTO

Hanan Mohammad A. Bajjash Master of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MIE) Member of Entrepreneurship Education Consortium- US

T

hrough effective entrepreneurship education, people can access the skills and knowledge needed to start and grow a new business. But, entrepreneurship education does not just contribute to new business starts. Communities who embrace entrepreneurship education also find that students perform better in school, and that a school’s overall performance also improves.

If you ask a group of business executives to describe the key to their company’s future success, you’ll get a pretty consistent set of answers. While the terminology might differ, all of the answers call for a talented, competitive, skilled, creative, and entrepreneurial workforce. A brief glimpse at recent blue ribbon reports on America’s economy offers further confirmation that talented workers will be the key differentiator in America’s 21st century economic success. For example, Innovate America, a report from the Council on Competitiveness’s National Innovation Initiative identifies talent as “the nation’s innovation asset.” What do they mean by talent? It’s not enough to simply be smart. Instead, we need to nurture a new generation of innovators who have key skills in areas like science and engineering, but who are also able to collaborate with others and to act in the face of new opportunities. In other words, we need innovators who combine skill with an entrepreneurial mindset.

The first initiative of entrepreneurship education in US was in 1980, which is mean it is the time to combine this type of education in our schools without any delay.

I do remember the first initiative for starting enterprises was in the early of 2001 because I participated in the first workshop of SME organized by DED in Dubai, and since that time the concept of SME has been raised. I wish in that time if we went through all these concepts in early stages of our life and education and since that time tracking the entrepreneurship education around the world became one of the main goals in my life and I believe that we are in our way embed it in our education system in order to reach to the competitiveness and to build our next generations of leaders (Entrepreneurs).

Think Like an Entrepreneur Bizness Young

5

Entrepreneurship Education

E

ntrepreneurship is so much more than just learning to run your own business. It’s an approach to life that involves thinking of yourself as a “cando� person. After all, if you can start your own business, you can do just about anything! Even when you work for other people, you can think like an entrepreneur by understanding that you are always in business for yourself. Let this motivate you to do your best on the job: Always look for opportunities to learn new skills and try new responsibilities.

Show your employer that you understand business and that you are working to improve the profitability of the company.

Entrepreneurship Education

WHAT IS ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION?

E

ntrepreneurship education seeks to prepare people, especially youth, to be responsible, enterprising individuals who become entrepreneurs or entrepreneurial thinkers and who contribute to economic development and sustainable communities. It is not based on a textbook course. Instead, students are immersed in real life learning experiences where they have an opportunity to take risks, manage the results, and learn from the outcomes.

gan in the early 1980s when Secretary of Education Terrell Bell issued a Policy Statement encouraging entrepreneurship education be taught in all vocational education programs. Today, entrepreneurship education efforts exist at all levels of education across the US and overseas. While this progress is impressive, it is still quite limited. The vast majority of Americans, and especially American youth, still cannot easily access entrepreneurship education training and resources.

Entrepreneurship education is not just about teaching someone to run a business. It is also about encouraging creative thinking and promoting a strong sense of selfworth and accountability. Through entrepreneurship education, students learn how to create a business, but they also learn a lot more. The core knowledge created via entrepreneurship education includes:

WHY ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION?

• The ability to recognize opportunities in one’s life.

• The ability to pursue such opportunities by generating new ideas and marshaling needed resources.

• The ability to create and operate a new venture.

• The ability to think in a creative and critical manner.

The benefits of entrepreneurship education –provided at all age levels– have been evident for some time. The first such training be-

These limitations are unfortunate, because the benefits of entrepreneurship education for individuals, communities, and the entire country are profound. The benefits include the following:

• Entrepreneurship Education inspires and motivates students to achieve while in school and use their knowledge in a real world setting.

• Entrepreneurship Education improves school performance and can help achieve No Child Left Behind (NCLB) goals and the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures.

• Entrepreneurship Education builds a pipeline that creates productive and thoughtful citizens who contribute to local, regional, and national competitiveness.

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The root of word?

of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge entrepreneurship emerged.

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to create and market new goods or services. The term is a loanword* from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon.

Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, believed to be coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is “one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediatory between capital and labour”.

E

ntrepreneurship according to Onuoha (2007) is the practice of starting new organizations or revitalizing mature organizations, particularly new businesses generally in response to identified opportunities. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking, as a vast majority of new businesses fail. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization that is being started.

Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities.

Entrepreneurship is often difficult and tricky, resulting in many new ventures failing. The word entrepreneur is often synonymous with founder. Most commonly, the term entrepreneur applies to someone who creates value by offering a product or service, by carving out a niche in the market that may not exist currently.

Entrepreneurs tend to identify a market opportunity and exploit it by organizing their resources effectively to accomplish an outcome that changes existing interactions within a given sector.

Many “high value” entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel investors generally seek returns of 20-30% and more extensive involvement in the business. Many kinds of organizations now exist to support wouldbe entrepreneurs, including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs (Non-governmental organization). Lately more holisitc conceptualizations of entrepreneurship as a specific mindset (see also entrepreneurial mindset) resulting in entrepreneurial initiatives e.g. in the form

Observers see them as being willing to accept a high level of personal, professional or financial risk to pursue opportunity.

Business entrepreneurs are viewed as fundamentally important in the capitalistic society. Some distinguish business entrepreneurs as either “political entrepreneurs” or “market entrepreneurs,” while social entrepreneurs’ principal objectives include the creation of a social and/or environmental benefit. * A loanword (or loan word) is a word directly taken into one language from another with little or no translation.

7

Set Up your Business

1.

Visualize Your Goals

There are seven formulas for business success.

Number one, set a specific goal and visualize it as a reality. Play the picture of your goal as already realized on the screen of your mind over and over again. Number two, look for a problem you can solve with a product or service that is high quality and good value. All successful businesses are based on products or services that are high quality and good value. Number three, start small and learn your business thoroughly. Be patient. Invest time rather than a lot of money.

2.

Bootstrap Your Way To Success

One of the best ways to build a business is to start off on a bootstrap. This means that you start off with very little money and you grow your business with the money that you earn in the business, rather than outside financing, borrowing, loans from friends and so on.

Seven Formulas For 5.

Use Financial Leverage

And number seven, use financial leverage. Financial leverage is business borrowing, lines of credit from the back, which are based on the cash flow from your successful business. The whole aim of starting a business is to develop a consistent, predictable source of cash flow in excess of cost and expenses and then to hold to the money. Banks will lend you all the money that you can service as debt with your cash flow.

6.

Start Off Part Time

One final thing that you can do, and I’ve recommended that many people do this over the years, is if you’re starting off with no money, go to work part-time for a business in a field that interests you. It’s a valuable form of on-the-job training. Work evenings or work weekends. Or work on your holidays if you like.

Sometimes a business that looks tremendous from the outside will look terrible once you start working for it. But sometimes when you start working for a business, you start to get an intimate understanding of how it works and you get insights on how you can improve it.

Bizness Young

3.

Test, Test, Test

Number four, test every major move before you invest in it.

Test, test, test. Don’t plunge into a business. Move ahead carefully, one step at a time. Number five, expand on the basis of your successes, out of your profits, as you move along. In other words, only expand your business on money that you’ve earned in the business, not on borrowed capital.

9

4.

Pick Your People Carefully

Number six, carefully select the people to help you expand and grow. The biggest mistakes you’ll ever make will be in picking the wrong people to work with, so be very, very careful in picking the people you’re going to work with in your business.

For Business Success 7.

Learn What You Need To Learn

Remember this, though, most businesses fail because of managerial incompetence. So take the time to learn what you need to know to succeed. Be patient. The time you invest before you start will pay off over and over again in the months and years ahead.

Action Exercises Here are two things you can do immediately to implement these formulas for business success: First, be prepared. The number one reason that people succeed in starting their own businesses is that they have the knowledge and experience, in advance that they need to succeed. Do your homework.

Second, start small. Some people think that they can be successful faster by putting all their savings at risk at the very beginning. The opposite is true.

Start small and grow out of your cash flow from successful operations.

...

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11

Unlocking Your Creativity

by Brian Tracy

Technovation

Creative thinking can be stimulated by two things; intensely desired goals and pressing problems. Your creative capacities need something to hone in on and your job is to provide it.

A Continual Stimulus For Ideas

Diagnose Your Problems Accurately

Intensely desired goals, clearly defined with detailed plans for their accomplishment act as a continual stimulus for ideas to achieve them.

Define your problems clearly in writing. Accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Sometimes you will find that you are dealing with a “cluster problem,� one that is made up of several smaller problems. Your job is to sort them out and then go to work on each one separately.

Visualize Your Goals To trigger your imagination, write out a clear description of your ideal end result or goal. Be clear about the goal, be flexible about the process. Think about it, visualize it as realized over and over. Project your mind forward to the picture of the realized goal and then look back to the present.

Define Your Goals Clearly Think on paper. Make a plan and then work on the plan, updating it, changing it, adding to it as you think of new ways to work toward the goal. The more clearly defined and keenly desired your goals, the more of your natural creativity will be released for goal attainment.

The Proper Approach To Problems The second stimulant to creativity is pressing problems. The key to idea generation when you face a problem is to approach the problem confidently, expectantly, with the attitude that there exists a logical, practical solution just waiting to be found.

The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and imaginative ways.

Break Up The Clusters In many cluster problems, there is a core issue surrounded by a lot of symptoms. Creative thinking requires that you separate the core issue, and then focus on resolving that before worrying about the smaller problems.

Action Exercises Here are two things you can do immediately to implement these formulas for business success: First, be prepared. The number one reason that people succeed in starting their own businesses is that they have the knowledge and experience, in advance that they need to succeed. Do your homework.

Second, start small. Some people think that they can be successful faster by putting all their savings at risk at the very beginning. The opposite is true.

Start small and grow out of your cash flow from successful operations.

Technovation

WHERE IS CREATIVE THINKING I

t is our goal that entrepreneurship and creative thinking become a priority to all those that are teaching students to be competent for tomorrow’s world of work.

Edward de Bono says “’There are three basic aspects of thinking: 1. what is; 2. what may be; and 3. what can be.’ We are almost totally obsessed with ‘what is’. We underestimate the extremely valuable contribution that ‘what may be’ has made to progress. We do very little about ‘what can be’ even though our future depends entirely on this aspect.”

Think about how the following thoughts of Edward deBono apply to what we teach and how we teach it.

• “The most basic human skill, and the one on which both social and economic progress depends is not taught. The single most important thing that any government can do anywhere is to teach ‘constructive’ thinking to its youngsters. So why, except in a few countries, is this not being done?”

• A two finger typist with hundreds of hours of practice is still a two finger typist. A few hours learning touch typing would have made a huge difference. It is the same with thinking. The basic skills of thinking need to be taught directly and explicitly. The teaching of “critical” thinking is totally inadequate. Judgment is not enough. It becomes very difficult to say: “That is excellent. There is nothing wrong with it at all. But it is not enough.” The front left wheel of a car is excellent, but it

is not enough. Critical thinking is excellent but it is not enough. We need generative, productive, design and creative thinking.”

• “In a stable world, knowledge of standard situations and the routine ways of dealing with them is sufficient.

Not so in a changing world. Routines and category judgments from the past may be inadequate, misleading and dangerous. Instead of analysis and judgment, we need design. We need to be able to ‘design’ ways forward.”

• “From where are we going to get the new ideas that are needed to design our way into the future? Not from the greater exercise of our traditional thinking, which is much too slow at producing new ideas. Nor can we wait for the slowness of chance and evolution.”

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REALLY TAUGHT? PART-1 COMPETENCE IS THE BASELINE BUT CREATIVITY IS THE VALUE CREATION.” LATERAL THINKING IS FOR CHANGING CONCEPTS AND PERCEPTIONS

• In education we are concerned with literacy and numeracy. That leaves out the most important aspect of all, which I call ‘operacy’. The skills of action are every bit as important as the skills of knowing. We neglect them completely and turn out students who have little to contribute to society.”

• “There are several ways of defining lateral thinking, ranging from the technical to the illustrative.

• You cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper .This means that trying harder in the same direction may not be as useful as changing direction. Effort in the same direction (approach) will not necessarily succeed.

• The brain is specifically designed to be ‘non creative’.

If it were creative the brain would be utterly useless. It would be impossible to get up in the morning or to function at all. With only eleven items of clothing there are 39,916,800 ways of getting dressed. To go through these and to sort them out would take a lifetime. We do not need to because the brain simply switches us into the appropriate routine. That is the basis of perception and of action.”

• “Because the processes of deliberate creativity are not natural there is a need to practice them. Riding a bicycle is not at all natural but once we have learned to ride a bicycle then it becomes easy.”

...

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Economy&Investment

Building Wealth PART-1

Y

ou can create personal wealth. It’s possible to meet your financial goals. By choosing to budget, save and invest, you can pay off debt, send your child to college, buy a comfortable home, start a business, save for retirement and put money away for a rainy day.

Through budgeting, saving and investing, and by limiting the amount of debt you incur, all these goals are within your reach. Some people consider themselves wealthy because they live in a very expensive house and travel around the globe. Others believe they are wealthy simply because they’re able to pay their bills on time. What we are talking about here is financial wealth and what it means to you. In the following space, write your definition.

Examples: Wealth is…

1. being able to put my kids through college.

2. having enough money to buy a house.

Wealth is…

1.

2.

3.

Now that you have defined what wealth means to you, how do you acquire it?

Building wealth requires having the right information, planning and making good choices. In this serious of lessons we will provide you basic information and a systematic approach to building wealth. It is based on time-honored principles you probably have heard many times before—budget to save; save and invest; control debt.

Economy&Investment

(1) Wealth Creation: Learn the Language

Y

ou want to create personal wealth, right? So does Bob. Bob is 35 and works for a manufacturing company. He looked at his finances and realized that at the rate he was going, there wouldn’t be enough money to meet his family’s financial goals.

So he chose to embark on a personal wealth-creation strategy. His first major step was to pick up a guidance.

Bob began by learning the language of wealth creation.

The first lesson was to understand the meaning of assets, liabilities and net worth. They make up this very important formula:

ASSETS – LIABILITIES = NET WORTH A wealth-creating asset is a possession that generally increases in value or provides a return, such as:

• • • •

A savings account.

A retirement plan.

Stocks and bonds.

A house.

A new car drops in value the second it’s driven off the lot. Your car is a tool that takes you to work, but it’s not a wealth-creating asset Some possessions (like your car, big screen TV, boat and clothes) are assets, but they aren’t wealth-creating assets because they don’t earn money or rise in value.

A liability, also called debt, is money you owe, such as:

• • • • •

A home mortgage.

Credit card balances.

A car loan.

Hospital and other medical bills.

Student loans.

Net worth is the difference between your assets and liabilities.

Your net worth is your wealth.

To calculate how much he is worth, Bob used the following formula: Assets –Liabilities =Net Worth. He made a balance sheet listing all his assets and all his liabilities. He listed his wealth-building assets first. Bob discovered his net worth is $21,600.

Using Bob’s balance sheet as an example, figure your own net worth. Be sure to add any assets and liabilities you have that are not listed here. Remember that net worth is your wealth. Are you worth as much as you want to be?

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Bob’s Balance Sheet Wealth-building assets

My Balance Sheet

Amount

Wealth-building assets

Cash

$ 1,500

Cash

Savings account

$ 1,000

Savings account

Stocks, bonds and other investments

$ 5,000

Stocks, bonds and other investments

401 (k) retirement plan/IRA

$ 25,000

Market value of home

0

401 (k) retirement plan/IRA Market value of home

Other assets Market value of car Total assets

Liabilities

Other assets $ 14,000 $ 46,500

Amount

Market value of car Total assets

Liabilities

Home mortgage

$0

Home mortgage

Car loan balance

$ 13,000

Car loan balance

Credit card balances

$ 3,000

Credit card balances

Student loan

$ 5,000

Student loan

Child support*

$ 2,400

Child support*

Miscellaneous liabilities

$ 3,500

Miscellaneous liabilities

Market value of car

$ 14,000

Market value of car

Total Liabilities

$ 24,900

Total Liabilities

Net Worth

$ 21,600

Net Worth

* Represents one year of payments.

Amount

Amount

17

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19

Ca$h

What is a Bank?

A

bank is a business. But unlike some businesses, banks do not manufacture products or extract natural resources from the earth.

Banks sell services financial services such as car loans, home mortgage loans, business loans, checking accounts, credit card services, certificates of deposit, and individual retirement accounts. Some people go to banks in search of a safe place to keep their mon-

ey. Others go to the bank seeking money for loans to buy houses and cars, start businesses, expand farms, or do other things that require borrowing money. Where do banks get the money to lend? They get it from people who open accounts.

Banks act as mediators between people who save and people who want to borrow.

If savers do not put their money in banks,

the banks have little or no money to lend.

Your savings are combined with others’ savings to form a big pool of money. The bank uses that pool of money to make loans. The money does not belong to the bank’s president, board of directors, or stockholders. It belongs to you and the other depositors. Because bankers are lending out others’ money, they have a special obligation not to take uncalculated risks when they make loans.

...

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UP

21

The Power to Shape Your Future

by Justin Sachs

W

hether your desires include improving your grades, traveling the world, or finding your soulmate, your dreams are POSSIBLE. As soon as you turn them into goals, prioritize them, and make them MUSTS they become PROBABLE.

The secret to obtaining anything — MAKE IT A MUST! As a human being, you have the power to do anything, be anything and make anything you want happen as it becomes important enough, as you become certain enough and as soon as you believe enough in what you are doing. You have the power of absolute certainty as soon as you decide to have it!

Knowing, without question, and having no doubts about what you want to accomplish will allow you to obtain anything you desire. Imagine being able to accomplish anything in life simply by putting your mind to it, deciding it is what you WILL do without question, and taking ACTION. If you want to create extraordinary results in your life, you must have extraordinary standards! In order to take your life to the next level, you have to RAISE YOUR STANDARDS. It’s as simple as that! Taking your life to the next level and living extraordinarily are

processes that demand more of yourself than is being demanded of anyone else around you.

This involves being more than average. It includes being more than good and more than great. “Being extraordinary” means that you are living your life at a level that no one else around you is living. If you have a bunch of “can’ts”, “shoulds”, “woulds” or “coulds”, you will never get to the place you want to be. Your life’s mission, and the journey to becoming extraordinary, is deeply rooted in your decision to take action. It is about deciding to set your standards to a level that you have never taken them to before.

To do that every day, every week and every month, you must challenge yourself to continue to grow to new levels...raising your standards higher and higher. Every opportunity you get, create more and more goals. Demand more of yourself than those around you.

e

commerce

7 Ways to Turn a G

oing online can be a great adventure--and a lot of fun-for any small business. But if you want your Web site to be more than a hobby, you need to put some thought into how to make it profitable. No matter what your business is, you should always be thinking about ways to diversify your revenue streams to boost your profits.

So to get you thinking about new strategies, I’ve put together a list of the seven ways you can earn income on the Web, and then I’ve explained how you can incorporate all of these methods to create success.

Online Profit Steams Whether you’re just beginning to develop your business model or simply analyzing an existing business, your chief focus should be on how you’re going to generate income. There are seven ways to generate revenue on the Web:

• • • • • •

Sell your own products Sell your own services Drop ship products Recommend affiliate products Sell ad space Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses • Start an affiliate program

Let me explain each of these a little further:

1.

Sell your own products. The main advantage to selling

your own products is that you ultimately control how much profit you make on every sale and you therefore have the potential for the biggest profit margin. You know exactly what each product costs, and you can try out different price points to see what works the best. People appreciate good value, and removing the middleman is a great way to provide your customers with competitive prices that keep them coming back for more.

2.

Sell your own services. Whether you’re a small-town

dentist, a high-priced online legal consultant, a real estate agent, a tutor, a landscaper, a bed and breakfast owner, an automechanic, a caterer, a fitness trainer or anything in between, you can profit from selling your service online. It’s easy to get started selling a service online, but your revenue potential, in most cases, is limited. That’s because, unlike someone selling a physical product that can be stored and shipped on demand, you can only provide as many services as your time allows.

When you sell a service, you’re essentially selling a relationship with yourself. And this requires that you spend more time and effort establishing your credibility and developing rapport with your visitors than is typically required on a site selling a physical product. You not

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Profit Online

23

by Corey Rudl

to promote another company’s products or services on your site to earn a percentage of their sales. As one of the company’s “affiliates” or promotion partners, you earn a commission each time someone you’ve referred to their site makes a purchase. To advertise their wares, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate program’s site, or you might publish an article about the company and their products in your newsletter.

5.

Sell ad space. Once your site has lots of highly targeted traffic, or a large, targeted opt-in list, you may be able to sell advertising. Advertisers are willing to buy ads when they’re being directed at large numbers of their target market. Nowadays, though, advertising revenues are a lot less than they used to be, so I don’t recommend you plan on making this your sole source of income.

Selling ad space can be a great additional profit stream, but it’s unlikely to keep your business afloat on its own.

only need to establish the benefits of the service you’re offering, you also need to establish the value of you providing this service.

3.

Drop ship products. If you want to sell products without the hassles of tracking your inventory, setting up warehouse space and maintaining a confusing shipping/receiving infrastructure, drop-shipping may be the choice for you. Drop shipping lets you sell quality, brand-name products on your site for a hefty profit, while the drop shipper takes care of fulfilling the order.

They warehouse the stock, pack the orders and ship them out to your customers.

4.

Recommend affiliate products. Recommending affili-

ate products creates a “no-risk” partnership that allows you

6.

Create a joint venture with like-minded businesses. Joint ventures are all about related businesses teaming up

7.

Start an affiliate program. With your own affiliate

and combining skills, products, services and resources to create new streams of income and profit. One great way to profit through joint ventures is to seek out products or services that would benefit your visitors, and then approach the companies that provide those products or services. Ask them if you can recommend their product or service on your site for a portion of the profits. Most companies will gladly agree to this arrangement--after all, there’s no risk for them since they only pay you when you refer a paying customer. program, you can recruit an army of people (your affiliates) who will recommend your product on their web site for a percentage of any sale they refer. You have the power to exponentially increase your income as more and more affiliates sign up and you continue to teach your existing affiliates how to increase their commission checks (and your income).

It’s one of the most powerful forms of online advertising I know. It allows you to grow your profits while keeping your business small, since you don’t have to go out and spend money on salespeople and advertising. Your affiliates do the advertising for you, and you only pay them when they make a sale.

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25

Tuchman’s Tips for Young Entrepreneurs

Radar

by Robert Tuchman

T

he Small Business Administration’s latest statistics show that a new startup has about a 50 percent chance of surviving for five years or more. Robert Tuchman’s advises entrepreneurs to start doing the following early on to ensure a company’s longevity:

active! Reward your people for taking the initiative. You’ll have a huge competitive advantage over established companies. Many clients will pay, and even take a bit of a risk, to get young, energetic minds on their side.

1.

5.

Do business from home. Save money on renting office space by doing business out of your own living space. Install a separate phone line or purchase a cell phone for business use only.

Print your own letterhead and business cards. Your clients will never suspect that “Suite 12-B” is really “Apartment 12-B.”

2.

Try to fund it yourself, or mostly yourself. It pays to go after the least amount of funding that is necessary. When you’re starting out, it feels good to say that some venture-capital firm invested millions of dollars in your idea. But a few years down the road, when you’re doing well, it will not feel so great to know that you own only 25 percent of your company.

3.

Put a positive spin on things. Does

4.

Build a culture of action and enthusiasm. During your first year, you

the timing of your entrepreneurial project coincide with you having been recently laid off?

Don’t include that in your pitch to customers or investors. Nobody wants to think they’re doing business with someone who’s only there because they have to be.

will face a lot of questions about your experience.

The best—and probably only—way to overcome them is to impress clients with your vigor and dynamism. If you want to be perceived as youthful, forward-thinking, and results-oriented, be pro-

!

Stay balanced. During the first year, and all the years thereafter, you will have to find a way to achieve balance. Basically, this means avoiding the temptation to work eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, without a break. Find an outlet—a hobby, an amateur sport, or an exercise activity—that gets your mind off work and relieves stress. It’s essential to maintaining perspective and the energy you need to keep your business thriving.

Robert Tuchman is the Founder of TSE Sports & Entertainment, a company he started out of his one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan at the age of 25. TSE has gone on to appear on Inc. 500’s list of America’s Fastest Growing Privately Owned Companies. Tuchman now serves as President of Premiere Corporate Events, a division of Premiere Global Sports.

A frequent guest on “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” he has also appeared on CNN, the “CBS Morning News,” BET, and has been the subject of features in USA Today, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Entrepreneur.

He lives in New York City. He is the author of Young Guns: The Fearless Entrepreneur’s Guide to Chasing Your Dreams and Breaking Out on Your Own.

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