Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Ahh, do you remember how we used to get all excited about the “Google Dance”, that period when Google updates the little green PageRank bar? Remember? Well apparently a lot of people still get very excited about it and it’s occurring right now - PageRank is updating!

If you have never heard the term PageRank head over to this page and have PageRank explained to you.

While some may argue PageRank is next to useless Webmasters and bloggers alike still love to see the little green bar climb higher, or for those with brand new websites, to finally see how well your site ranks.

Personally I stopped getting excited about PageRank ever since my blogs hit 6 since it’s very hard to get to a 7 and I haven’t done enough to warrant a 7 as yet. Although if my rankings dropped I would definitely be annoyed.

While I can’t say this conclusively I have noticed that if I point my two PageRank 6 blogs to any other page I can basically create PageRank 5 pages, which as I mentioned last time there was a PageRank update, seems to indicate that most sites have a PageRank that is simply the highest PageRank backlink of the site minus one. So if I have PageRank 7 sites linking to my site it very likely will be a 6. This of course makes sense given how PageRank is intended to work, but it does seem a little silly since if you have control of high ranked sites you can create more high ranked sites simply by linking them together.

Case in point - my Blog Traffic School pre-launch blog has gone from PageRank 0 to 5 for it’s first update and I’m pretty sure that 5 is there because of links from Entrepreneurs-Journey.com and SmallBusinessBranding.com. Not that I am complaining of course.

I hope PageRank has been kind to you today!

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By Adnan from Blogtrepreneur

When Yaro asked for readers’ contributions for July, I decided that I should really dig deep into my entrepreneurial spirit to ask myself How Do You Become A Successful Entrepreneur? Now this article definitely is not the be all and end all of ways to become a winner in business online or offline, but some of the points I will make should help you to firmly establish yourself in the world of entrepreneurship, and should hopefully distinguish you from the huge crowd of money-making hopefuls.

Successful entrepreneurs need to see success. Many of the top businessmen around have seen a product and the associated success that could possibly come with it. Take Michael Dell for example. He believed in the potential of computers way ahead of his time, and built a business from his dorm room. Once you have managed to visualize your success, planning the road to this achievement is a must.

If you don’t plan extensively about your new idea or concept, without thinking ahead, you might encounter unforeseen difficulties with management or cashflow. I recommend using a business plan which incorporates:

• What your product/idea is.
• How does it differ from other products and how will it make you become successful.
• Who your audience is.
• What money you need to spend in terms of product cost, advertising, shipping, staff, and so on.
• What profits you are hoping to make.

Perseverance is also key in becoming a full-time entrepreneur. For me, this is essential especially in the blogging field, as in order to maintain a good readership and a good income if you are using ads on your site, you need to post regularly and with quality content. Bloggers in particular are more likely to experience burn-out if they work too hard, and can also experience a drought in terms of traffic if they slacken the pace. A true entrepreneur will be able to prevent the feeling of being “burnt out” if they know what their goals are, and if they love the task of always having to meet deadlines. Discipline is also the key in this field, as an entrepreneur must work hard in order to achieve. We often see “Get Rich Quick Schemes” and let me tell you that in 99.9% of these cases, obtaining money quickly is just not possible. I have finally learnt (through many financial losses) that only discipline and hard work can result in rewards.

Tied in with this is the recognition that you, as an entrepreneur, never consider failure as an option. Too often these days, have I seen businesses or individuals deem themselves failed if they have not achieved a set of targets. Failure simply is not a word in the dictionary of an entrepreneur, as even if a project is not going well, an entrepreneur will find new ways of coping with the situation and will adjust his aims to fit in with the task in hand.

Entrepreneurs also need to manage their time properly. There’s no point in spending a whole day over a task, when in reality it will be cheaper and more effective to hire someone to help you with a certain task, thus enabling you to produce more profit. Delegating jobs and staff and being able to manage as well as bringing in the bucks is a true mark of an entrepreneur and one who knows what he is doing.

A successful entrepreneur must have an air or a grace about him that will demand respect from other individuals. I would like to say that I am a very friendly person, always looking for new contacts and always trying to network with others who share similar skills and attributes. At the same time, you must also conduct business in a very formal way, being punctual, polite and remaining cool under pressure.

Even with all these points, I feel that I have only scratched the surface on the make-up of a true entrepreneur. You may have other qualities which you might deem important, so please let me know if you think I have missed any out. Successful entrepreneurs are never secure in their field, although this may be the same with other “bog standard” jobs, however the rewards that can be obtained from having the mentioned attributes can be really substantial. By working hard and never giving up, you are bound to become a successful entrepreneur, all you have to do is believe.

Adnan
www.blogtrepreneur.com

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By Herb Firestone from SEO for Smart People.

If you’ve owned your own business before and you’re on the diving board trying to decide whether to dive headfirst back into the entrepreneurial pool, you’re not alone. If this is your situation, or even if you’re considering entrepreneurship for the first time, let’s just say, Yaro absolutely hit the nail on the head when he said, “When you own your own business you may not make any real money until you sell it.”

Not only was I able to sell my business and see some real cash, but imagine my surprise and good fortune when the purchaser agreed to take me and two of my employees along in the deal.

The benefits of working for someone else are obvious. There’s definitely something to be said for the security of a regular paycheck, direct deposited I might add, health insurance reliably taken care of, and even one paid day off per month, which you can save up and take all at the same time.

The advantages look even better when you apply the “Jeff Foxworthy” test as follows:

You know you own your own business when you’re always on call and must be ready, willing and able to do whatever it takes at any time of the day or night – same as Superman.

You know you own your own business when you’re simply expected to wear all the hats and do a little of everything.

On the other hand, you know you work for someone else when there’s serious specialization of tasks. There’s one person, for example, to handle domain registration and hosting, another for email and tech support; still another for logo and web design, two for programming, even more for seo, a project manager to stay on top of it all, a sales department with sales assistants, and especially a book-keeper to make the past due collection calls and a receptionist to keep the telemarketers away.

• You know you own your own business when your first three calls of the day are, “may I speak to the person who handles your advertising;” would you be able to help the children of the world today; and we’re the people who handle the copier in your office, when you know you don’t even have one?
• You know you own your own business when it’s the last day of the quarter and your 941 tax form is due, not to mention your Texas Workforce Commission report, and to add insult to injury, it’s payday besides.
• You know you own your own business when the air conditioning stops working, the electricity goes off, and the bathroom is flooded.
• You know you own your own business when you’re waiting in the checkout line at the office supply store and one of your employees calls on your cell phone to inform you that she won’t be coming in today … and by the way, we’re out of paper clips.

So, why on earth would anyone even consider leaving all that behind to return to entrepreneurship?

Could it be the thrill of the hunt, the excitement of the chase, the willingness to try, the challenge to get it done and the sense of accomplishment when you do?

So, what’s the solution? Get off the board, walk back around to the shallow end, and slowly reenter entrepreneurship by getting your feet wet one small step at a time.

With the fourth of July upon us, we in America love England and all, but without that entrepreneurial spirit of independence back in 1775, we’d probably still be paying taxes to the Queen today.

So that’s the why. But what about the “how, when and where?”

It only takes one word to answer the question, “how,” and that word is blogging. Where else but the blogosphere could you start a business for less than a hundred dollars, write a seven hundred word article, have it posted on someone else’s blog, and never even mention once what you’re selling?

The when could be today! For the “where,” visit my new blog, SEO for Smart People, Herb Firestone’s SEO blog, to see for yourself why, “when it comes to seo, there are no dummies!”

Herb Firestone
www.seoforsmartpeople.com

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I haven’t actually heard of this guy, Rich Schefren, but apparently he is a business coach/friend/associate for a lot of people I have heard of, including Mike Filsaime, Jay Abraham, John Carlton, Yanik Silver, and Alex Mandossian (Rich is namedropping quite a bit - there are many more business guru-types mentioned).

If you are on the email lists of any of these people or travel around Internet business related forums and blogs you may have already heard of the release of a pretty cool e-book titled the Internet Business Manifesto. Shortly after the release of the manifesto Rich provided a “Missing Chapter“, which is almost as big as the Manifesto, and actually I think it has more valuable advice in it.

You can download the e-books from here -

• The Internet Business Manifesto
• The Missing Chapter

Rich has a blog here: Rich Schefren - Strategic Profits

I just finished reading both books and although I had no idea who Rich was before, his content is quality, and that is what matters in this case. If you are in business these book are worth reading, so take 30 minutes of your time today and enjoy the value.

Rich teaches how to construct a strategic business and makes an important distinction between a strategic entrepreneur and an opportunistic, well, fool. Unfortunately the latter is what a lot of people who are trying to make money online are currently doing - buying into whatever is the latest program to make money online and not building a business that has foundations in your strengths and passions.

There is a lot of great, free advice in these books. You might call it common sense yet most people don’t follow it (that certainly includes me too). It’s the kind of advice that is all-encompassing - general business advice for any entrepreneur, not specific advice on how to do something in particular, but strategic for your overall business.

Personally I enjoyed the missing chapter more because it discussed a topic dear to my heart - building a business based on strengths and passions, not on money making opportunities.

Rich’s key strength in these books is his ability to present some potentially abstract concepts in a clear and very relevant manner. I hope you get something from them as I did and I’d love to hear your opinion.

Yaro

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I know I said there would be no more self development articles on Entrepreneur’s Journey, but what I meant to say there would be no more by me! Matt kindly contributed this great article on self development and I wanted to publish it here since my personal development blog won’t be launching for a while. Enjoy! - Yaro

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By Matt Lindsay from A Car Too Far

“If you can’t believe in yourself then who else is going to believe in you?” - I heard this mantra a while ago and although it’s not a pillar of my everyday living, it serves to illustrate at least one of the key issues that often send people on a path of self development. There are other reasons of course, ranging from those who are picking themselves up after a fall (maybe you lost your job or broke up with a partner) to those who are only hitting the 7 out of 10 mark and feel they could do better. Whatever your reason for starting a program of self development, once you dip your toe, you could well find yourself in for a splash.

Self Development is, by nature, an open loop structure; as you develop and improve your personal characteristics, the more you will desire to achieve and strive for better things. In order to get that bit extra from life, you will need to develop more and so on and so forth and if this cycle is left unchecked, this can rapidly lead to a serious burnout. Fortunately every day constraints or “frictional losses” will erode the speed at which this cycle accelerates but ultimately you will need to be careful about what aspects of your character you wish to improve and more importantly how many you try to improve at once.

I recently decided to quit my job in order to chase my dream. I realised that if I was working from 5AM to 12PM everyday already, then I had the commitment it would take to go it alone. I have a few months in which to work up enough money to give me a few months breathing space, but at some point I will have to decide what business of mine I’m going to run with. How did I make this decision? Well Steve Pavlina’s excellent approach to the relative risk strategies of being in a job to working for yourself were instrumental in the decision and this all started because of my journey of self development, so, well I know these risks.

If you are reading this article it is likely that you have an inkling as to what self development involves and you may even have a few good resources for advice. This is not the domain for this article but I am happy to put you in the direction of my favourite reads. If, for example, you pop over to Steve’s site, you will find a plethora of articles and blog entries on self development. The easy mistake to make is to harvest them all (or a large number), read them and try to implement them. Take this strategy and it is next stop: Burnout City .

For instance, we would all like to get a little more out of our day. How about trying Polyphasic sleeping, having better time management or just getting up when your alarm goes off (this worked wonders for me). We could benefit from giving up coffee, sanctifying our workspace, making money from our blogs, overcome fear and there aren’t many of us out there that would turn down the opportunity to make $10,000 in an hour. There are, however, some things that cannot be rushed and self development is one of them. Not only will you burn out if you binge on self improvement but in actual fact some of the best advice and methods are mutually exclusive. Just as Steve often says, to get from a 7 to a 10 you sometimes have to go back to a 5 first.

I do not know the ultimate answer to applying self development, only the way it works best for me and the way that I would advise. I have split the two routes and addressed them separately:

Progressive Self Development

The way I like to look at applying self development is like a tan. If you try and get a great tan all in one, it will burn and peel off quickly. If you build it up, layer by layer, waiting for each application to settle and really sink in before laying the next, you will have a firm understanding of the things you have done, why they work and why you should continue to do them. It is also easier to do it this way as you only really need address one issue at a time.

Structured Self Development

If you are in more of a rush to be the million dollar man you might opt for a program of structured self development. This is where you consider certain aspects of your persona and group them into comparable and mutually inclusive groups. You might for example have a “Time management and optimization” aspect that you want to improve and similarly a “Finance and occupation” aspect. These groups will depend on you, but be sure to keep them fairly specific. For example if you tired to bundle “Time Management” and “Healthy Living” into a single group you may well come unstuck when you try and optimize both as the interrelationships between the two (extra time required for workouts or meal preparation compared to “time and motion studies”) will cause unpredictable or unrepeatable results at best or collide entirely at worst. Once you have these groups defined (on paper preferably) then set about reading up on one group at a time, or if you are impatient, one mechanism for each group. Try to deal with one group completely before moving to the next if you have time, or again if you are rushing this then one mechanism from each group only!

Ultimately, the process of Self Development is a difficult one, not least because of one of its own inherent anomalies. When dealing with self progression, it is commonly accepted that goals are required. A goal is a dream with a deadline, that is to say that as we, as humans, work best to deadlines, by attaching a “due by” date to our dreams we transmute them into actions. Self development however is an on going process and only a program of continual improvement will make for take you the whole distance. If you cannot put a time frame on it as an overall process and you can never complete it then doesn’t it break its own rules? Well, yes and no, but with no timeframe on it, at least it will work nicely with your new “Stress management” mechanism…

Provided for your own protection by Matt Lindsay.

Matt is an Aussie born, UK living, 26 year old working a day job, a night job and running an online business of two years (www.slothball.com). He has a blog at lindsayhart.co.uk/blog.

Matt is giving up his job in October to further follow his dream (see his blog) and to find a way to make mortgage each month - pretty scary really.

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