Unstrapp'd - How Gen-Y Does Business

Take a look at your Twitter feed for one minute and you will notice that some of the hottest topics today are “social media” and “personal branding”. Everyone and their grandmothers are looking to promote themselves or their products through social media channels these days. The problem is the majority of these people tweet a few times, create a new Facebook Page and get discouraged when only their friends support the cause.  There is a better way!

Read more on How to Systematize Your Personal Branding Using Social Media…

Another year is in the books. I will assume that you did the best you could with what you had this year. For some it was amazing and others it may have been quite dreadful. Hopefully, we all look to turn every situation into a positive. So much has changed in the world and you being an entrepreneur it’s safe to assume much has changed in your life! With change, hopefully comes progress; progress that you can evaluate by taking a look at your goals of 2009 and checking what you have accomplished.

Over the past year, I have been scouring the Internet for resources to help me grow my businesses. It is quite refreshing to discover and learn from others and hear stories from fresh perspectives, rather theory out of a book. Of course there are many ways to build a businesses and while many are figuring it out, the way we communicate is evolving right in front of our eyes. With the ammunition of a blog and a Flip cam, we are seeing many young entrepreneurs becoming prominent voices and in some cases niche leaders while building profitable businesses. In months and years not decades.

There are three words dealing with leadership that when used together, can lead to an enormous change in your effectiveness as a Leader. These three words are “Control, Connection and Challenge”.

These are words that are often thrown around when you hear people talking about leadership, but not many people address them in the way that I’d like to. I’d like to address these head on and explain the importance of them to you.

As we wrap up 2009, I want to thank every single one of you for reading this blog. The response has been completely humbling and I have made some tremendous connections in the process. I have had the chance to interview a massive inspiration in Gary Vaynerchuk and just recently interviewed Mike Michalowicz (the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur).

You’re at a networking event. You’ve talked to a few people. But those conversations only lasted a few minutes and were pointless. What are you doing wrong?

One thing you may or may not have realized is that entrepreneurs love to talk. More specifically, they love to talk about themselves. The more you get them to talk about themselves, the more they will like you. The more they like you, the more they will open up to you. The more they open up to you, the more you can develop a relationship and learn from them.

I have spent a lot of time over the past 3 years focused on my weaknesses. That led to a great deal of time spent reading many personal empowerment and business books. I actually get pretty pumped when I discover something in my life that I can improve upon. But while focusing on my weaknesses, I really lost sight to the gifts that I had. I was tiring myself out from the circles I was running trying to be an all-star at everything. There is a very powerful word in the Japanese language called “kaizen”, which means continuous incremental improvements.

富不过三代 (fu bu guo san dai) Is a saying that has been stuck in my head for quite a while (since my first reading of The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman to be precise). The translation closely works out to “Wealth does not surpass three generations”. The theory is simple; The first generation has their nose to the grindstone and earns a killing, the second generation holds it all together by saving it, and the third pisses it all away.

If there is one adage you will hear over and over again from today’s successful online entrepreneurs, it’s this: build an e-mail list! You will hear this drum beat so often because it holds the clear ring of truth.

Building an e-mail list has never been more critical to online success. Especially when considering the current economic climate, building a list provides you with a qualified target audience who already understands what you are offering and who have already agreed to either purchase or download something from you for in the past.

We all remember when our parents reached their mid-life crisis. It was the time of career changes, sports car purchases, Rogaine, maybe all of the above. For Generation-Y, our crisis came a bit sooner in the form anxiety, doubt and uncertainty about our futures. For many of us college was a time where we lived day by day, shot by shot, without a clear understanding of what our future held. So once we finally received that rolled up piece of paper from some dude in a gown we were dazed and confused.