You need a revenue model people!

After a weekend that involved too much alcohol and not enough iPrioritize, I sat down late last night to read the August 2006 issue of Inc. Magazine (it's a solid mag for YE's but the only reason I get it is because it comes free with my Fast Company subscription).

On page 30 there's an article entitled "Mash-up mania" that discusses the recent trend of venture capital that has been poured into "mash-up sites" (sites that combine easy to license tools with publicly available data sources). A great example is one of my favorite real estate sites, Zillow, that uses mapping software (like the free Google Earth) to present in-depth real estate information. The article states that they've raised $32 million from investors.

That's awesome...right? Well, it would be if they had a revenue model. According to the article, which talks about both Zillow and Trulia,

Both sites are well designed and attract hundreds of thousands of visitors per month, but it's not entirely clear how they intend to make money. Google prevents companies that use its technology from charging a subscription fee, which would seem to leave advertising as the only likely revenue stream for mash-ups that rely on its technology.

Now, I haven't seen Zillow's biz plan. Hopefully they do have a revenue plan that can get their investors their $32 million back plus a bunch more, but doesn't it bother anyone that a company can potentially get $32 million without a clear revenue plan? Isn't it business 101 that you need to actually MAKE MONEY to be considered a business? Crazy me, I always thought that if you approached an investor with an idea that didn't result in money being made that they'd throw your biz plan in the garbage and never talk to you again. I guess I was wrong...

Must watch SEO videos by Matt Cutts; my SEO rant

If there's one blog related to Search Engine Optimization that I think everyone involved in online business should read it's Matt Cutts' blog. For those not familiar with Matt, he's an engineer at Google who gives web professionals amazing insight into the way things work at Google and in the SEO industry in general. His most recent post, SEO Answers on Google Video, contains three short (less than 10 minutes each) videos about SEO. I recommend the videos to anyone from beginner site owners to SEO experts - everyone at any level can learn something from Matt.

The main thing that I took away from watching the videos (which I just finished doing) is that most people focus waaaaay too much on SEO and waaaaay too little on creating a quality site that encourages people to actually want to come back. In the third video, Matt answers someone's question about whether or not it's more important to optimize for search engines or for users and Matt answers that both are important. You can get all the traffic in the world by optimizing your site for SE's, but if your site sucks no one is going to "take action" (buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or whatever you want them to do).

I'll take the whole thing a step further and say that it's MORE important to have a site that people want to visit than it is to optimize it for search engines. Yes, your site needs to be crawlable by the search engines (Matt makes the point that being able to be crawled is the most important thing you can do for SEO), but, believe it or not, it is possible to drive traffic in other ways than through SEO.

I'll give you an example. My friend runs Detailed Image, a car detailing company that also sells detailing products online. From what I know, they have done little to no SEO, yet are a very profitable business because they drive traffic to their site by paying car forums to let them answer questions on an official "Ask a Detailer" thread. Would more search engine traffic help? Certainly, but had they focused on SEO to the extent that they weren't looking for other effective ways to drive qualified traffic to their site, they would have missed out on the opportunity that they found with forums.

Another example is iPrioritize. How many people do you think actually search for web-based to-do lists (or variations of that)? I've checked, and it's not too many. Most people don't realize that web-based to-do lists even EXIST, so how are they going to search for them? iPrioritize is certainly SEO'd very well for key terms like "organize" and "to-do list" but I can't rely on that traffic to sign up users because most of the time when people search those terms they aren't looking for a tool like iPrioritize. I have been using alternative methods - article writing, promoting with del.icio.us, stumbled upon, & digg, and other viral techniques - and will continue to use those type of methods primarily to drive traffic (a MySpace page is coming soon to attract students) as opposed to constantly tweaking my SEO, because for my site and my business it doesn't make sense to focus on SEO the way other companies do.

SEO is an amazing way to drive traffic to your site for free, but it's not the ONLY way, and you certainly can still get quality traffic and conversions from places other than search engines. Think about how many of your favorite sites you found through search engines and how many you found through other methods (from a friend, a link on a blog or in an article, etc)? My guess is that less than half came from search engines.

What a day...

When I woke up today, I had two things I absolutely wanted to do today - do a blog post and update SportsLizard's mobile site. I figured those two things would have taken about an hour and I could spend the rest of my Friday working on writing a marketing plan for the next phase of marketing for iPrioritize. Boy was I wrong.

It started out great - I woke up to my inbox filled with the usual newsletters and realized that two of the biggest had published stories written by yours truly! With that comes a rush of traffic to SportsLizard and iPrioritize and a bunch of iPrioritize new registrations. And with those comes the typical customer service issues - comments, suggestions, and some minor problems. I love dealing with those emails because they mean good things are happening - traffic is peaking and people are actually using iPrioritize!

Then a quasi-disaster struck at 4:45 PM EST. I was actually using iPrioritize to enter my own tasks for the coming days and then it crashed. After 10 minutes it was still down so I sent an IM to my hosting companies customer service and they replied with a generic response about how they were working on it. Then a message appeared on their site saying that one of their generators crashed and they had to power down the facility, which housed 1/4 of their sites (including SportsLizard and iPrioritize). Lucky me.

I proceeded to spend the next hour or so cursing and throwing my little wrist pad thingy all over my room. Why? On this day of all days? I don't even want to think of how many potential lifelong users were visiting the site for the first time during those two hours, only to see it down and never come back. Even worse, it pains me to think of regular users like myself who had the freaking site crash in the middle of working on their lists. Aaaaahhhhhh!

When the site finally went live again around 7 PM, the database was a mess (presumably because people were entering tasks at the moment of the crash and the commands were never executed completely) and I had to spend quite a bit of time fixing the database so everything works properly. Now, at 8 PM nearly everything on the site is up and running (a few little things are still quirky).

My question for you guys - has anyone had an experience like this and what is the best solution? My web host, iPowerweb, is widely regarded as one of the best. I understand that outages are bound to happen, but I want to be more prepared in the future. How hard is it to set up a backup server in a different location? Is it even possible considering users are constantly updating my database with new tasks every second? How would I go about "mirroring" the database in real time? I'm sure there's a way - eBay comes to mind as an example of someone who has the same problem and I'm sure has a solution. I am, however, looking for a relatively inexpensive solution :)

Wow, it felt good to get all of that bitching off my chest. Thanks for listening :) I'm off to begin apologizing profusely to my customers...

My new favorite blog

With all do respect to all of you great bloggers out there, I recently stumbled upon my new favorite blog - the trizoko biz journal by the folks over at trizle (you've got to be great to name your company trizle).

The writing style is like nothing I've ever seen before - it's not even worth explaining, you'll know what I mean when you check it out. I literally spent three hours reading through last night. My favorite posts:

• Building a great business


• How to build a Web 2.0 application


• What business are you really in


• Why does my startup company suck (my personal favorite)

13 Great Firefox Extensions for Web Professionals

Like most web developers or SEO professionals, I use a vast array of tools to get the job done. I use a combination of desktop and web applications, some purchased and some free. Everyone I know has downloaded a free copy of Mozilla Firefox, but few realize that by installing some of the 1,500 free extensions they can eliminate the need for most of the other applications they currently use. Below are my 13 favorite extensions for web professionals (in no particular order):

HTML Validator (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/) – validates web pages to the W3C HTML standards with a simple green check in the corner of the page if the page validates, a red check if it doesn’t, and a yellow exclamation point if there are warnings. It also includes an enhanced view of source code that allows you to see where errors are within the code.

FireFTP (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/) – free, secure, cross-platform FTP client that provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. This eliminates a piece of software for those of you who use a separate program for FTP.

Professor X (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2823/) – lets you view header information without having to view source code. The page “slides” down and Professor X shows you the contents of the page's head element, including Meta, Script and Style content.

NikkelWHOIS (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2646/) – view the WHOIS information for any page by clicking the button on the top-right of the browser.

IE Tab (http://ietab.mozdev.org) – sick of swapping between Internet Explorer and Firefox when testing out a web page you’re developing? With IE Tab you can view Internet Explorer in a Firefox Tab!

FireBug (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/) – an advanced debugger console that lets you monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax.

Codetech (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1002/ ) – web page editor that has the feel of Dreamweaver. An amazing extension for anyone doing web design that doesn’t want to fork out a few hundred dollars for Dreamweaver.

Server Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2409/) – easily switch between sites on your development and live servers by clicking the switch server icon.

SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html) – pulls useful market research data right into Google's and Yahoo!'s search results, including Google PR, Age, links, Alexa rank, WHOIS, and more. It also adds a few helpful links to the top of the search pages, including Google Trends, Google Traffic Estimator, and the Overture View Bid tool.

Yet Another Window Resizer (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2498/) – allows you to resize browser window to default screen resolutions.

AdSense Preview (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2132/) – preview the Google AdSense ads that would appear on that page. This is incredibly useful if you are considering putting AdSense on a page and don’t want to go through the hassle of signing up for an account and putting the ads up just to see what type of ads will show.

Screen grab (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1146/) – takes a screenshot of the webpage and saves it as an image file. This saves a ton of time compared to the method I used to use – take a screenshot and open Adobe Photoshop to crop the image.

Server Spy (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2036/) – indicates what brand of HTTP server (Apache, IIS, etc.) runs on the visited site on the lower-right side of the browser.

I need your help!

In an effort to beef up iPrioritize's press section I'd like to make an offer to fellow bloggers out there. If you sign up for an iPrioritize account and write an unbiased review of the service on your blog, I will give you a free lifetime iPrioritize business account, a link to your review from our press page, and a link to your blog or business from this blogs home page (a Google PR5 page for those of you into that). Drop me an email at adam.mcfarland@iprioritize.com if you're interested.

Oh, and for what it's worth I'll gladly return the favor and review your site or product for you anytime.

Successful Sites vs. Successful Businesses

Is it possible to have a successful website and not have a successful business? I certainly think it is. Here's what I think the qualities of a great site are:

• Provides unique and valuable information


• Encourages frequent visits


• Users feel like they are a part of a "community"

If you have those things you will likely eventually have a successful site on your hands. The most popular forms of sites that meet those requirements are:

• Blogs


• Forums


• Wikis


• News sites


• Social bookmarking or tagging sites


• Social networking sites


• P2P file sharing sites


• Podcasting and Vodcasting sites

These sites are a crucial part of the internet, but aren't necessarily good businesses. You are basically forced into using advertising as your ONLY source of revenue. By doing that you really limit yourself to:

• AdSense (or other PPC ads)


• Affiliate links


• Sell your own advertising

Unless you have an IMMENSE amount of traffic, it is hard to generate any significant amount of money from those sources.

Those types of sites are best used to SUPPLEMENT your business. For example, this blog is not a successful business for me (I think I've made like $10 in AdSense since I started the blog about a year ago). However, it does an amazing job of introducing me to other entrepreneurs and promoting my businesses through another channel. In that sense it is a very successful website and a successful tool for my businesses, but the blog in and of itself is not a successful business. Make sense?

Reality is that most successful online businesses have some other source of revenue, be it by selling a product (Amazon), service (eBay), or information (ESPN Insider). The best online businesses combine the aspects of a successful site with their revenue model to differentiate themselves.

A great example is Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble. They both sell the same books online, but Amazon absolutely crushes B&N in part because of the community aspect they create by allowing users to review each book. I don't know about you, but I never buy a book without checking the user reviews on Amazon. They've managed to differentiate themselves from the competition by creating a reason for people to visit their site other than to buy a book.

There's nothing wrong with having a successful site - it's an amazing accomplishment that you should be proud of. Just don't expect to quit your day job because of it any time soon.

**EDIT**
I'm not saying that it's IMPOSSIBLE to turn a successful site into a successful biz or that if you have a successful site that it CAN'T be a successful biz, just that it's MORE DIFFICULT to succeed if advertising is your ONLY source of revenue. You should certainly try to turn it into a successful biz. I recently wrote an article about doing just that - I just think it's waaaay more difficult than having your own revenue source.

As a YE looking to get a quick return on your investment, I think we spend a disproportionate amount of time building great sites and not enough time building successful biz's. Too much time focusing on traffic and not enough on dollars. That's where the inspiration for this post came from.

Office romance is stupid

Right or wrong, in our society we often spend more time with our co-workers than our families and friends combined. Any time people spend that much time together there's bound to be people who become great friends, people who can't stand each other, and of course people who decide to date.

It may be a natural thing, but I'm telling you don't do it. I recently read a post from David Lorenzo, author of Career Intensity, entitled Office Romance is Like a Car Crash. He makes the point that THERE IS NO HAPPY ENDING:

In most cases the best you can hope for a marriage. If you marry someone from the office, the best case scenario will be that one of you leaves the company. This is tough because it requires a career change for one of the two parties.

In the worst case, you'll face allegations of favoritism or you may even be sued for harassment. Anytime you mix your personal life and business you expose yourself to claims of preferential treatment. People become bitter when they perceive the playing field to be unfairly tilted. This bitterness can often become an expensive proposition.

I never thought of it that way, but there really is no good result. Like he said the BEST case scenario involves marriage and one of you leaving the company - not exactly stress free. And how often does that happen? My guess is less than 1% (I couldn't find a stat and I didn't feel like spending any more time flipping through my Human Sexuality book from college or searching Google...and yes I took a sex class in college and it was awesome).

So over 99% of the time it ends badly - they either sleep together and call it quits or they date for a while and call it quits. Both scenarios absolutely suck. No one wants to spend that much time around an ex, especially one that can influence their career. What happens when one of them meets someone and the other one gets jealous? What if one of them starts dating another person at work?

When I first started my job out of college we had a really attractive administrative assistant. I had interned there previously so I felt comfortable asking a co-worker her deal was (i.e. was she single). He told me "don't shit where you eat" and walked away. I laughed, thought about it for a second, and realized that he was right, so I didn't. I realize it can be hard, but keep work and play separate. You've got enough to deal with without having to add that stress to your life.

You never know where something good is going to come from

In the chaos of our daily lives it's easy to avoid others and close opportunities because we are "too busy" to deal with them. I had one of those moments this week where I almost pulled a "I don't have time for them" but luckily I caught myself in time to cultivate a great new business relationship.

To promote iPrioritize, I write freelance SEO articles for several popular online newsletters (some of which I also share here when applicable). Every time an article gets published, my inbox gets flooded with emails - some compliments, some criticism, and some people looking for my help. I make sure that I respond to each and every one of them no matter how long it takes. I thank them for reading the article and offer advice when they ask for it. Many times we exchange several emails and a new relationship is formed. I've even had a few who requested to hire me for some consulting work.

Usually this is where I draw the line - I thank them again for reading the article and then I refer them to people that can help them. Unfortunately I don't have the time to be a consultant AND run my businesses. It's a field that I have consciously made a decision not to get into. But a few weeks ago I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with John Edelson of Time4Learning - a service for home-schooled kids that offers online games to enhance the learning experience. John needed some help with several blogs that he uses to promote Time4Learning and he requested my assistance. We had a lengthy phone conversation in which I learned a few interesting things from John (most notably that Google gives you a free refrigerator when you purchase your 1,000,000th AdWords click, how nice of them) so I decided that I would take on the project. I ended up enjoying the work and my conversations with an experienced business owner like John.

In the end I made few bucks and more importantly developed a new relationship. Moral of the story - always be open to opportunities.

Screw with your co-workers today

When they're away from their computer:

1. Take a screenshot of their desktop


2. Create a new folder somewhere on their hard drive and move all of their icons/files from the desktop there


3. Auto-hide their task bar (right click on the task bar and go to properties)


4. Set the screenshot from Step 1 as their desktop background


5. Watch them click away at the image of their icons and start menu when they come back to their desk! This can literally provide hours of entertainment, especially if they can't figure it out and they call the IT department.


6. Bonus points if you video tape it and throw it on YouTube so I can watch it and laugh my ass off

Selling without actually selling

I recently came across a post on Donyell Nelson's blog about online sales. She talks about how most online sales processes work:

This is the wrong way:

You find a niche.
Setup a website and autoresponder.
You find something to give away so that people will be enticed to subscribe.
*BAM* You have their email address so you send them sales letter after sales letter.....

Every one of us has had that happen. Most of us either unsubscribe from the list or just delete the emails. Rarely does that work. She goes on to explain that you should provide several emails with free useful information to build up trust before trying to sell them. You should focus on developing a relationship with them before you even think about trying to sell them. You should give before you receive.

So why do so many salespeople (online and offline) continue to solicit people with SPAM and cold calls? Yes, a certain percentage of those will result in sales, but it seems like the energy that one puts into those things could be diverted to developing relationships with potential clients by offering them something that you have - by helping them out instead of ticking them off. Anyone who has done cold calling (I have) knows how much it sucks and would much rather do ANYTHING else than pick up the phone again.

Think from the customers perspective - you value the opinions of those you trust when you go to make a purchase. Whether it be a friend, a family member, a business (I listen when Google talks), or someone you respect that has helped you out by giving you something for free, all of them have a much greater impact because you trust them.

Last post, I mentioned a role model of mine, Joe Templin. The reason that he's able to be such a successful salesman is because he's NOT selling - he's helping. That helping leads to trust and leads to sales sometimes. If it doesn't, he still has the satisfaction of knowing he helped someone and also has a new acquaintance that will introduce him to more people. It takes time, but it really does work.

I like to make the analogy to dating - most guys know how hard it is to approach a random girl at the bar and turn that approach into a date (or whatever else your goal for the evening might be). It's possible, but it's definitely not easy. Most of us also know how much easier it is if we happen to know the friend that she is hanging out with. The mutual friend can introduce you and maybe even say a few good things about you. Now your chances just increased exponentially because the girl trusts the opinion of your mutual friend. She's let her guard down and now you can "sell" her :).

When iPrioritize launched, some people told me that I should take the "classic" sales approach and go out and solicit people to buy business accounts. I steadfastly refused because I know that doesn't work - or at least doesn't work as well as other methods. I have focused more on things like giving free accounts to non-profits. Hopefully that will lead to some sales (many people in those organizations also work other jobs that might be interested in a business account), but if not I can sleep a little better knowing that I have been able to give something that hopefully helped some great organizations.

Someone needs to write a book on the "new and better way to do sales"

A role model we can all look up to

The people that we meet throughout the course of our lives mold and shape who we become. Some of those people have such a profound effect on our journey that we honor them by calling them a role model. One of the great things about being part a large network of young entrepreneurs (thanks to YE Blogger and Mind Petals) is that we can introduce each other to people that we would never meet on our own.

Role models take time out of their busy lives to guide us and inspire us. They are the first to pick us up when we fall and the first to congratulate us when we succeed. They help us reach our potential both personally and professionally. I think it's a travesty that these people don't get more credit, so I want to introduce you to one of my role models - Joe Templin.

Joe is a financial planner for Northwestern Mutual Financial Network - but calling him a financial planner is an injustice to all that he does. I first met Joe at a career fair as a 19 year old sophomore in college looking for an internship in engineering. Joe convinced me to give Northwestern a try, and before I knew it I was working as an intern for a financial planner - a far cry from engineering. After a few months, I knew that financial planning wasn't in my future, but the invaluable lessons that I learned from that internship could fill a book (I'll probably do another post about that internship in the future).

"Do the right thing." That quote is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Joe. He instills that attitude in everyone that surrounds him. It's easy to get caught up in chasing the money, especially in an industry like financial planning, but Joe hammers "do the right thing" into your head from the moment you meet him. Doing the right thing means giving without expecting to receive, helping without expecting thanks, and sacrificing for the well being of others.

Whenever I'm in a bind "do the right thing" always comes to the forefront of my thoughts. It's a simple philosophy - some might even say it's an obvious one - but
in the business world (and in life in general) it's easy to succumb to our selfish desires and lose perspective on what's really important to the health of our business, our family, and ourselves.

What's even more remarkable is the industry that Joe manages to do this in. Financial planning is a very lucrative industry and usually with the money comes greed and selfishness, not temperance and selflessness. And I suspect that's why Joe and his team are so successful.

Joe sets an example by being heavily involved in local charities, universities, chamber of commerce, etc. He also makes it one of his goals to meet as many YE's as he possibly can. Everyone inspiring entrepreneur I know that's in the our area has spoken with Joe at some point and all come away with the same impression that I have - that he is out to help them succeed. I've never heard anyone say "Joe tried to make me one of his clients" or "Joe tried to sell me something I didn't need." I have never hesitated to refer anyone looking for insurance or financial advice to Joe, but as a young entrepreneur you probably need what I need - a mentor to guide you through the tough times and difficult decisions.

Much like being a part of the YE community, being part of Joe's community is an invaluable business resource. His network of business contacts all over the world embrace his same values, so when you need a lawyer and Joe gives you a phone number, you know you are getting a quality person and a quality professional to deal with.

A lunch I had last week with Joe inspired this post. I introduced him to iPrioritize and he immediately came up with ideas to help grow my business for success. I thought about all of the YE's that I know online that could benefit from meeting Joe, even if it's just a few emails back and forth. Sometimes it's easy to feel like I know it all, but I don't and I need someone like Joe to support me, and I suspect that as a YE you need the same.

I encourage you all to drop Joe an email or give him a phone call sometime. He loves chatting with young entrepreneurs. I guarantee that whether you email him once, talk to him once, or become a life-long client of his, that you will come away feeling like he helped you more than you helped him. To me, that is a role model.

Stop wasting time

This morning I started working on a marketing project for iPrioritize that I'd been putting off for a while. About an hour into working on it, I was less than enthused about the whole thing and I started asking myself why the f*** I was doing it. I thought about it for a second, and realized that it was going to take a ton of time and it was unlikely to bring value to the company compared to the other things that need to be done. So I stopped doing it, started working on some more important stuff, and that was that.

I'm sure this has happened to you. Then you think back and wonder why you ever thought it was a good idea to do that in the first place. Then you move on to the more important things...if you're lucky enough to be in the position to do so.

I thought back to my time as an engineer and realized that not being able to drop pointless work was one of the things I hated most about working for a large company. There were times when I'd ask my project manager why I was doing something and all I'd get was a shoulder shrug and a "my boss wants it so just do it." Sometimes I'd go to his boss and fight it (this is what made me a not so good employee), other times I'd say screw it and just do it anyway.

I've done some of the most boring and repetitive work I can think of, but I didn't mind doing it if there was a PURPOSE. I think so many companies don't bother to think about why they do things. They do them just because they've "always done it that way." They don't take the time to really evaluate whether or not what they are doing adds value to the company. If something isn't helping the company reach its goals, it shouldn't continue to be done. It's that simple.

Would you get a prenup to save your business?

Random thought today: say a YE starts a business when they're single, gets married a few years later, and then gets a divorce. What happens to the business? Does it get split just like the rest of the posessions? And if so, would it be in the YE's best interest to make their spouse sign a prenuptual agreement prior to the marriage?

Think about starting a business when you are 25, growing it to the point where you are able to take home a nice salary (say 100k/yr), getting married at 30, and getting divorced at 35. By that point your business is worth over $1 million. How much would it suck if your former partner now owned half? Half of that business that you poured your heart and soul into, much of it before you met. It's bad enough that you are getting divorced, now your business is falling apart too.

I'll admit, I was thinking about myself when the thought popped into my head...but I think that many YE's are single and eventually plan on marrying so I decided to dig a bit further. It should be said that I think this problem applies to any business type - be it a sole proprietorship or some form of corporation (LLC, S-corp, or other) - as long as the individual owns part of the business, it's fair game.

After reading this article and then this one, one is compelled to get a prenup. It is a very real problem that people have, and it's devastating to think about your ex owning 40% or 50% of your business.

One scary scenario that the first article mentions: you get divorced and your spouse gets half of the biz. You agree to a buy out plan in which you pay your ex-spouse half of the value of YOUR business. On top of that, the business is swamped in legal expenses. How much does that suck? So if your business is worth $1 million, you're stuck paying $500k to a bitter ex-spouse, plus legal costs. Ouch.

Personally, despite all of the potential pitfalls, it would still be a tough call. If I'm so in love with someone that I am about to marry them and profess to spend the rest of my life with them, how could I then go against that by planning for the possibility of divorce? It's almost like planning to fail - sort of like if you start a business but spend a ton of time crafting what you're going to do when you fail.

On the other hand, we all know that ~50% of marriages end in divorce (my guess is that it's higher for entrepreneurs but I've got no data to support that, just the opinion that entrepreneurs are more stressed out than normal). I'm sure if you asked those 50% that didn't make it back when they tied the knot, 100% of them would have been confident that they would make it. Right or wrong, things happen, people change, and unfortunately divorce happens.

My gut tells me that I couldn't do it - that it would be cursing the marriage and clearly placing my business ahead of the love of my life - something I probably couldn't do. What about you guys?

Bold Business Talk on Young Entrepreneurs

Fellow young entrepreneur Donyell Nelson has a great internet talk radio show called Bold Business Talk. On the July 2 show, entitled Savvy Young Entrepreneurs, Donyell spoke with several YE's (myself included) about the challenges of being a young entrepreneur. Check out the audio for the episode at the Bold Business Talk website. While you're there, be sure to catch up on the other four episodes of BBT, each has some great info about starting and running a business.

The coolest thing about being a YE

I think that the coolest thing about being an entrepreneur is that you have the wherewithal to take an idea and turn it into a reality. Think about that for a second. Every single person you know has had that proverbial light bulb go off in their head and said "Wouldn't it be a great idea if...". Many times those ideas come from someone with an intimate knowledge of the problem and the solution is a pretty good one.

But most people just let it die there. They don't look into it and the idea gets lost right there. I think most people have that "What could I really do about it" attitude towards problems. They just become used to letting ideas slip away. Not entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs stare the problem head on and come up with a solution. That solution helps other people solve that same problem, and with that you have changed the world in your own small way. How cool is that?

In my case, I've been able to turn two ideas into reality. I can pinpoint the exact moments that I came up with the ideas for SportsLizard and iPrioritize. Looking back, it's amazing to think about how the idea materialized into reality. It really is something special that not everyone can do or even wants to do. And I think that's pretty damn cool.