1. Premier Sponsor
2. News Update
3. Welcome to Issue Twenty One
4. The Mistake of Generation Y: Lessons Learned by a Young Entrepreneur
5. Take a Job or Make a Job :Entrepreneur vs Employee
6. Free Content for Your Web Site
7. May Discussion Forum Highlights
8. Recommended Book List for Entrepreneurs
9. Featured Organization of the Month: Habitat for Humanity
10. Closing Notes
11. Recommended Products & Books

Virante Link Building Services Virante has unveiled its new client results report. If you want to increase the number of visitors your site receives each month, have Virante build high quality incoming links to your web site today. Virante can build between 25 and 5000 links to your web site in any category with any PageRank requirements. Email Malcolm Young at myoung@virante.com or call at (919) 459-1399 for a consultation on how building incoming links will help your business.

David Siu began working at Virante on June 1. David runs a number of sites. Check out his fine wine site, his medical coding site, and his secured loans site.

Broadwick Corp. has today passed 2160 clients for its permission-based email marketing software IntelliContact Pro. We launched IntelliContact Pro v3.0 in April which includes list segmentation, a multi-message autoresponder, surveying and many additional features. Broadwick was excited to welcome Claire Marshall, Amber Neill, and Robert Plumley to the team in May.

Virante has unveiled its new Client Results Report. Download the Virante Client Results Report here. If you need any assistance with link building, web marketing consulting, or search engine optimization, contact Malcolm Young at myoung@virante.com or (919) 386-0133. You can now order predetermined link building packages directly at http://www.virante.com/services/. We've found building high quality incoming links to be one of the most effective ways of obtaining top search engine positions.

Sales of Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales hit a record high in May. Key endorsers include Jay Levinson, author of Guerilla Marketing and David Chernow, President of Junior Achievement Worldwide. We encourage you to discuss the book and the general topic of building a company to $1 million in sales in our entrepreneurship forum. Buy your copy of the book now from Amazon for $10.85.

We hope you enjoy this month's informative Entrepreneurs' Chronicle!

In the first article, "The Mistake of Generation Y: Lessons Learned by a Young Entrepreneur ", we take a look at my response two years ago to a young entrepreneur's query and how student entrepreneurs can succeed.

The second article, "Take a Job or Make a Job :Entrepreneur vs Employee," points out the main differences between forming your own business and working for one.

Finally, we have sections that provide free content you may use on your web site and a list of our book recommendations for current and aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or would like to contribute content to be published in the newsletter or online, I encourage you to contact us at myoung@virante.com. Please do feel free to forward this newsletter on to your colleagues and associates. On behalf of the Zeromillion.com team I thank you for being a subscriber.

Yours entrepreneurially,

Ryan P. M. Allis, founder
http://www.zeromillion.com
The Top Entrepreneurship Resource Online
Author: Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales

Note: This is an authorized except from Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales. Learn more about the book and purchase your copy today from Amazon.com for $10.85.

The Mistake of Generation Y : Lessons Learned by a Young Entrepreneur
by Ryan P. M. Allis

One late night about 2am I received an email from a fifteen year old named Greg. This email was very interesting and even a bit scary. Greg was exactly like I had been at fifteen - to the letter.

I originally met Greg through my entrepreneurship discussion forum on www.zeromillion.com. He inquired about the search engine guide that I had written, and was wondering if I could offer him a discounted copy.

Looking for feedback and testimonials, and in consideration he was so young, I sent him a pro bono copy of my guide and just asked him to let me know what he thought. Well, he liked it and sent me an email back the next day. At this point, I began to realize just how much I was like him when I was fifteen. He was into the same persons I had been three years before, and was progressing along the same initial path of web site design and online marketing as I had.

This was Greg's message:

Ryan,

Right now I am trying to develop a successful website/internet business. I am also always looking to learn more - which is why I own [numerous courses, ebooks, and software]. I also purchased [marketing course]. I am considering going into business, though I am not sure whether to do something like website development, search engine optimization, or something else. I am taking economics and accounting next semester in high school. I am not sure as to whether or not I should attend college. In the likely event that I do, I would probably be interested in something like e-commerce or webpage design.

What are you doing right now? I have several business opportunities that I wish to explore, but I must work them around my full time school schedule. I would be interested in learning more from you.

Sincerely,

Greg

P.S. Where are you making your first million? Online? Offline?

My Reply

I was intrigued and wanted to share with Greg the collective knowledge I had gained over the past years and warn him about one of the perils I ran into. I am surely not omnipotent on the issues I talk of in my reply to Greg, but genuinely hoped I could offer something of value of him, and now to you. Here is what I wrote in my response.

Greg,

All right. Here it goes.

I was exactly like you at 15; very interested in online marketing but with little real experience.

Right before my senior year in high school, I got the chance to put some of my knowledge to work in a company that had a product but no sales to that point. That company has since done $1.5 million in sales. Half of it was that the product was great. The other half was the marketing and business systems I put into place.

In the past two years, and especially since going off to college this past August, however, I have realized there is much more to this world and to this life than web site design, web marketing, and promotion.

Now, I am not sure what type of person you are, and am not sure where your goals, hopes, dreams, and ambitions lie, but if you are like me, and I think you just may be, you'll want to reach your full potential in life and have lots of opportunities open to you. You might have goals soon like winning the Nobel Prize in Economics, taking a company public, or writing a best-selling book.

Life is a long game and a long process. My mistake was that I was playing for the short term; doing whatever I thought was best to reach that starry eyed goal of making my first million. Problem was, I didn't realize that if I put some of my business ventures off for a while I would have a much greater opportunity in life.

Now, I ended up all right because I got good grades in high school, am now at a pretty good college, and got some real business experience with a one in a million company that became wildly successful. However, there are many people who greatly limit their lives by spending all their time on the computer or holed-up in their room and I was close to becoming that person. You are not going to make very much money at fifteen. You may work your ass off, and make $30,000 at most. But if you invest the time you have now in learning, volunteering, making friends, reading, and do internships you will in the long run have much greater opportunity and by the time you are 22 have a college degree, much more knowledge and experience, and be able to build a business that makes much more than $30,000 each month.

The key to business is joint ventures. That is the way to really make the money. You can have all the drive and ambition in the world but if you look very young and do not have solid business connections you will be hard pressed to make that million.

There are many things in business that you just cannot do until you are 18. You cannot incorporate a business. You cannot open a business bank account. You cannot obtain a merchant account. You cannot sign a contract. And although the net makes it easier, it will be difficult to earn respect and convince people to joint venture with you or your company. At 22 with a college degree and numerous business contacts, things are a lot easier. At 40 with an MBA, a successful track record, and a tinge of gray hair, it's relatively cake.

What matters is knowledge, competence, drive, contacts, and experience. You may have drive now, but if you work hard to gain the other four for the next few years it will be very easy for you to make many million dollar companies. You may spend the next three years of your life with all the drive and web marketing knowledge in the world plugging away on your computer, but it will just limit other opportunities you may have.

Now, I am by no means saying stop learning or stop what you are doing. The key is to somehow find a balance. See if there is a way you can pick up a job in an organization. Ask your dad/mom if they can help you find an internship or position doing web marketing for a local business. You need to get the business knowledge and experience through others who are successful before you will be able to be successful yourself. Try to find a mentor. Further, focus on getting all As and Bs if you can, take AP classes, and prepare well for the SAT and ACT. Plan on going to college and start now considering seriously where you want to go and take the application process seriously. Consider colleges outside your state too, and do not let any urges, worries, or prejudices of your parents hold you back from applying to all the colleges you would like to consider.

If you have the opportunity, going to a good college is essential to winning in the long run and opening up a whole new world of possibilities. If you have a very good work ethic, are intelligent, have a great idea, and have an experienced mentor to guide you along the way, it is possible to skip college. For most, however, I would not advise it.

Doing well in school is very important. More than I then realized. Gaining real business experience by interning and learning is very important. Keep learning and doing web marketing, but make sure you put community involvement, grades, gaining experience, enjoying life, and making contacts above business... for now. The return on this investment will be phenomenal. I promise you.

Keep doing what you are doing as it is awesome and commendable. I may be completely wrong about you and be making an ass of myself telling you things you already know. But if you are like I was, and I think you may be, then hopefully the above has helped.

Have I given up my entrepreneurial dreams to focus fully on school or building contacts? Well, not entirely. I have recently incorporated my first company and am in the process of building it now. It is just too much fun and am I following my bliss. Perhaps I should listen to my own advice. I just hope I have things in balance. We shall see.

The world is yours and I wish you well.

Thanks for your feedback. I look forward to talking with you further and hearing any reaction to / thoughts on the above. I am still learning too. If you can see the big picture and overriding importance you'll love economics and although it's not the most fun thing in the world you'll manage to get through accounting just fine since you realize its importance.

I wish you luck and hope we can keep in touch.

Warm regards,
Ryan

P.S.: There are few ways to make a million dollars "online." To make a million you must first figure out something that people want, incorporate a company, obtain a bank account, develop a product, drum up funding, trademark the product name, find office space, buy office supplies and furnishing, build a great team, outsource development of promotional materials, obtain a merchant account, develop the distribution model, manage the supply chain, set up an accounting system, position your company in the marketplace, build strategic relationships, and manage fulfillment. All of these are surely 'offline' activities.

Do not be fooled by the hype online. It takes hard work, tenacity, intelligence, planning, competent advisors, a good product, and a great team. You have to create a system that works and creates sales for you while you are sleeping. And you have to have people that are inspired by your leadership and commitment. Put down Rudl and Allen temporarily. Pick up Thomas Friedman, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Sun Tzu, Warren Bennis and perhaps even a little Tolstoy. There is much more to the world than what is online. It is sometimes hard for you and I to realize that, as we are the first generation who does not remember what life was like before the Internet. Get out there and enjoy.

I hope sharing this letter with you has been helpful. In sum, I feel that in this age of computers, many teenage entrepreneurs get their start with computers and many spend a great deal of time trying to develop an online business. While they should surely continue in their efforts, if they truly wish to become wealthy, they must also invest in themselves, learn business by working within the structure of another business, build relationships, and get a good education. This investment will pay off in the long run.

Ryan Allis is the CEO of Broadwick Corporation, a provider of permission-based email marketing and list management software IntelliContact Pro (www.intellicontact.com), and CEO of Virante, Inc. (www.virante.com), a Durham, North Carolina based web marketing consulting firm. Ryan, who is 20, is currently studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is an economics major and Blanchard Scholar. Additional information on the author can be found at www.ryanallis.com.

This article may be republished online as long as the byline remains

Note: This is an authorized except from Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales. Learn more about the book and purchase your copy today from Amazon.com for $10.85.

Take a Job or Make a Job: Entrepreneur vs Employee
by Ryan P. M. Allis

Entrepreneurs	Employees
Value wealth over job security	Value job security over wealth
Can go months or years without payment	Receive consistent paycheck
Long hours, especially during start-up	Regular, consistent hours
Potential for very large payoff	Constant but relatively low payment
Build their own assets	Work to build someone else's asset
Have a higer tolerance for risk	Do not like risk
Own the company. Can only be fired by Board of Directors.	Could be fired at any time
Sit behind the desk when interviewing	Sit in front of the desk when interviewing
Are willing to take calculated and educated risks	Adverse to risk
Build systems for benefit of themselves	Build systems for benefit of employers
Pay taxes only on NET income	Pay taxes on total income
Build assets and then use them to purchase other assets	Do not build assets.
Build passive and portfolio income, taxed lowest	Build active income, taxed the highest
Invests from the inside	Invests from the outside
Can start other similar companies	Restricted by non-disclosure and non-compete agreements
Adapt quickly to change	Often resist change
Often have to dedicate yourself fully during start-up stages. Hard to raise a family and start a high-potential venture.	Have time to do other things besides work—such as raise a family or take up hobbies.
Have access through their businesses to much larger credit limits	Much harder to obtain significant credit
Financial security once venture succeeds	Will have to follow strict saving and investment plan to reach financial security by retirement
Can become wealthy at young age	Will not become financially secure while still young
Have a bias toward action	Often have a bias toward passing the bill
Create the systems	Have to deal with the bureaucracies created by intricate systems of the companies they work for
Decides who to hire and who they work with	Have little say over who they work with
Have freedom to control direction of their company	Have little say over the direction of their company
Are able to use all of their skill sets	Use only a small portion of their abilities
Rarely do the same thing two days in a row	Often have repetitive jobs
Work on building assets so they'll never need a 401(k) or pension	Work on building 401(k) or pension
Make money when they sleep	Make money only when they are working

Hopefully the table above has given you some insight into the different characteristics of entrepreneurs and employees. It is a difficult choice to make for many. Many aspiring entrepreneurs choose to work for someone else for a few years to gain knowledge, contacts, and capital. Others feel that the best way is to start out as an entrepreneur and have the advantage of quite a few years of learning over their peers. Whichever you decide, just make sure that the choice is the one that is right for you, not just the one that everyone wants you to make.

Ryan Allis is the CEO of Broadwick Corporation, a provider of permission-based email marketing and list
management software IntelliContact Pro (www.intellicontact.com), and CEO of Virante, Inc. (www.virante.com), a Durham, North Carolina based web marketing consulting firm. Ryan, who is 20, is
currently studying at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is an economics major and Blanchard Scholar. Additional information on the author can be found at www.ryanallis.com.

This article may be republished online as long as the byline remains.

If you have a web site that has to do with business, entrepreneurship, marketing, web marketing, ebusiness, personal development, or economics and would like high quality free content for your web site, you may syndicate the following articles from our web site. These articles are stored in zip format and can be downloaded by clicking on the appropriate link. We simply ask that you keep the author byline at the bottom of each article per the instructions included with each zip file. If you choose to use any of the articles we ask that you notify us at info@zeromillion.com.

48 Articles - Authorized Excerpts from Zero to One Million

45 Articles - Articles by Ryan Allis, June 2002 - July 2003

Members: 735
Posts: 915
Location: http://www.zeromillion.com/forums/

In May we saw some great topics come up for discussion in the Zeromillion.com Forums. Some highlighted topics include:

• Provocative Speech of a Young Entrepreneur
• Working for Ryan Allis
• Awakening to China's Emergence
• Building a Business Team
• Building strong ventures
• University Business Project
• Whats the need of a website to small biz owners?
• One life to live, so what are your goals?
• Transform Your People or Risk Business Failure

The following books are recommended for reading by aspiring and current entrepreneurs and business leaders. The books in bold are must reads. Please email any recommendations for additions to this list to myoung@virante.com.

Globalization & Economics

• The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
• Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal by Ball and Dagger
• The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L Heilbroner
• Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets by John McMillan
• The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
• The Other Path by Hernando de Soto
• Economics by Stanley and Brue
• Macroeconomics by N. Gregory Mankiw
• Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy by Joseph A. Schumpeter
• International Business by Charles W. H. Hill
• Against the Dead Hand by Brink Lindsey

Entrepreneurship

• Zero to One Million by Ryan P. M. Allis
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing by Robert Kiyosaki
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• The E-Myth by Michael Gerber
• New Venture Creation by Jeffrey Timmons
• The Young Entrepreneurs’ Edge by Jennifer Kushnell
• The Young Entrepreneur’s Guide to Starting and Running a Business by Steve Mariotti
• The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship by William D. Bygrave
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker
• Good to Great by Jim Collins
• At Work with Thomas Edison by Blain McCormick
• Multiple Streams of Income by Robert G. Allen
• On Entrepreneurship by Harvard Business Review
• Entrepreneurship.com by Tim Burns
• The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
• Fire in the Belly - an exploration of the entrepreneurial spirit by Yanky Fachler

Marketing

• The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines by Ryan Allis
• What Clients Love by Harry Beckwith
• Building Thousands of Links to Your Site by Ryan Allis
• Net Results 2 by Rick E. Bruner
• Protégé Training Program by Jay Abraham
  Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
• Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
• Principles of Marketing by Kotler and Armstrong

Personal Development

• Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey
• Succeed and Grow Rich Through Persuasion by Napoleon Hill
• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons by Napoleon Hill
• The Student Success Manifesto by Michael Simmons
• Secrets of the Young & Successful Jennifer Kushnell
• Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
• Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins
• The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D

Substandard housing is a problem that plagues individuals, communities and entire nations around the world. Habitat for Humanity is solving the problem of substandard housing. At work in 89 nations, Habitat for Humanity has housed more than 750,000 individuals in 3,000 communities. Each person touched by Habitat for Humanity—whether a homeowner, volunteer or other supporter—becomes a force of change, a link in the chain of real solutions to the real problem of inadequate housing in our world.

Past Highlighted Organizations:

May 2005 - National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship
April 2005 - Opportunity International
March 2005 - The Collegiate Entrepreneurs' Organization
February 2005 - United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
January 2005 - United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
August 2004 - Youth Development & Entrepreneurship Foundation
July 2004 - Lead America
June 2004 - Students in Free Enterprise
May 2004 - Junior Achievement

This concludes issue twenty of The Entrepreneurs’ Chronicle. We'll see you July 1, 2005. If you are not subscribed and would like to subscribe, please visit http://www.zeromillion.com. If you would like to contribute content, become involved with the zeromillion.com team, make suggestions, or provide feedback please feel free to contact us at info@zeromillion.com. We encourage you to participate in our discussion forum at http://www.zeromillion.com/talk/.

This newsletter is published by www.zeromillion.com with support from the Entrepreneurs’ Coalition and the Boston University Global Program. The newsletter is sent using the IntelliContact Pro web-based email marketing and list management software.

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Zero to One Million Guide for aspiring entrepreneurs on how to build a company to one million dollars in sales. Price: $10.85 | More Info

Obtaining a #1 Ranking in the Search Engines The book the professionals use to consistently obtain top search engine rankings. Price: $37.00 | More Info

IntelliContact Pro by Broadwick Corporation is web based software that enables you to send out permission-based email newsletters to your prospects, customers, and subscribers, track campaign metrics such as opens and clickthroughs, and create and send surveys. Manage and contact all of your prospects, customers, affiliates, employees, and suppliers. IntelliContact Pro v3.0 includes the added features of an Autoresponder and List Segmentation. With plans starting at $9.95/month and a free fully functional fifteen day demo, IntelliContact Pro is a top choice for list management software. We encourage you to sign up for a free 15 day trial or learn how IntelliContact can benefit your organization. If you have any questions about the software feel free to contact Director of Customer Service Brad Gurley at (919) 968-3996 or via support@broadwick.com.

Virante provides web site design, web marketing consulting, and search engine optimization services. Learn more and request a quote at www.virante.com.

All Contents Copyright © 2005 by Zeromillion.com, the top entrepreneurship resource online

"If you had one chance, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted--would you capture it, or let it slip?" - Eminem