War Room Contributors Home Tech Entertainment Wall Street Markets Strategy Sports Lifestyle Politics EuropeData Misc. Your Money Video Latest Your News War Room Home Management Hiring & Firing Founders' Corner Instant MBA Document Center HiveTapePRContributors Follow us on Facebook and get updates from War Room Contributors posted directly to your news feed Enter you email address and zip code to set up customized email alerts.
Email Zip Here's Everything I Wish I'd Known When I Started My Company At 16 Vanessa Van Petten, Young Entrepreneur Council | Sep. 24, 2011, 9:36 AM | 118 | A A A xEmail Article From To Email Sent!You have successfully emailed the post.
Vanessa Van Petten URL Vanessa Van Petten is the CEO and author of Science of People.
How The Founders of College Hunks Hauling Junk Overcame the Inexperience Barrier How to Make the Perfect Pitch How to Diffuse an Angry Customer I started my company as a naive 16-year-old. There are so many things I wish I had known.Stray From the Plan
When I started RadicalParenting.com I was constantly told, "Stick to your big goal" or "Full speed ahead." Having an end goal is great, but I didn't realize that being flexible and being open to unexpected; opportunities were equally important. For example, as a writer, I wanted to offer books and blog posts to our audience. I was given the opportunity to do webinars and decided to give it a shot, even though it wasn't in the plan. The webinars turned out to be hugely successful and taught me that video as well as articles are the a powerful combination. Having a plan is great, but being willing to changing directions when new opportunities arise can really help boost your business.
Offer Before You Ask
As a newbie to networking, my approach was all wrong. I went to conferences with a sack full of business cards and asked everyone what they could do for me. I quickly learned that I even though I was meeting people, there was nothing substantial about our interactions. We would trade emails and then never converse again or my blunt ask would turn them off. After a few failed conferences, I learned that if I found out as much as I could about their business I could target the specific ways we could help each other. So, when you go to a conference find out their business and then think of ways that you can both leverage each others audiences, specialties or connections. Not only will they remember you, but your business will benefit as well.
Keep It Simple
Starting a company is not as hard as maintaining a company. The first few steps of starting my company like building the website, getting incorporated and writing my business plan were challenging. However, I believed everything would get easier from there -- boy was I wrong. Once I built our website I realized I had to maintain it, add content to it and optimize it if anyone other than my parents were going to find it. Keeping the business growing as a harder challenge than I thought. I wish I had known that making company processes, products and systems simple from the start would make running the company less expensive and complicated later. If you are starting a company or a new project think about both how to do it and how to maintain it.
Vanessa Van Petten specializes in social and emotional intelligence research and development. The focus of her company, The Science of People, is to research youth behavior and help adults keep up with young adults.
The Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs. The Y.E.C promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship, and resources that support each stage of a business's development and growth.
Please follow War Room on Twitter and Facebook.Follow Vanessa Van Petten on Twitter. Tags: Young Entrepreneur Council | Get Alerts for these topics » Advertisement: Share: Twitter Facebook Buzz Digg StumbleUpon Reddit LinkedIn Email More about embedding posts »Embed More about Alerts » Alerts Newsletter x
To embed this post, copy the code below and paste into your website or blog.
600px wide (preview)400px wide (preview) 300px wide (preview) Join the discussion with Business InsiderLogin With FacebookLogin With TwitterName (Required)Email Address (Required but never displayed)URLComments (You may use HTML tags for style)Join the discussion with your Facebook Login Send Us A Tip!This Week's Media Winners & LosersThe Most Legendary And Lucrative Baseball Movies Of All TimeWHERE ARE THEY NOW: Famous Hollywood Couples Of The NinetiesGet Business Insider Emails & Alerts Learn More »Customized instant email alerts(sample)More:Business Insider Select(sample)SAI Select(sample)The Wire Select(sample)Clusterstock Select(sample)Money Game Select(sample)War Room Select(sample)Sports Page Select(sample)Politix Select(sample)The Life Select(sample)Tools Select(sample)Europe Select(sample)Your Money Select(sample)SAI Chart Of The Day(sample)Money Game Chart Of The Day(sample)Sports Page Chart Of The Day(sample)10 Things In Tech You Need To Know(sample)10 Things Before the Opening Bell(sample)Politics in 60 Seconds(sample)Instant MBA(sample)Marketing Mondays(sample)Apple Investor(sample)Google Investor(sample)Microsoft Investor(sample)Breaking News Alerts(sample) Advertisement Your Money NASDAQ Composite 2,456 +27.56 (+1.122%) S&P 500 1,130 +6.87 (+0.608%) NYSE Composite 6,727 +44.11 (+0.656%)
Active Users on BI right now...
Click for more live stats »
Startup Document Center Templates To Jump Start Your Business Business Plan Exec Summary SampleBy-Laws Financial
Model See All » Become a ContributorRead Me
Nicole Carter|JackThreads CEO: Why $1000 Turned Out To Be The Best Money I Ever Spent
Worth every penny.
Henry R. Nothhaft|3 Ways The New Patent Law Destroys Jobs 4
Kevin Lincoln|Americans Are Back To Relocating For New Jobs 3
Jim Edwards|With Layoffs Imminent, A Merck Memo Uses These 12 Euphemisms For Job Cuts 1
Tim McManus|Here's How To Stop The Best Federal Employees From Leaving
Eric Barker|Drinkers Earn More Money Than Alcohol Abstainers
Eric Barker|10 Fascinating Facts About Beauty
Martin Zwilling|Most Entrepreneurs Should Never Bring On Investors
Come Recommended|SCAMMED: 4 Signs You've Been Duped By A Job Posting
Eric Barker|10 Scientifically-Proven Ways To Be More Creative
Bronwyn Saglimbeni|The Right Way For A CEO To Apologize
Wempy Dyocta Koto|Inspiration For Entrepreneurs: 40 Tips
More »Most Read Read Commented Recommended
How To Get Your New Facebook Profile In Just 5 Minutes 248,829 Views
The 14 Most Corrupt Members of Congress 116,238 Views
QUIZ: Do You Know What These Secret Codes Mean? 79,079 Views
Meet The 25 Youngest Entrepreneurs Running The World's Most Valuable Startups 76,595 Views
Inside Sean Parker's Totally Deluxe Off-The-Hook Spotify Party 66,683 Views
REUTERS: Business Insider Sucks 339 Comments
Here's The Viral Video Of Elizabeth Warren Going After GOP On 'Class Warfare' Charge 255 Comments
GOLD MELTDOWN 93 Comments
OBAMA: 'I Am A Warrior For The Middle Class' 85 Comments
IT'S OFFICIAL: The Recession Has Created A New Lost Generation 74 Comments
Loading, please wait... powered by See more » AdvertisementThanks to our partners
A-Z Index Companies Authors Tags Site MapLatestContributorsVideo Tools Job Listings Lists & Rankings Digital 100 Silicon Alley 100 Silicon Valley 100 Clusterstock 50The Life 50 America's Best Colleges Best Business Schools Sexiest CEOsMore Your Account Register Change Your Email Preferences About BI About Jobs at BI Masthead Contact Advertise Mobile Follow BI Email Newsletters Alerts RSS Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Verticals Tech Entertainment Wall Street Markets StrategySportsLifestyleToolsPoliticsEuropeData CenterMisc.Your MoneyVideoLatestPR * Copyright © 2011 Business Insider, Inc. All rights reserved. Registration on or use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Serviceand Privacy Policy.| Disclaimer
Powered by MongoDB | Hosted by Datapipe | Web analytics by Empirical Path var _comscore = _comscore || [];_comscore.push({ c1: "2", c2: "9900186" });(function() {var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true;s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js";el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el);})();View the original article here
This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.
No comments:
Post a Comment