Here's Everything I Wish I'd Known When I Started My Company At 16

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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.

Recent PostsThe Scientifically-Proven Method For Getting People To Say "Yes" 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.

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Markets around the world are lower after S&P's downgrade of Italy.

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Headlines just hit the wire that Nicolas Sarkozy told the French Cabinet he would do everything to save Greece.

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Everything Is Down Ahead Of The Big Jobs Report

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Following yesterday's losses on Wall Street, Asian markets are mostly in the red. The Nikkei is down 1.2% and the Hang Seng is down 1.8%.

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