The New Year is a fresh start.

The person you were last year no longer exists. All that matters is who you are on New Year’s Day and who you become by the end of the year.

January 1^st is a perfect time to make a personal change, but it’s also a perfect time for entrepreneurs to make big changes to their businesses.

The 12 resolutions below are for entrepreneurs hoping to help their business thrive in 2012.

#1 Resolve to Finish Every Project You Start

I’ve written previously about how most entrepreneurs have so many good ideas, that it can be difficult finish one project before starting the next one.

Don’t make that mistake this year. If you decide to develop a business, commit to seeing it through completely.

#2 Resolve to Start Charging Your True Worth

When trying to get your business on its feet, sometimes you have to charge less than your product or service is actually worth. It’s a good way to gain clientele and experience. But it’s not a good way to get rich.

Eventually, you’ve got to start charging clients for the actual value that you’re providing.

If you’ve been working for less than you’re worth, then 2012 is the year to make a change.

#3 Resolve to Keep a Clean Work Space

It’s hard to be productive in an environment that’s cluttered and disorganized.

Look around your work space right now. If it isn’t clean and controlled, then make a commitment now to maintain a focused work space for the next year.

#4 Resolve to Improve Work Systems

When Henry Ford implemented an assembly line in his factories in 1913, he completely revolutionized the automobile industry. By making the production system more efficient, The Ford Motor Company was able to produce more vehicles for less money – and profits went through the roof.

A business is only as efficient as the systems it employs.

Some systems are simple, like the way you organize your inbox. Others are very complex, like your step-by-step approach to completing a project over the course of a month.

We often create systems without much thought and then take them for granted once they’re established. As long as a system works, what’s the point in meddling?

But this is one thing where you really need to put in the extra time and make sure you’re doing things right. Take a step back and look critically at the systems you implement regularly with your business.

Systems are so important because their effect is cumulative. If you improve a system one time, that improvement continues to benefit you every time it’s implemented.

If you haven’t paid much attention to your systems lately, then make a point to focus on them in 2012.

#5 Resolve to Be Authentic

People are spending more time online than ever before. By now, they’re pretty adept at recognizing who’s being genuine and who isn’t.

2012 is a great year to tune out the voice in your head that tells you to pretend to be someone you’re not. Instead, communicate online with your authentic voice. People will take notice and respond.

#6 Resolve to Keep Track of Your Hours

How many hours are you putting into your business a week?

It’s not necessary to have a set schedule or to work eight hours every day. That’s part of the joy of being your own boss. But it is important to be aware of your work hours – and four hour days aren’t going to cut it (at least not at first).

When you begin to keep track of your hours, you start to understand where your time is going and how you could use it more effectively.

If you’re doing freelance work and you’re being paid by the project, this will also help you in pricing your services.

A Time Tracking Tool

There are many applications out there that help you keep track of how you’re spending your time on your computer.

Rescue Time is free software that automatically tracks which programs and websites you’re using throughout the day. Over the course of a few weeks, you begin to get a clear picture of how efficient your computer time is and how it compares to the work habits of others.

At the end of the month, take a look at the data. You may be surprised to realize how much of your time goes to work that doesn’t actually you earn you any income (like answering emails or being active on social media).

#7 Resolve to Redesign Your Website

Even if you’re website is up-to-date now, it won’t be in six months. The Internet keeps changing and the most successful online companies will continue to change with it.

Don’t risk becoming outdated. Make sure you update and improve your website at least once this year.

#8 Resolve to Eat Right and Exercise

Okay, okay – I know these are the two most cliché resolutions in the history of New Year’s. But they’re cliché for a reason.

Eating right and exercising are great resolutions for anyone who operates their own business. It will give you more energy and focus to make the most of your work day.

Of course, it will also make you healthier and it may even help you look better in the bathroom mirror.

#9 Resolve to Spend 20 Minutes Actively Learning Each Day

Solo entrepreneurs must be proficient in many different fields. In any given day, you may work as a designer, marketer, salesperson, and writer.

There’s not always time to master each of these skillsets. When you’re just starting out, sometimes all that matters is that the task is completed. Whether or not it’s completed perfectly is beside the point.

So entrepreneurs tend to become jacks of many trades, masters of none.

The good news is that means there’s a ton of room for improvement. And even if you’re getting by with your current ability-level, honing your skills will make for better and more efficient work.

That’s why it’s such a good idea to spend 20 minutes actively learning every day.

Ways to Learn

Podcasts

This is a great learning solution for the time-crunched entrepreneur. Maybe you’ve got a full-time job, run your business on the side, and you don’t have 20 minutes to spare.

Pop in a pair of headphones and start learning while involved in an activity that doesn’t require your full attention. Suddenly riding the bus, doing the dishes, and exercising are opportunities to become a smarter, better entrepreneur.

Video Tutorials

While audio is a great learning tool, actually seeing something is often the most effective way to understand it. There’s simply no substitute for watching a pro as they complete a task, talking you through every step of the way.

In the last few years, a huge number of quality video tutorials have been posted on YouTube. Simply search for a subject, press play, and start learning.

Video isn’t the best if you’re just looking for a few bits of essential info. You can’t skim a video like a written tutorial. But they’re an ideal method when you need to sit down and learn a process from front to back.

Books

Ink and paper may be old-fashioned, but a big “how-to” book is still one of the best learning resources available.

Even if all of the information within its pages is available online, that’s no replacement for having it right there in your hands. You won’t have to search the web for quality instruction and you can take it with you wherever you go.

A 500-page tome can set be pretty expensive, but the cost is small when you think of it as an investment in your business. Check out your local bookstore or Amazon to find a compendium on whatever subject you want to master.

Refresh, then Rest

If you really want to get the most out of your daily lesson, revisit it for a few minutes right before you go to sleep. If you read an informative article, skim through it again. If you learned a new technique in Photoshop, create something simple with it.

Not only will this reinforce what you learned the first time around, the new knowledge will sit at the fore front of your brain as you prepare for sleep.

Sleep is your brain’s opportunity to organize and store all of the knowledge it gains throughout the day. So you stand a better chance of actually remembering your daily lesson if you revisit it before you call it a day.

If you resolve to devote a little bit of time to learning every day for the next year, you’ll be see a huge improvement in the quality and quantity of your work by the end of the year.

#10 Resolve to Keep Your Resolutions

Every January, people across the world make resolutions to change the way they act.

Every February, many of those resolutions have been broken or forgotten.

It’s only over the course of the whole year that a change can have any real impact. But if you do stick to your resolutions, they will eventually become habits that will improve your life (and business) for years and years to come.

So, the most important resolution you can make is to really stick with whatever changes you decide to make this year.

What’s Your Resolution?

Let us know how you’re going to make 2012 the best year yet.

Warren Buffet isn’t a psychic, but he does have a knack for predicting the future.

His eye for savvy investments has earned him the nickname the “Oracle of Omaha” — along with a net worth of US$50 billion.

Buffett has never been shy about sharing his common-sense business strategies: he’s famous for writing shareholders once a year to explain his thinking. In the process, he’s left the world with a wealth of business knowledge.

Get inside the mind of a legendary investor with the lessons and quotes below.

Lesson #1: Choose a Good Path

Do What You’re Good At

“There’s a whole bunch of things I don’t know a thing about. I just stay away from those.”

We all have our talents. For his part, Buffett realized long ago that he was very good when it came to investment. Ever since then, he’s focused on that, staying within what he calls his “circle of competence.”

You should do the same. Identify your strengths and then stick to them.

Find and Follow Your Passion

“Do what you’re passionate about. If you do this, there will be few people competing or running faster than you.”

When you complete a task that you’re passionate about, you’ve got more energy than when you started.

Buffett doesn’t get tired of his job, because he actually enjoys what he’s doing. He has said, “I get to do what I like to do every single day of the year,” and that at Berkshire-Hathaway they enjoy, “the process far more than the proceeds.”

I know that you’ve heard it before, but there’s really no greater way to ensure the success of your business than by founding it on something that you are truly passionate about.

As Buffett said, “Without passion, you don’t have energy. Without energy, you have nothing.”

Know When to Abandon Ship

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

Every business will someday face adversity, just as every boat will eventually spring a leak. You should never let your business drown just because an unexpected problem arises.

But if your business isn’t getting any traction at all, maybe the underlying model is making everything more difficult than it has to be. Instead of expending all of your energy trying to keep a sinking ship afloat, seek out a better model. 

Lesson #2: Keep it Simple

Make things Easy on Yourself

“There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.”

People often make work more challenging than it needs to be. Have you ever spent hours and hours working on a project that you know you could have completed in thirty minutes?

Don’t languish with unproductive habits or inefficient systems. Find ways to work that makes your job easy.

Pick Low-Hanging Fruit

“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”

If there’s an apple within your grasp, you’re not going to reach for a ladder.

Buffet adopts a similar strategy while investing: he doesn’t make risky investments because he doesn’t have to. Good companies make him money, but great companies make him more of it.

Whether in investments or business, focus your effort on where you get the most bang for your buck. Pass on lofty challenges.

Simpler is Better

“The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.”

The day-traders who buy stock are making their job very difficult. They study pages of market analysis and work 40-hours-a-week just trading.

If you’re good with complicated data, you’ll make some short-term gains that way. But you could also take Buffett’s lead and tune that noise out.

Berkshire-Hathaway makes its stock purchases based on just one thing: the intrinsic value of the company. Buffett buys stock in companies that have good fundamentals and a track record of growth. Pretty straightforward.

People love to come. up with complex formulas, but most success in business is simple, common sense.

Two Simple Rules:

“Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.”

Lesson #3: Character is Good for Business

Don’t Swim Naked

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.”

Before the global recession of 2008, financial institutions were making risky investments and pretending that they were safe. It worked for a while.

But the thing about the tide is that eventually it goes out. When that happens, the only thing that will matter is the true value of your investments.

Resist the urge to put up a faux-exterior. Conduct your business solid through and through, you’ll have nothing to worry about when the water gets shallow.

Look Out for the Customer

“Decide early in life to make your money by selling things that you really believe are good for the customers.”

Profit is a symptom.

It happens naturally whenever a company provides value to their customers.

The best way to make money is to offer a product or service that’s truly good for the people who use it. One way you’ll know you’re onto something is if you actually want to use it yourself.

Good People do Good Business

“You can’t make a good deal with a bad person.”

When Berkshire-Hathaway acquires a company, Buffett makes the deal in person and seals it with a handshake.

He likes to get to know a company’s management on a personal level because he’s only interested in buying businesses that are managed by good people. For Warren, personal integrity really matters.

He’s realized that being the good guy pays off. Taking shortcuts may pay off in the short term, but they always come back to haunt you eventually.

So act with good character and only associate with businesses that do the same.

Good Business is Contagious

“Hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.”

Don’t be intimidated to work with people who are smarter than you. On the contrary, surround yourself with the brightest and most productive people you can find.

Not only will they push your business to new heights, their good habits will spread to you. Few factors have a greater impact on our behavior than the behavior of our peers.

Lesson #4: Think Long-Term

Be Patient

“No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

We live in a world of instant-gratification.

But short-term thinking can only lead to short-term success. If you want the type of consistent growth that creates true wealth, you must recognize that real success takes time. No matter what you do today, you can’t build million dollar business before you go to sleep.

So don’t try to rush something that can’t be rushed. Instead commit yourself completely to the long-haul.

Look Ten Years Out

“Our favorite holding period is forever.”

A stock’s holding period is the time between its purchase and sale.

When Berkshire-Hathaway makes a decision to buy stock in a company, they intend on owning it for the next ten years – and preferably even longer than that.

This long-term perspective gets them thinking about the factors that really matter, like the quality of the company’s business model and management.

Long-term thinking is more than just a good strategy for investors. Life is a long-term game, so start thinking about where you want your business to be in ten years.

Keep Your Reputation

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

A business’s assets will come and go, but a bad reputation is like a stain you can’t wash out.

All it takes to do permanent damage to your reputation is one slip-up. That’s a big problem, because people won’t work with a company that they don’t trust.

So don’t let yourself get sloppy. Cultivate an ethic of quality work.

Leave a Legacy

“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time.”

What’s the best part about building a successful business?

It isn’t the money and it isn’t the freedom. It’s the fact that you’ve provided a huge amount of value to a huge amount of people.

Starting a business is like planting a seed. With proper care, it will still be making the world a better place long after you leave.

Buffett’s legacy doesn’t stop with his businesses, either. Like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, he’s pledged to give half of his wealth to philanthropy.

Lesson #5: Develop a Mindset of Wealth

Plan for Success

“I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.”

I’ve already written about how being totally confident can help you bend the universe.

Believing that you will succeed is the first step to making it happen.

Tune Out the Noise

“Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.”

The more successful you become, the more haters you’ll have. You don’t have any control over what other people say, but you can choose to ignore their negativity.

Know when to listen in and when to tune out.

If someone gives you constructive criticism, then you should do everything you can to learn from it. But when criticism is unfounded or fueled by jealousy, listening to it will only be a distraction.

Accept that You’re Not Perfect

“I’ve made lots of mistakes. I’m going to make more. It’s the name of the game. You don’t want to expect perfection in yourself. You want to strive to do your best. It’s too demanding to expect perfection in yourself.”

You’re only human. You’re going to make some big mistakes.

Even an investment genius like Warren Buffett doesn’t win them all. He has accepted that fact and he doesn’t beat himself up when things don’t turn out like he had hoped.

It’s exhausting to expect perfection from yourself. Be satisfied with your best effort.

Be Happy

“I am not inclined to make myself unhappy. I sort of accept things as they come.”

If every one of his businesses went bankrupt tomorrow, Buffett would still be smiling.

His happiness doesn’t come from seeing green arrows next to his investments. It springs from his unflappable optimism and buoyant spirit.

There’s no greater gift you can give yourself than personal happiness. But if you’re not happy now, no amount of money or success is going to change that.

Be thankful for what you have, live with passion and purpose, and accept things as they come. Happiness will follow.

In I975, he co-founded Microsoft – a computer software company that would eventually make Gates the world’s wealthiest man. He earned the money by masterfully guiding the world into the era of networked personal computers.

Today, Gates is no longer the world’s wealthiest, but he’s still worth a healthy US$ 59 billion.

He’s retired from his role as Microsoft’s CEO and instead devotes himself full-time to philanthropy through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Below, you’ll find 10 business lessons from the life of Bill Gates.

#1 Get Lucky

Gates is a very smart man, but he’s benefitted from more than his fair share of dumb luck.

In 1968, Gates was an eighth grader, attending a private middle school in Seattle called Lakeside. That year, the school invested $3,000 in a state-of-the-art computer.

13-year-old Bill joined computer club and was instantly hooked. He and a handful of other enthusiastic students racked up hours and hours on the machine, learning how to program through trial and error. It was the beginning of a journey that would propel Gates to astronomical success.

Here’s where the dumb luck comes in: in the 1960s, very few colleges had computer labs and a middle school with a computer was unheard of. The chances of a 13-year-old having access to a computer were pretty much one-in-a-million.

If Lakeside hadn’t purchased a computer, then young Bill might never have discovered his love for computer programming and he never would have started Microsoft.

#2 Make the Most of the Luck You’re Given

Bill may have been ridiculously lucky, but all the computer time in the world wouldn’t have meant anything if he hadn’t dedicated himself so fully to master it.

Ultimately, it was the thousands of hours of focused labor that made Gates into the type of computer genius who could start a successful software company.

We don’t always recognize it, but each of us is uniquely lucky. Whether through our natural talents, our circumstances, or our relationships with others, we’re all fortunate to have many paths to success in front of us.

Take in your luck for a moment – and then capitalize on it.

#3 Bite Off More than You Can Chew

Microsoft’s big break came from Bill Gates telling a fib.

He’s a worldwide celebrity, an ardent humanitarian, and the he once tried to circumnavigate the world in a hot air balloon.

Branson knows a lot about business (as evidenced $4.2 billion net worth), but he also has a knack for adventure and living life to the fullest. Enjoy the lessons on life and business below.

#1 Your Age Doesn’t Matter

Richard was just 16 years old when he had his first business success, a magazine called Student. By 22, he had founded Virgin Records.

Branson is proof that it’s never too early to start.

But at 61, he’s also proof that being old is just a state of mind: Branson regularly kite surfs and attempts to break world records (e.g. a 2008 attempt to break the world record for sailing across the Atlantic).

#2 Think Laterally

The sky is the limit for your business, but that doesn’t mean that the only direction to grow is up.

Branson’s magazine led him to sell records. His record store led him to start a label, which led him to buy a recording studio and a night club.

By starting ventures in complementary industries, Branson created a network of businesses that reinforce one another. It’s much easier to promote a new musical artist when you own a night club, a magazine, and a record shop.

#3 Work for Free

How does a no-name record label sign its first artist?

Virgin Records did it by offering to let multi-instrumentalism Mike Oldfield use their recording studio for free. The recording sessions led to Tubular Bells (1973), Virgin’s first release and a best-seller.

When you’re trying to get your foot in the door in a new industry, sometimes the quickest way to make money is by doing something for free.

#4 Be Controversial

Branson signed the Sex Pistols to his label after other major labels (EMI and A&M) had dropped them for their penchant for creating controversy and mayhem.

The Sex Pistols lived up to their reputation and broke up not long after signing with Virgin Records. But their acquisition broadened Virgin’s profile and gave them an upper hand in the booming punk rock scene.

It’s natural to steer away from controversy, but if you’re willing to seek it out, you can draw attention to your business while cashing in on opportunities that others were too timid to take.

#5 Diversify

After finding success in the record business, Branson dove into the transportation industry, founding Virgin Atlantic Airways in 1984. He’s since expanded his business ventures to include mobile phones, cosmetics, movies, and even his own cola.

Diversifying across industries doesn’t just keep things interesting for Branson, it also provides safety from the unpredictable ups and downs of any given industry.

Branson’s glad he didn’t stick to the just the record business: it has been in steady decline since Napster launched in 1999.

#6 Love Your Business

When Branson sold the Virgin record label to EMI in 1992, for £500 million, he was brought to tears.

A lot of people would probably cry tears of joy if they just made that kind of cash (myself included), but Branson was crying because he was emotionally invested into his record label.

If you don’t want to put your heart and soul into your business, you shouldn’t start it in the first place.

#7 Opportunity is Constant

“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”

Don’t be discouraged if a business venture doesn’t turn out like you hoped.

Instead, keep an eye out for the next big opportunity.

#8 Be a (Benevolent) Dictator

“I believe in benevolent dictatorship provided I am the dictator.”

Nobody can accuse Branson of being cold to his employees (he makes a habit of writing them personal letters), but he also embraces his role as a dictator.

If you want to be a leader in business, you can’t worry about what other people think. Exercise your power and act decisively.

#9 Success in School is Different than Success in Life

Richard Branson is dyslexic and he struggled in school before dropping out at the age of 16.

School is great at testing and rewarding certain skillsets, like the ability to memorize information and follow instructions. But those skills aren’t the only skills necessary for real life success.

#10 Learn by Doing

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

Branson started a magazine without ever having taken a journalism class and he became one of the world’s most successful businessmen without ever having taken a business class.

Don’t wait until you’re qualified to start doing what you want with your life. Just do it. You’ll make a ton of mistakes, but that’s the fastest way to learn.

#11 Be a Pioneer

In 2004, Branson founded Virgin Galactic – a space tourism company that will soon be taking sub-orbital vacations. So far, over 430 brave people have signed up to become Virgin Galactic astronauts.

The ticket price: $200,000.

Virgin Galactic is a great example of Branson’s willingness to explore new frontiers with his business ventures. Being a pioneer is risky, but it has a distinct advantage: when you pioneer an entirely new industry, beating the competition is a piece of cake.

#12 Look into the Future

Virgin Galactic is one of many instances in which Branson has anticipated an emerging market.

When Branson observed gasoline prices on the rise, he saw an opportunity to enter the fuel industry. The Virgin Green Fund invests worldwide in research and development of renewable fuel.

Given the global scarcity of gasoline, coupled with mounting consumption, it’s a good bet that Branson’s bet on alternative energy will pay off in the long run.

When you see current trends and project them into the future, you give your business a huge advantage for years to come.

#13 Screw Business as Usual

Never has there been a more exciting time for all of us to explore this next great frontier where the boundaries between work and higher purpose are merging into one, where doing good really is good for business.

The above is an excerpt from Branson’s brand new book, Screw Business as Usual, about how businesses can succeed by striving to make a positive impact on the planet (and not just make boatloads of money).

Branson argues that companies that treat their employees, their communities, and the environment better tend to have better long-term financial growth and a healthier brand.

When you make a positive impact with your business, you’re not just making the world a better place. You’re also contributing to the long-term success of your company.

#14 Give Back

“If I get frustrated by something, then I like to try to put it right.”

Branson’s businesses may make the world a better place, but that hasn’t stopped him from entering into the realm of non-profit humanitarian efforts.

He’s taken on AIDS (Virgin Healthcare Foundation), nuclear weapons (Global Zero), and even war itself (The Elders).

After a chat with Al Gore over breakfast about climate change, Branson decided that global warming was a legitimate crisis. He subsequently pledged an enormous $3 billion to help solve it.

Obviously, giving back doesn’t help Richard’s bottom line. But my guess is that it brings him satisfaction beyond words.

#15 Enjoy the Simple Things

“Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.”

Richard Branson lives a life that’s easy to envy. His wealth allows him to travel the world, meet influential people, and do it all in style.

But while yachts and jewelry are nice, they won’t give you real satisfaction. That’s something that can only grow out of an appreciation for the simple things, like your health, your loved ones, and a nice long bath.

Don’t wait until you’re “successful” to enjoy yourself. Start now and enjoy the way up.

Images Courtesy of

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gulltaggen

/http://www.flickr.com/photos/daly3d/

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Mark Zuckerberg is much more than the world’s youngest billionaire.

At age 27, the founder and CEO of Facebook has forever changed the way we share ideas, interact with friends, and present ourselves to the world.

This didn’t happen by accident. Mark has been able to accomplish extraordinary feats because he’s lived his life in an extraordinary way.

Keep reading for nine ways that you can be more like Mark Zuckerberg.

#1 Combine Ideas

The best new ideas are often just new combinations of old ideas.

In October 2003, while a sophomore at Harvard University, Mark created a website called Facemash. Facemash would place the images of two Harvard students opposite one another and ask users to pick which was more attractive.

The website was a hit on campus, but there was one big problem: Zuckerberg had hacked into Harvard’s computer network to get the images of the students and was therefore violating people’s privacy. The university shut Facemash down.

Later that semester, Zuckerberg made a website to help his classmates study for their art history final. Like Facemash, it was hit at Harvard. Unlike Facemash, it allowed users to post comments underneath images.

Around the same time, Zuckerberg began working as a programmer for a group of Harvard students who were developing a dating and networking site called HarvardConnection.com.

All three of those ideas were good (if flawed) on their own, but when Zuckerberg put them all together they became Facebook.

#2 Start Exclusively

On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook.com, a social network exclusively for Harvard students. The next month, he introduced it to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale.

Soon Facebook opened to more Ivy League schools, eventually spreading to all universities across the United States.

Only after expanding from colleges to high schools and companies did Facebook go public in September of 2006. That’s over two-and-a-half years after it first launched.

Why start exclusive?

If you want to attract as many people as possible to your website or business, it seems like you would want it available to everybody right away.

But these things take time to grow – and it’s often better to incubate your business in a smaller community before going global with the big boys.

Furthermore, people are more likely to visit sites that are catered specifically to their needs, partly because we enjoy being part of a ‘select few’ who are able to participate.

This isn’t just good advice for websites. If you’re providing a service, try starting by working exclusively for one very small niche. Contact the people and businesses in that group and let them know that your work is tailored specifically for their needs. Expand from there.

#3 Work Backwards from the Customer

The customer is always right.

So why do so many entrepreneurs come up with a product or service and then ask, “How can we convince people that they need this?”

As Mark Zuckerberg will tell you, it’s better to first get inside the head of your customer and find out what they want, and then provide it:

“The question [guiding our decisions at Facebook] isn’t ‘What do we want to know about people.’ It’s ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?’”

Mark Zuckerberg

While sites like MySpace and Friendster fell to the wayside, Facebook grew into the 800-million-member behemoth it is today because it has a knack for understanding how people want to share and connect socially.

#4 Make Your own Rules

Mark may be a bit on the shy side, but he’s not afraid to shake things up.

He once had a business card that read, “I’m CEO… B***H” and he sometimes wears rubber sandals to board meetings.

Part of the fun of being an entrepreneur is that you don’t have to follow a business code of conduct. It can signal to clients and customers that you’re an innovator who will excel in the ever-changing world of 21^st century business.

#5 Have a Mission

Already worth $17.5 billion (and having pledged half of his wealth to charity), it’s hard to believe that Zuckerberg is motivated by the desire for more money.

“Yeah, we can make a bunch of money – [but] that’s not the goal.”

Mark Zuckerberg

He continues to work hard for Facebook’s success largely because he has a vision for how his company can shape the world:

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

If you haven’t already, take the time to consider the overarching mission of your enterprise. When you’re aware of the positive impact that your business can make, you’ll be more motivated to work hard and make it happen.

#6 Think Worldwide

In 2010, Zuckerberg began blocking out an hour every day to learn Mandarin Chinese. That December, he traveled to Beijing and toured the offices of Baidu (the Chinese equivalent of Google).

With a population of 1.3 billion, Zuckerberg clearly sees the potential in tapping the Chinese market.

In the Internet age, barriers of distance have become almost irrelevant. So take a page from Mark and think of your business as a global endeavor.

#7 Get “Wired-In”

“I keep programmer time sometimes…programmers tend to stay up really late and work when everyone else is asleep. So it’s not really uncommon for me to stay up until 6 or 8 in the morning.”

Mark Zuckerberg

If Mark hadn’t been willing to work way past his bedtime, he never would have been able to launch Facebook while enrolled full time at Harvard University.

This work ethic remains in Facebook’s company culture to this day.

Facebook regularly holds “Hackathons,” in which their engineers stay up all night, coding from 8 pm until dawn. Past Hackathons have yielded Facebook Chat and the friend suggester.

Sometimes our best work comes when we immerse ourselves completely in a project, late at night for hours on end.

#8 Learn How to Program

What do the founders of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook all have in common?

They were all programmers.

“My number one piece of advice is: you should learn how to program.”

Mark Zuckerberg

Computer programmers create digital systems – and digital systems have never been more important to the way we live and do business. Zuckerberg’s advice above stems from his understanding that skilled programmers will be in very high demand for decades to come.

Of course, some of us have ambitions that don’t require lines of code.

So the real lesson here is to develop the skillset necessary to accomplish your goals. That way, when you have a billion-dollar-idea, you’ll actually have the ability to bring it into existence (like Mark did).

#9 Challenge Yourself to Be Better

Mark Zuckerberg takes self-improvement very seriously.

He lists “eliminating desire” as one of his interests on his Facebook profile and he takes on a new “personal challenge” every year.

In 2005, when some Facebook investors and employees began criticizing Zuckerberg’s performance as CEO of the company, Zuckerberg didn’t get defensive. Instead, he took “CEO Lessons” from a retired former CEO.

Businesses are a reflection of their owners and part of the reason that Facebook keeps getting better is because Mark keeps getting better.

If you liked this article, share it on Facebook. Mark would want it that way.

As an entrepreneur, you don’t have to worry about the conventional productivity traps.

But minus the 9-to-5 workday and an uptight manager breathing down your neck, it becomes absolutely essential that you master the art of self-discipline and make the most of your work time.

How to Be Surprisingly Productive

(1) Spend More Time Playing

One of the reasons why I love entrepreneurship is that it allows people to spend more time doing what they truly love.

That’s the theory, at least.

But if you let your never-ending to-do list weigh on your conscience, you may start thinking and acting in a way that lets real life slip through the cracks.

This ultimately hinders your ability to be productive, because you work better when you’re happier.

Work Hard, Play Hard

I recommend that you take at least one day off every week where you don’t allow yourself to even think about getting work done – then schedule that day to be jam packed with your favorite activities (i.e. hiking, jet-skiing, or spending quality time with a significant other).

By dedicating time each week to doing things that you truly enjoy, it will be much easier focus on the menial aspects of your industry.

(2) Take Lots of Breaks

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.

– Ovid

There’s nothing more important to your success than your commitment to working hard. But you’re not a machine (and even machines need to cool down every once and a while).

It’s more productive to work effectively and efficiently for 45 minutes than it is to spin your wheels for an hour. So it’s important to perceive when your mind or body is starting to feel overloaded – and give yourself permission to recharge.

Why Entrepreneurs Should Break Even More than Most

Entrepreneurs don’t just work within systems. They must create new systems.

They don’t just solve problems. They must anticipate and avoid them.

In other words, entrepreneurs are challenged daily not just to work hard, but also think hard – tactically, creatively, and laterally. Since entrepreneurs ask so much from their brains, it’s especially important that they allow them to rest throughout the day.

The Pomodoro Technique

One way to fit breaks into your work day is by using the Pomodoro Technique, which became popular with computer programmers in the late 1980’s. Wikipedia identifies the method’s five simple steps:

1. decide on the task to be done
2. set the pomodoro (timer) to 25 minutes
3. work on the task until the timer rings; record with an x
4. take a short break (5 minutes)
5. every four “pomodoros” take a longer break (15–20 minutes)

Though the method calls for a timer that you wind up manually, there’s a ton of free software out there that can help people get in pomodoro mode on their computer. One Google Chrome application actually blocks you from accessing distracting websites while you’re in 25 minute work zone (Strict Pomodoro).

(3) Expand Your Work Environment

As human beings, we are remarkably perceptive of our surroundings.

Our mood flows from the space we occupy. A clean, streamlined space can empower you to think and act with clear focus. A cluttered, loud, or crowded workspace can transform you into a distracted and unfocused version of yourself.

You’re probably already aware of the importance of having the ultimate workspace. But our environment is more than just four walls and a desk.

Listening Environment

Sound waves are vibrating around us at all times. While silence is golden, the right soundtrack can get your mind focused and your body moving – which will make you more energized to work.

Try out this 8tracks playlist of 30 instrumental tracks. It was designed to help people study, but I find it’s a great companion for the focused entrepreneur.

Smelling Environment

Smell is so powerfully linked to our memories that one whiff of a familiar odor can instantly whisk us back to a day that we thought we’d forgotten long ago.

So how can somebody use the smell-memory link to become more productive?

Try buying a candle or box of incense. Put it in your work space and light it only when you’re ready to put in some hard work.

Your mind will begin to associate that aroma with those productive memories. Once you’ve established the connection, then you can light the candle or incense whenever you want to trigger your mind to buckle down.

Thinking Environment

When you’re solving problems and communicating messages, all of the hard work is taking place in your brain. So if you want to be efficient in that space, you must keep your mind like a good desk: open and uncluttered.

It’s a good practice to take 20 minutes each morning to sit and clear your mind. You may never silence your stream of consciousness completely, but you will cultivate a mental calm that you can carry with you for the rest of the day.

(4) Do Things the Slow Way

Measure twice, cut once.

– English Proverb

Productivity is more marathon than 100-yard-dash.

Like runners sprinting out of the starter gates, we often think that we can maximize productivity by doing things as quickly as possible. But hurrying through tasks can cause frustration and unnecessary mistakes, which leads to more work in the long run.

So take a breath and take your time.

Learn How to Do it Right

Self-education will make you a fortune.

– Jim Rohn

When your job asks you to accomplish an unfamiliar task, it’s tempting to think, “I don’t have time to research this. I’m just going to wing it.”

But usually it’s more productive to take the half-hour and learn how to do your job better or more efficiently. The Internet is like a classroom that’s always open and full of free lessons – take advantage!

How to Make Slow Work for You

Try setting aside 20 minutes every day to get a better or more efficient in your niche. Since I make videos for a living, I usually watch a video tutorial or become better acquainted with time-saving Photoshop shortcut commands.

You can check out these IncomeDiary tutorials that will help you be more productive making money online:

• Money Making Strategies – What I’m Doing In 2011
• All The WordPress Plugins I Use On IncomeDiary
• How to Create a Website

(5) Get Less Connected

Man has been struggling to clear his mind and focus since the dawn of time.

But focusing has become more difficult than ever since the dawn of StumbleUpon, Facebook, and YouTube.

If your work doesn’t require you’re connected to the Internet, then disconnect from the network until the project is complete. You might be surprise by how much more powerful your computer can be without the web.

A Tool to Help You Disconnect

If you need the internet, but want to stay away from certain distracting sites, try StayFocusd (it’s a Google chrome extension that blocks distracting sites from your browser).

(6) Sleep More

Every entrepreneur has been guilty of burning the candle at both ends. But working late into the night only to wake up early in the morning can have a seriously negative impact on your work performance.

According to Harvard Medical School, inadequate sleep affects your mood, motivation, judgment, and perception – and I can’t think of four things that are more important to the day-to-day success of an entrepreneur.

Furthermore, since deep sleep is when your brain processes the prior day’s experience, shortchanging sleep can prevent you from learning and moving forward on your entrepreneurial journey.

How to Be a Productive Sleeper

Getting into a consistent sleep rhythm helps your mind and body to understand when it’s time to work and when it’s time to rest.

So, take a few moments right now and think about your ideal, eight-hour sleep schedule. Write it down.

Stick with that schedule for the next seven days and tell me if you don’t notice an improvement in your daily productivity. Your body and your business will thank you.

(7) Think of Productivity as a Cycle

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing… that’s why we recommend it daily.

– Zig Ziglar

Productivity isn’t a faucet that we can turn on and off at will.

You shouldn’t expect to sit down at your desk, turn a knob in your mind, and immediately become super-productive.

Think of productivity as a process that you’re taking part in throughout your day. It’s part of the way you eat, the way you run errands, and the way you unwind.

Once you begin maximizing your productivity, you’ll find that it becomes easier and easier to be productive day in and day out. Just like any other habit, being productive is a cycle that tends to repeat.

The Power of Productivity

He who conquers others is strong; He who conquers himself is mighty.

– Lao Tzu

As an entrepreneur, you are the engine of your business. Everything – growth, client acquisition, revenue – depends on your ability to produce, day in and day out.

In other words, there’s a direct relationship between your productivity and the success of your company. Become twice as productive and you’ll soon be making twice as much money.

The Simple Joy of Being Productive

The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.

– Albert Einstein

Being productive isn’t just important because it allows us to create more valuable, successful, and profitable businesses.

A productive day earns an entrepreneur a sense of contentment that no amount of money can buy.

Rejoice in a job well done – then get back up tomorrow and do it again.

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

– Bruce Lee

Your Personal Productivity Technique?

Since effective productivity habits are different for everybody, I would appreciate it if you shared any tips you’ve uncovered in the comment section below.

Images Courtesy of

http://www.flickr.com/photos/orcmid/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/becca/,

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/sadikot/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilspicys/,

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/janlendl/,

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/npmeijer/, http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevensnodgrass/5548193945/.

But before he was a legend, he was a person.

We can’t all be Steve Jobs, but we can all learn from his extraordinary life.

#1 Skate to Where the Puck is Going to Be

In 2007, Steve Jobs said, “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.”

Steve’s ability to anticipate future trends helped Apple dominate now-burgeoning markets like digital music sales (through the iPod and iTunes Store).

#2 Accentuate the Positive

Steve started life out on the wrong foot. He was given up for adoption at birth because his mother had wanted a daughter.

Tough break? Young Jobs didn’t think so: he was thankful for his loving adoptive parents — who happened to live in Palo Alto, California (which would eventually become Silicon Valley).

#3 Learn from Others

In high school, Jobs attended lectures at a small computer technology company called Hewlett-Packard. Before turning 21, Steve had worked for both HP and Atari. He saw what these companies were doing and learned what he wanted to do differently with Apple.

#4 Start Early

Because Steve was still a sponge-brained teenager when he started working with computers, he learned quickly.

It also helps that he started Apple in his early 20’s: when he was still full of energy, fresh ideas, and not yet restrained by a family or career.

#5 College is Important…

At its best, higher education challenges us to make connections and solve problems.

Jobs credits a college calligraphy course for part of the Macintosh’s development:

“If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”

#6 …But it’s Not Necessary

Reed University was expensive and Jobs didn’t want to drain his parents’ savings. If Jobs hadn’t dropped out, he would have been a junior in 1975. He co-founded Apple Computer that year instead.

#7 Travel the World

The year before he founded Apple, Jobs journeyed to India. Travel has a way of broadening a person’s perspective and expanding their sense of what’s possible – good traits in an entrepreneur.

#8 Surround Yourself with Good People

Steve Jobs wasn’t a great computer engineer. Apple would have had no chance if Jobs was the only one building the computers. That’s why he recruited Steve Wozniak.

Through the years, Jobs’ companies have blossomed thanks to the brilliant people he’s brought on board – like Apple CEO Tim Cook and Pixar CCO (Chief Creative Officer) John Lasseter.

#9 Expect Greatness

People tend to rise to expectations.

#10 Fake it Before You Make it

In Apple’s early days, Steve recognized that Palo Alto, California was the epicenter of innovative computer technology. Steve wanted his company to be associated with this place – but Apple was still headquartered out of a garage in nearby Los Altos.

Jobs’ solution was to set up a PO Box in Palo Alto and hire a voice answering service. A potential client would get the impression that Apple was a big company in the heart of Silicon Valley – even though the truth was that it was still just two sweaty guys in a garage across town.

#11 Obstacles are meant to be Overcome

Movies are a great way to learn from others as stories, fiction and non fiction, are taught to the viewer in an easy to understand way. There’s a lot to be learnt from these stories as they show you how exceptional people who have come before you have done it.

The Godfather

An offer you can’t refuse.

One of the greatest films in the world based on the best book I’ve ever read. The Godfather is the story about the growth of a small family business as it becomes the largest organised crime family in New York, fighting off opposition at any expense. The Godfather and his son Michael Corleone are the brains behind the family and this film gives you an insight into what it takes to become one of the most powerful family businesses in the country.

Glengary Glen Ross

Lie. Cheat. Steal. All In A Day’s Work.

In the fast paced world of Chicago real estate, competition and incentive is what decides who’s the best. That’s why they’re having a little sales competition – First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado, second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is you’re fired. With stakes that high, and the pressure on, the salesmen show that they’re willing to do anything it takes to succeed in business, but the most interesting part of this is film, is what exactly that is.

Wall Street

Every dream has its price.

In the life of an ambitious young stockbroker, Bud Fox will do just about anything it takes to succeed, and for him, that includes a little bit of insider trading. See what happens when the desire to succeed takes over your life and the motto of ‘Greed is good’ directs how you do business. But what happens when you’re pushed to your limits and asked to do something you can’t or won’t do? Suddenly everything comes to a head when Fox is asked to help do something, not only illegal, but morally reprehensible.

The Game

There are no rules in The Game.

What do you get the guy who has everything? Nicholas Van Orton (played by Michael Douglas) is a wealthy San Francisco banker who’s life is wrapped up in his business, which has left him as somewhat of a loner. His brother Conrad gives him the gift of a lifetime, which would prove to change his perspective on the world and the way that he’s going to live it. When bad things start to happen to you, you start to question what’s really important in live, business, success and money, or actually living?

Boiler Room

Motion creates Emotion!

After entering the stockbroking profession to impress his father, Seth Davis, a Queens College dropout, soon realizes the huge earning potential ahead of him. But with commissions much larger than any other company, Seth soon learns that not everything is what it’s cracked up to be and he’s forced to face the dilemma of money and greed vs. morals and legality. For any young entrepreneur starting out in business, it’s a very real possibility that you’re going to face moral dilemmas and the way that they’re dealt with in this film is very eye opening.

Jerry Maguire

The rest of his life begins now.

This is a story about a man who’s at the top of his game; beautiful partner, the biggest clients, lots of respect. But then he decides to step back and question it all and proposes his new thoughts to the rest of the company, which ultimately ends in him losing it all. Everyone turns his back on him, except for one, very volatile client, Rod Tidwell. From here you see Jerry examine what it really important to his business and life and works towards bringing it all back together again, only this time, the way it should be.

Trading Places

Take two complete strangers, make one of them rich the other poor… just watch the fun while they’re… Trading Places.

What happens when you take the rich and the poor and make them switch places? A social experiment ran by Mortimer and Randolph Duke, brother and owners of a commodities brokerage firm, proves to be very interesting when the switched pair run into each other. A life changing event for both of them, poses the question of what’s more important in life, friends and love, or money and power?

Office Space

Work Sucks.

When your hypnotist dies just after they’ve put you in a state of complete bliss, you can’t help but have a refreshing outlook on life. If there’s ever a film to make you want to get out of a desk job in the corporate world, then this is it. Peter Gibbons is a man who can’t help but be promoted as he consistently starts to slack off and do things his own way, but trouble starts to arise when his new careless nature starts to lead to him stealing from the company in a much bigger way than he expected.

Pursuit of Happyness

Based on a true story.

This is a real life story of a man who believes so badly in a product that he can’t sell that he ends up losing his house, his wife and his money, being left with just himself and his son. This in itself is an important lesson to be learnt, but it’s the steps that he takes from here that really shape him into who he becomes. Against all odds, he takes an unpaid internship to become a stockbroker, fighting against his peers for a single job at the end of it. This is a powerful true story that sticks with you as you face your own personal struggles in business.

Catch Me If You Can

The true story of a real fake.

Again, this is another true story, about a young conman who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, doctor, lawyer and history professor during his stint as fraudulent cheque casher. What’s amazing about this film and the life of Frank Abegnale Jr. is how much he managed to achieve in a much tougher environment and under more stress than most people are used to. Whether it’s legal or not, business is business and Frank was one of the best at what he did.

Rocky

His whole life was a million-to-one shot.

This is a story of a man who went from nothing tom something, and something very big at that. It’s an inspirational film for the amount of perseverance Rocky puts into it, but that’s not what I love the most about this film. My favourite part is the story behind the making of the film and the life of Sylvester Stalone up until this point. He’d written the entire script in 24 hours straight, but had so little money that he had to sell his dog, his best friend, outside of a liquor store for $50, just to get by.

The real turn in the story is when, after months of trying to sell the movie, he gets an offer of over $100,000, but he can’t play Rocky. This is a big problem for Sylvester as he only ever dreamed of being an actor, so with barely enough money to eat, he declined the offer. Higher offers kept coming in, but he continued to turn them down, even to the sum of $400,000, purely because he wanted to play Rocky. Eventually, he was offerered just £25,000 if he wanted to play Rocky and he took it.

The first thing he did was go back to the liquor store to buy back his dog, but this ended up costing him $15,000 and a part in the movie for the man he’d sold him to. So after everything, Sylvester was made into a huge movie star, with Rocky winning an Oscar for best picture, all because he continued to follow his dream. This mentally is seen throughout the film and part of the reason it makes it a great film for any entrepreneur to watch.

Shawshank Redemption

Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.

This is one of the greatest films of all time, and one I’m sure that the majority of readers have seen before, purely because of its undeniable greatness. It’s the story of a man who manages to succeed in the worst possible conditions imaginable – false imprisonment for the murder of his cheating wife and lover. From making friends with another con inside the prison, Andy manages to make the best out of a very bad situation and through perseverance manages to achieve more than he ever thought possible.

The Social Network

You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies

This is another story of the young, successful and intelligent man, only this time, it’s based on a true story of the world’s youngest billionaire – Mark Zuckerberg, the creator and owner of Facebook. The story is pretty amazing and has been made famous by this film, he starts off as a Harvard student with a strong streak of arrogance and huge potential, he creates a new social network based upon the most prestigious email address in the country, the Harvard email address. The rest, as they say, is history.

Pirates of Silicon Valley

Good artists copy… Great artists steal.

There are no two bigger names in technology than Microsoft and Apple and this is their story. This is an amusing documentary style film about their competition and their rise to the enormous companies that they are today. It’s slightly dated today, and perhaps The Social Network is a little bit more relevant, but it still holds some very valuable information and pointers to learn from. After all, you’re gotta be a pretty special person to become as powerful as they have.

Forrest Gump

The story of a lifetime.

This is a simple man with good intentions, who accidentally becomes phenomenally successful from living his life the best way he knows how. He wins medals, becomes a professional ping-pong player, takes up running, owns a huge shrimping company and inspires people all across the country. The simple nature of Forrest makes him very appealing to world as he proves that you don’t have to be a super genius to make something work, you just have to try.

Blow

Based on a true story.

Another great film based on a true story, this time only slightly more illegal than the last, it’s a film based on George Jung and his career as a cocaine dealer. What started off as a small time operation working with pot, he is eventually imprisoned and introduced to cocaine and that’s where things start to explode. He’s rumored to have handled about 85% of all of the supply of cocaine in the 1970′s, making him an incredibly powerful and successful man, and this film is all about exactly how he did it.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Nice guys finish last. Meet the winners.

This is the story about two con men, big time and small time, and their struggle to compete together in a small French town which isn’t big enough for the both of them. So they decide to take part in a bet in which the loser leaves town and allows the other to carry on with their business. The only problem is that the bet is to see who can extract $50,o00 from a young female target – a pretty high stake. Of course hilarity ensues as you get to watch how the minds of con men work as they compete against each other to reach the goal first.

The Aviator

Some men dream the future. He built it.

A biopic depicting the early years of director and aviator Howard Hughes’ career from the late 1920′s to mid 40′s. It wasn’t the money he made or the time he spent that made him so great, it was the attention to detail and perfection that he strived for that set him apart from his competition. He faced many obstacles along the way from rival companies and malicious rumors, but nothing stopped him from becoming exactly who he wanted to be.

Risky Business

There’s a time for playing it safe and a time for Risky Business.

A good story about what you have to do when you take your dad’s Porsche out for a trip and start to realize that you’re going to need a lot of money, which you’re going to have to raise in a very creative way. With his parents away and responsibility out of the window, Joel starts to realize that it’s not all as easy as he was expecting, having to look after friends and source cash any way he can. An interesting look at what people can come up with when they’re put on the spot to come up with some fast cash.

The Corporation

This film takes a good, long look at what happens when you take a business and you model it to be legally a person – a corporation. What happens though when the sole purpose of this person is to make money for its shareholders though? It starts to act without a conscience which threatens the world, our future and the people working for it. This isn’t just a film about evil corporations though, it’s also about what we can do to stop them from taking over everything that we know. I saw this film in the cinema and it’s well worth seeing again, it’s completely eye opening.

The whole point of this post is to make you think of your end goal, where you want to go with your online business. Every day your working on your business, don’t just think about how much you made that day but how much your going to make for investing an additional day into your business when you go to sell your blog/company. Some of these guys were worth $30,000 a day – now that’s what gets me excited about blogging.

In my head, I have already decided I’m going to sell my blog network for millions of dollars. Here’s the clever thing about what I’m doing:

Here in the UK, if I make over £150,000 a year, I have to pay 50% (actually 51%) of anything over that to the government which makes it quite an easy decision to not take the money out of the company but instead to invest it in it. So my whole game plan is not take a big salary, live within my means and invest every penny into my business so that I can grow it to the point where it gets millions of visitors every month and ideally make me 7 figures a month also. If I keep reinvesting, growing my business for a few short years I will then be in position to sell the company for lets say a cool £10,000,000. On the first £2 million I have to pay 10% tax and then 18% after that. For me, the best part of this isn’t so much the financial side, it’s the fact that I would of built something amazing, something to be proud of, the money is just a bonus! This reminds me of this saying:

Entrepreneurship is about living a few years of your life like most won’t, so that you can live the rest of your life like most can’t!

Now think big and get inspired!

#1 Ugo.com – Sold For: $100 million

Founded: 1997

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth:  $27,397

The website Ugo was founded in 1997 as Unified Gamers Online  (UGO) by Chris Sherman.Action World Inc. bought them very early on and decided to rename the business. They changed the name to  UGO Networks, however the name didn’t stick for long as it was once again changed to Online Underground. Eventually it was sold on to the Hearst Corporation approximately $100 million.

#2 Fotolog – Sold For: $90 million

Founded: 2002

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth:  $49,315

Fotolog was founded by Scott Heiferman, in 2002, and unfortunately the site began to have problems just 3yrs later in 2005 when the amount of visitors and members started to become too much for the websites servers. The website itself currently receives over 20 million unique visitors each month and was sold to Hi-Media Group for the tidy sum of $90 Million.

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#3 Consumersearch - Sold for: $33 million

Founded: 1999

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth:  $11,301

Consumersearch was founded by co-founders Derek grew and Carl Harmaan in 1999, the pair also owned a privately held corporation at the time. The website sold for a huge $33 million and the news was first released by the New York Times Co. The buyers,  About.com are also owned by the New York Times Co. In 2009 the website was honored in the 13th annual webby awards competition.

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#4 TechCrunch – Sold for: $30 million

Founded: 2005

Year of Sale: 2010

Daily Worth: $16,438

TechCrunch is a very well-known website publication, which is well grounded within the technology and gadget niche’s. The blog was first founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington, and the first time it was published live online was on June 11, 2005. It’s astonishing that in just five years Michael had created such a unique website which was full of valuable  content and managed to sell the website for a total of $30 million to AOL.

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#5 PaidContent – Sold for: $30 million

Founded: 2002

Year of Sale: 2008

Daily Worth: $13698

Paidcontent was founded by Rafat Ali, in 2002, and was basically an online resource for; information, analysis and news. Rafat Ali the founder of the website, was a journalist and so the website itself was a natural progression for him. In the end the website was eventually brought out by Guardian Media Group $30 Million (2008) Ali Rafat however is still part of the website, and is currently working for the company as an editor.

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#6 Tatter and Company – Sold for: $30 million

Founded: 2002

Year of Sale: 2008

Approximate Daily Worth: $13698

Tatter and Company or TNC as it is also known, was founded by Chang-Won Kim and Chester Roh, they formed the company in 2002. Tatter and Company itself was and still is a blogging platform for the Korean nation. I’m sure it is not a major surprise that the company was purchased by  Google for the sum of $30 Million, in 2008.

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#7 Ars Technica – Sold for: $25 million

Founded: 1998

Year of Sale: 2008

Approximate Daily Worth: $6849

Ars Technica was founded by Ken Fisher, in 1998 and quickly became one of the top and most authoritative blogs with the technology industry. The site provided a great amount of news and sometimes reviews on their chosen niche. The website was purchased by Conde Nast Publications for $25 Million in 2008,  a decade since the year it was founded.

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#8 Weblogs.com – Sold for: $25 million

Founded: 2003

Year of Sale: 2005

Approximate Daily Worth: $34,722

Weblogs Inc was created by Brian Alvey and Jason Calcanis in 2003, with the help of an investment from Mark Cuban. In the early days the business was initially set up for professional readership, they also had a number of other websites running alongside Weblogs, in fact there were approximately a dozen websites in total. Weblogs was purchased in 2005 by AOL to the tidy sum of $25 Million.

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#9 Livejournal.com – Sold for: $25 million

Founded: 1999

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $8561

LiveJournal just as the name suggests was a virtual community where users could keep a blog or an online digital diary, through their free open source server technology. They didn’t stop there though, they had the software allowing users to easily create blogs and diaries online they even allowed for calendars, polls, and even have guest writers. The website sold for approximately $ 25 million to Six Apart  in 2007.

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#10 Bankaholic.com – Sold for: $15 million

Founded: 2006

Year of Sale: 2008

Approximate Daily Worth: $20547

Bankaholic is the creation of founder John Wu who also created CB Land Investments. The website itself was an online banking marketplace which basically provided its customers with credit card offers as well as interest rates and personal financial advice. The website eventually sold for $15 Million to BankRate and now has a hefty team of banking and financial professionals behind it so who knows where it could go? maybe it will be worth double the amount in a year or so.

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#11 Deadline Hollywood – Sold for: $14 million

Founded: 2006

Year of Sale: 2009

Approximate Daily Worth: $5479

Deadline Hollywood started off  as a column in the LA weekly, in 2002 by Nikki Finke. The column itself was basically an informative entertainment column based around the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Nikki decided to take her now well-known columnto the online world, and the site first went live in 2006 as a blog. She decided upon calling it the ‘Deadline Hollywood Daily’. It was so popular that in 2009 the Mail Media Corporation bought it from her in a lucrative deal with $14 million. The website has since been changed to deadline.com.

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#12 Wonkette – Sold for: $12 million

Founded: 2004

Year of Sale: 2006

Approximate Daily Worth: $16438

Wonkette is a website that was established in January 2004, it was part of the Gawker Media Network, and it’s founding editor was Ana Marie Cox, who has also been the editor of the well known website suck.com. Gawker Media thought a downturn in the internet boom was on the horizon, and not wanting to lose all the money they had poured into the website they sold it. The buyers were Ken Layne and his business partners, paying  $12 Million in 2006. It’s also worth mentioning that Ken Layne was also the editor of the site at the time he and his partners bought it.

#13 Celebrity baby blog -Sold for: $10 million

Founded: 2004

Year of Sale: 2008

Approximate Daily Worth: $6849

Celebrity Baby blog was created by Danielle Friedland in 2004, and as you can see from the name of the blog,  the topic is pretty obvious. Yes that’s right it’s another blog about famous babies. With celebrities a current trend at the time (when are they not, right?) and her website gaining a very steady stream of visitors,  She managed to sell the blog to Times Inc in a deal worth $10 Million. Not bad for a blog based on babies, the blog has also changed names since to babyrazzi.com.

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#14 Tree Hugger – Sold for: $10 million

Founded: 2005

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $6849

Tree Hugger was the brainchild of Graham Hill, an environmentalist entrepreneur who knew how to use technology to his advantage. He managed to sell the blog to the Discovery Communication for a neat and tidy sum of $10 Million in 2007. You got to admit there’s probably not that many tree huggers out their worst $10 million!

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#15 Freakanomics -Sold for: $8 million

Founded: 2005

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $10958

Freakanomics, was founded by Stephen J. Dubner, in the year 2005  and was sold just two years after it was first created. Stephen was a professional journalist for the New York Times, when he started the blog, which was actually created after the huge success of Dubner’s book, which was also called ‘Freakanomics’ . The website was eventually bought out by the New York Times the sum of $8 million.

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#16 The Consumerist – Sold for: $7 million

Founded: 2005

Year of Sale: 2008

Approximate Daily Worth: $7305

The Consumerist, is yet another website which was developed by the Gawker Media Group, there doing quite well aren’t they? Anyway, Joel Johnson was the editor-in-chief although the site was originally the idea of Nick Denton and Lockhart Steele both of whom are highly ranked within the Gawker Media Group. They decided to sell the consumerist to Consumer Media LLC when they were offered around $7 Million. I think I may have sold for that price too!

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#17 World Hum – Sold for: $6 million

Founded: 2001

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $2739

World Hum is a very highly regarded and award-winning magazine-style blog which was created by Jim Benning and Michael Yessis. The pair were obsessed with travel and decided to create the blog as an outlet for their passion. Within the blog they had all sorts of various categories; how-to sections, question-and-answer sections and where the best places to travel were, as well as how to get there and where to stay once you arrive. Eventually the Travel Channel decided to make them an offer in 2007  to the tune of $6 Million, which they just couldn’t turn down. I can’t say I blame them though.

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#18 Arseblog – Sold for: $5 million

Founded: 2006

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $13698

Arseblog, yes I know you’re properly all sniggering, well at least those of you in the UK as it is a bit of a naughty word but anyway,  the website was created by Andrew Managan in 2006,m due to his undying loyalty to the football team Arsenal FC (Soccer to all of you reading this in the US). In 2007 Andrew was made an offer god-father style, one he definitely could not refuse $5 million by the company Ole Ole. The site has since changed it’s name to Ole Ole.

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#19 GardenRant – Sold for: $1.3 million

Founded: 1996

Year of Sale: 2007

Approximate Daily Worth: $395.73

GardenRant was formed in 1996 by gardening enthusiast Susan Harris, mainly as a way to share her thoughts, tips and advice as well as sharing event details and special promotions. Though you may think that there wouldn’t be much value in a gardening blog it actually did amazingly well and was eventually bought out by the company GardenWeb for a rough figure of around $1.3 Million, not bad for a blog talked mostly about flowers. Never underestimate the power of any niche community, big or small!

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#20 Politicshome – Sold for: $1.3 million

Founded: 2008

Year of Sale: 2009

Approximate Daily Worth: $3561

Politicshome was founded just two years ago in 2008 by Stephan Shakespeare, who is also the founder and CEO of YouGov, which is basically an Internet-based market research company. After just one year of the blog being online, Stephan managed to sell the business in a very successful deal with Conservative politician Michael Ashcroft. The deal was worth an approximate $1.3 million.

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My biggest site to date has been RetireAt21.com – which has received millions of visitors! I often come across big name marketers, bloggers and even the odd guru who told me they started their make money online journey at RetireAt21.com which is of course quite amazing and humbling considering I was a teenager and seriously dyslexic at the time.

Recently I was speaking to one of my readers from those early days and I asked them why did RetireAt21.com help them so much. His answer surprised me a little – but it appears my Richest Young Internet Entrepreneurs post inspired him so much he would come back twice a day to look at the same post – as he wanted to be on that list so much!

There are loads of reasons I could of added to this post such as, Everyone’s trying to be something they’re not, Wasting To Much Doing Rubbish and so many more.

Well it is nice to know people like your content — but more importantly it is essential that people take action on your content. Reading a post is great and FOCUSING on success is essential but unless you take action on that FOCUS you are wasting your time / day dreaming.

1. You are too busy complaining about other people

This is No1. for a lot of reasons, despite my young age, I have been in business for 7 years now and have enjoyed it but a few times a year you are going to come across complete IDIOTS – honestly, no better words for them. Here are some great examples:

- You hire someone to do a job, they don’t do it but still want to get paid, you said NO! So they go to all your competitor blogs and forums and message about you being a scammer – you clearly are not one and they ripped you off however you end up paying them because you want the madness to end and they still think they are right.

- You create a HUGE forum, beat all your competitors in a very little time and so they gang up on you and hack your forum day after day till you leave.

- You tell a close work colleague your online business idea so that they will promote it and instead they go of and create it themselves because they are GREEDY!

- You do a 10x bigger job for someone than anyone else but at the regular price and they still complain and don’t appreciate your work. (that annoyed me the most, there is just no helping some people!)

I’m just like most of you guys, when these things happen, I hit the fan, I go crazy but the thing is, all that time you are complaining about these idiots, going crazy, thinking about getting revenge etc YOU are not building your business. Fortunately for me I come to my senses fairly quickly and get on with what I should be doing which is Building my business rather than being bothered by small minded people who frankly will never make much of their lives anyway.

2. You are Too Busy Being a Douche

I was at one of the many events I go to every year and one guy in the audience decided it wasn’t for him so he refunded after the first day. (as per the offer the organizer made when people signed up). I have no issue with that individual requesting a refund – but when they then take a picture of themselves holding the refund cheque and Tweet it – they are behaving like a complete douche in my opinion

This guy wasn’t prepared to listen, learn and ultimately make more money because when it came down to it – he was to busy trying to be a jackass. Focus on yourself and stop wasting your time thinking about other people.

Here’s Another One: So often people like to point out my bad spelling because they really don’t have much going on in their business, leave me alone and focus on yourself. (I know some of you do it in a nice way but honestly, we all know I can’t spell already)

3. You buy every single product, crap ones included

There’s nothing wrong with buying lot’s of product, myself, my friends and even the top gurus in the world spend $100,000′s a year on their own training. The problem comes when you buy EVERY single one and you get confused because some will contradict each other because their teaching you different things. If your into blogging, buy all the blogging books, but don’t then buy into all the product creation books, affiliate marketing, facebook marketing etc if your not ready to even implement what you have learn’t. Get an idea of where you want to go and the work out how to get their – that’s exactly how I go about it and if Facebook marketing isn’t included in my plan then I don’t buy the products.

4. You go to every single FREE seminar

I myself go to a couple a year as I find it gets me excited again and I love hearing how they pitch from stage as it really is an art form. But some people go to EVERY single one and frankly if your spending all this time going to free events that have the soul purpose of pitching you something, when will you get time to implement?

5. You’ve Been Pitched Crap | Your Teachers Have Got It Wrong

There are some people (‘gurus’) teaching rubbish or selling ‘systems’ that went out of date in 2002 – often at ‘FREE’ seminars. Unfortunately some people as per my example above get so caught up in the PITCH and want out of the rat-race so much they BUY — but ultimately never take action. The thing is, so many people are DESPERATE to ESCAPE the rat race that they will believe anything and I don’t blame them. Don’t misunderstand — not all “gurus’ are scammers – far from it, but as you can tell I personally have an issue with so called FREE seminars that are nothing more than Pitch Fests!

I do believe in Karma — and if you knew how little these so called ‘millionaires’ really made you wouldn’t buy their products either.

Here’s another great example:

Twitter and Facebook make it easy for people to get noticed and connect with other people. Some idiot obviously made a product teaching people spamming is effective because it seems anyone who can’t make money decides to spam us on social sites with offers we don’t want and they do it in a very unappealing way. Don’t ever tweet me an offer because I will not take an notice of you and I would really recommend you find out more about your teacher. For example, I was at an event recently where a lady was teaching how to make $10,000 a month with Twitter and a friend of mine told me she said she only made $8,000 a month, now if shes willing to admit she makes $8,000 she probably makes closer to $5,000 and that could be a one of? Look for someone with a great track record and lot’s of social proof.

6. You are Lying To People

This one goes out to some people I know off that think they run with the big name gurus. Listen, the reason your still broke is because your lying to your audience, you don’t make millions a year, you don’t get 100,000s of visitors to your site and you don’t live on your own private island where you work from your laptop on the beach. Your audience are NOT, I repeat, ARE NOT dumb, so when you try to teach them how you supposedly did something, most people can tell when you actually know jack shit (can I really swear on my own blog?!?!) about it!

7. You are Forever Copying Someone else

So copying isn’t a bad thing, I actually tell my students to copy me because, I have tried it, tested it and it works so why not share the love, right? The problem is, when people copy a whole system without fully understand how it works. Remember from reason 1 and I mentioned a colleague who stole my idea that I showed him, well I really got the last laugh because he would of gone of, spent a few days copying my product and I actually found out how much he made, ZERO, Zilch, Nothing! The reason was simple, he had no right doing the same thing, just like number 6, if you don’t know something about a subject, then don’t try to teach it because your readers will notice.

8. You are Too Busy Dreaming Small to Ever Dream Big

We all know the big money comes when you do big things so why are you wasting your time thinking small? Here’s an example for you, when creating IncomeDiary I could have niched it down and made it only about driving traffic to a blog, sure I would of got some traffic and a following but nothing like I have today. Instead I went for the whole niche, Blogging and now even opened up to blogging about Income Online in general.  That’s a tip right there, always make sure you know where your going, don’t enter a niche if you can’t scope it out and go REALLY big. If I become the top site for Online Income, I would be on the level with BusinessWeek and Entrepreneur.com – definitely where the big boys hang out.

9. You are Not Prepared To Listen

Around 15 months ago I met a reader of my site, I told him a few things that should help him make money online. A year later, I see this guy again and he’s still not doing anything online but is writing mad amounts of notes at a seminar just like the year before. I couldn’t bare to watch him waste his time so I grabbed him, took him to a quite area outside and got my laptop out and gave him a blueprint to what he needs to do to go big online, I found him an amazing domain (which I was quite jealous about but I already said he could have) and sent him off to go make it big! 1 week later he emails me telling me basically he’s doing something else online, which sounds to me like a really bad version of the idea I gave him, basically he decided to over complicated it.

10. You are Not Implementing

So the ones who actually do decide to listen to my great advice, where are they? Well of course I have some great students which makes it all worth it but I would have a lot more if EVERYONE implemented what I teach. If you are not prepared to implement, why bother learning?

Which of the above apply to you? What do you think is stopping you from making it big?

Adding more…

11. Your To Focused On What Other People Are Doing that You Don’t Focus On Yourself

Every day on my blogs I go to my comments and their is someone talking crap about me or my posts – if you don’t like it, LEAVE, go somewhere else! Stop focusing on making my life harder and instead work on yourself.

12. Your Trying To Do To Many Things

This one probably applies to the most us, if you try to do to many things you will end up lots of tiny websites that don’t make you any money. Focus on making one thing big, it doesn’t have to be your BIGGEST idea, you just need to see it through.

13. You Think Everything is Harder Then It Is

So many people don’t want to do things, including myself because you think it’s going to take a lot longer then you think or it’s really hard to do. Stop giving excuses and work out a way to do things – here’s a couple problems with solutions:

- A product will take me months to create – A: Create a 90 minute presentation offering your solution.

- Can’t Code a Site – A. Get someone else to do it for you.

It really can be that simple, don’t over think things.

14. Time

Real simple, MAKE TIME! I can handle my whole business with a hour a day if I have to.