30 Days From Now You Could Be a Business Owner or Real Estate Investor

We're extremely excited to announce the launch of the JourneyPage Group System. It is specifically designed to help you take action on major goals in 30 days by connecting you with facilitators who've accomplished what you want to accomplish and who have helped many others do the same. By joining a group you receive:

1. unlimited support to all of your questions within 24 hours
   
2. daily step-by-step instructions
   
3. one conference call

ENTREPRENEURSHIP: START A REAL, VIABLE BUSINESS

Many people dream about one day starting their own business! But few actually get started. In this program, some of the country's top young entrepreneurs will show you how to:

1. Identify, test, protect, and pursue viable business opportunities that match your passions and strengths.
   
2. Take all the steps necessary to become an official business.
   
3. Inexpensively build your brand and promote yourself online.

Bio:
Sheena Lindahl and Michael Simmons, co-founders of Extreme Entrepreneurship Education and authors of The Student Success Manifesto and All or Nothing, Now or Never, have been keynote speakers on the topics of student success and youth entrepreneurship at events and conferences from Washington state to Washington D.C. As 2005 graduates of New York University, authors, teachers, speakers, and award-winning entrepreneurs, they are able to deliver a unique perspective that connects with audiences. Recently, Michael and Sheena were named by Business Week as one of the country's top 25 entrepreneurs under 25 and featured on USA Today, the AOL homepage, CBS, ABC, NBC.

Using creative financing strategies, Sheena became financially independent of her parents at the age of 17 and has been able to completely pay her way through NYU’s $30,000+ yearly tuition, excel in school, work full-time at jobs she loves, co-found a business, and write a book.

Michael co-founded his first business, Princeton WebSolutions (PWS), when he was sixteen years old. PWS was later rated the #1 youth-run web development company in the nation by Youngbiz Magazine. In addition, Michael has been the winner of three entrepreneur of the year awards from the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Fleet, and the National Coalition for Empowering Youth Entrepreneurship.

Bio:
Ryan P. M. Allis, 22, is the CEO of Broadwick Corp., providers of web-based emarketing communications software including the IntelliContact email marketing software, the CEO of Virante, Inc., a web marketing consulting firm that assists high potential start-ups and established Fortune 500R organizations launch brands and build sales on the web, and the author of the book Zero to One Million: How to Build a Company to $1 Million in Sales.

Over the past four years, Ryan has built three companies to $2 million or more in annual sales--two as a marketing consultant and one as CEO. Today, Ryan spends most of his time on his latest venture, Broadwick Corp. As CEO he's managed the company from its start in July 2003 to its current size with 40 employees, over 7,000 customers, and over 900 channel partners. Ryan was named by BusinessWeek as one of the "Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25" in 2005.

Visit our site to register.

LEARN HOW TO FIND AND ANALYZE REAL ESTATE DEALS

Does investing in real estate seem like a daunting and scary task? Do you ever wonder how you should get started?

Although there are many skill sets necessary to be a successful real estate investor there are TWO skill sets that can make you money NOW.

It is these TWO skill sets that my mentor trained me in when I first started investing in real estate. It is these skills sets that allowed me to acquire nearly $1 million worth of real estate in my first year as an investor.

During the next 30 days you will learn a step-by-step process to finding extraordinary investment deals and quickly analyzing their potential. Furthermore, you will receive day-by-day content, quick answers to all of your questions, and be invited to participate in one conference call.

Bio:
Doug Fath has sold two businesses, developed a highly profitable multi-million dollar real estate portfolio and helped hundreds of students generate thousands of dollars in passive income, all by the age of 25.

Today, Doug is a full time real estate investor and financial freedom activist who is committed to helping people create wealth, while pursuing their true passion in life. Using the principles that worked for him and other successful entrepreneurs, Doug inspires and empowers individuals on their journey to financial freedom through coaching, seminars and keynotes.

Doug’s entrepreneurial endeavors have received national acclaim. He is a winner of the 2004 Bank of America Entrepreneurship Award and has been featured and interviewed by The NYU Report, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Bloomberg TV. Finally, Doug is a Keynote Speaker on ‘The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour’, which brings America’s top young entrepreneurs to colleges across the nation, and a featured speaker for the American Management Association at conferences and schools across the country.

Visit our site to register.

Posted at 01:08 PM | TrackBack | Top

October 15, 2005

Company Updates

Last year, Extreme Entrepreneurship was selected to take part in the Stern Incubator, a program of NYU's Stern School of Business. I just finished writing a company update for them, which summarizes what Extreme Entrepreneurship is about and what we've been doing. Allow me to share it here:

Over the summer, Sheena Lindahl and Michael Simmons began working full time on Extreme Entrepreneurship. Their focused attention has been a catalyst for some exciting developments – from a more developed business model to the establishment of key partner relationships.

The company is focusing on three channels through which to fulfill its mission of helping students plan, prioritize, and pursue their vision for life: books, speaking engagements, and an online community. Significant progress has been made in each of these arenas.

Extreme Entrepreneurship is currently working with a book packager and literary agent, who is helping them to improve the quality of and relaunch of The Student Success Manifesto and The Student Success Manifesto Workbook. Additionally, the packager is assisting in the development and sale to a publisher of a flagship book and workbook, Extreme Entrepreneurship and All or Nothing, Now or Never, as well as an extended series of “pocket mentors” – practical guides to achieve the goals in one’s life plan.

In addition to speaking engagements that Michael and Sheena have been taking part in, they are currently planning The Extreme Entrepreneur Tour (EET) in partnership with Advantage Networks. EET is a collegiate entrepreneurship tour traveling to 150 college campuses throughout America starting in the Fall of 2006. EET brings together America’s top young entrepreneurs to spread the entrepreneurial mindset to their peers at a grass roots level. Young entrepreneurs who've made, earned, and sold their company for millions and/or made a huge impact before 25 have already been recruited as speakers.

Lastly, Extreme Entrepreneurship is in the process of developing an online community to be targeted at college students and purchased by colleges. The community features the ability for individuals to post and receive feedback on their life plan and goals, as well as to send surveys to help them get feedback on the tough questions they face on their journey. This community facilitates communication between individuals and their mentors and peers. Rahim Fazal, an MBA Candidate at Richard Ivey School of Business and young “dot-com millionaire” who started and sold his first business while completing his last year of high school, is assisting in the market research and creation of the community.

Posted at 10:38 PM | Top

September 04, 2005

Inc. Advertisement

Our advertisement came out in this month’s Inc. Magazine on page 106. We are grateful both to Inc. for their generous donation and Dan Blank for his great design work. Buy a copy and check it out!

Posted at 03:38 PM | Comments (1) | Top

June 08, 2004

The Writer's Life

I'm not going to apologize
again for my sparse posts. To be completely honest - and that's what this blog
is about - I simply have not had the time or been motivated enough to find the
time to write entries, because when I am in the flow of writing I focus
completely on The Student Success Manifesto Workbook. So how is the progress
coming along on that? Well folks, we may actually be nearing the end of this
project. A few more months to go, no doubt, but in the final stretches for sure.
And then the blog will have all my writing to itself. No more having to share
writing time with a book! As we come to this final stretch, I will be in
desparate need for some reviewers who will give their feedback, edits, and
testimonials on the book before we send it to the professional editor.
Especially valuable are those Extreme Entrepreneurs out there who will use the
Workbook to create a Life Plan of their own! Reviewers will have 2-3 weeks to
give their comments and the reviewing process will begin two weeks from today.
If you are interested, please send an email to sheena@successmanifesto.com.
Those of you who give the most useful and constructive comments will be
mentioned in the acknowlegements section of the book! I look forward to hearing
from you!

Posted at 12:59 AM | TrackBack | Top

January 07, 2004

Money First, Passion Second?

Today, I spoke at The Alfred E. Smith High School, a vocational high school in the Bronx Burrough of New York City twice to conduct a workshop for The Fleet Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Award for NYC. Sheena and I conducted the first workshop together and then I did the second one alone. This was actually the first time we?ve ever spoken together. I was really impressed by Sheena?s poise and ability to project a powerful image. We complement each other very much, and I really look forward to speaking with her more.

The major lesson I learned on a emotional/core level today is that focusing mostly on money gets student attention big time. I?ve known this at some level for awhile now, but I?ve sort of resisted focusing on it during talks because I feel so strongly that entrepreneurship is about much more than money.

However, moving forward my feelings on Extreme Entrepreneurship are?I would like to focus more on money first and then more on other benefits as people become more of an Extreme Entrepreneur. This approach will contrast the current approach of equally blending all of the benefits. Interestingly, my partner and I initially started our web development business in 1998 mainly because we saw the money potential. It was only after experiencing being an entrepreneur that I began to appreciate its other benefits. Perhaps, this new approach would maximize the money and the overall message in the long-term by simply giving the right messages at the right times to the right people?

Some of my worries following this approach are:

1. Company Bramding. Will talking about money first, influence how we people perceive what we talk about later? For example, if the Da Lai Lama spoke about how to be a millionaire now, it might hurt the whole ?spirituality? thing he has going on.
   
2. Personal Branding. Will people be more cynical of the idea in the short-term?
3. Artistic Integrity. Does this approach sacrifice Extreme Entrepreneurship?s artistic integrity (see my recent post entitled The "Sell Out" / "Starving Artist" Dilemma) no matter what? What if this approach sends the same message and is more effective in the long-run?

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Books, Books, and More Books!

Carrying 2,100 books up four flights of stairs is not for the weak body or mind.

Posted at 07:03 PM | TrackBack | Top

December 01, 2003

Team Work

Sheena (my business partner and girl friend) and I have had trouble connecting lately to have a much needed meeting on the strategic direction of the company. I would love to say that we've been really busy (which we have been) and believe that this is the reason why we haven't met. However, we've been following this pattern for a few months now.

More realistically, the reason is that we have difficulty having strategic meetings without getting into arguments or prematurely ending the meeting. As a result, I think we are both subconsciously avoiding having the crucial meetings because we want to avoid the stress of arguments.

Having a relationship with a loved one (family or significant other) is very interesting. On the one hand, we have a trust and interrdependence that it would be extremely difficult to have with anybody else. We're so intertwined that a win for her is truly a win for me and vice-versa. On the other hand, as a result of being so close, we take liberties with each other that business partners wouldn't normally make. Small issues that shouldn't be brought up are brought up. For example, during one meeting it was particularly annoying to me that Sheena was biting her nails. I knew it shouldn't bother me and so I didn't say anything, but the annoyance kept on growing until I finally said something. Asking her to not bite her nails got her angry and then an argument ensued. Looking back, it's comical that such a small thing could blow up.

Things don't tend to be so-so. For reasons that I don't fully understand, they are either better than ever or let's just say, "other than better than ever."

But in the end, we are both committed and our relationship is improving and in so doing we're each going through major personal growth that affects the business and our lives.

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November 14, 2003

If you were us, what would you do?

Sales
As of right now, we have 174 people who've pre-ordered the book for the Amazon.com bestseller. This is less than half of our original goal of 400. However, we have a few hundred books in the sales pipeline (which may or may not materialize) and many email newsletters, which have not been sent out yet.

Bestseller Date
We've decided to move the bestseller day to November 22^nd, one week after the original bestseller day. This was a challenging decision because we lose the PR hook of it being my birthday and because it pushes back the date people who preordered the book receive it. We're compensating for this inconvenience to our customers by contacting them via email and apologizing for the delay, telling them exactly when they can expect to receive the book, and reminding them that they are entitled to a refund if they so desire.

Cash Flow
In addition, we're still being faced with cash flow problems. The books are at the printer, but they need the first half of the payment ($1,880), to proceed. However, we're still waiting on the check from NYU for over 600 books, which we invoiced for 10 weeks ago, which would allow us to pay this.

Video-Recording
Although my keynote address went very well, the tape we have is a blank! This is very disappointing because we spent the whole day preparing for it and testing it. Ryan Allis was kind enough to let us use his camera so he is checking today on whether there was a mix up with one of his tapes. The worst case scenario is that we will have to record it again next week.

Posted at 03:14 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Top

October 30, 2003

New Amazon.com Bestseller Partner

I just got off the phone with Dhrumil Purohit (see pic above), the principal & creative director of Dharma Boost who I met a few months ago through Doug Evans, founder of Servador who I met a few months before that at a National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) New York Metro Advisory Board Meeting, which I got invited to because I was an alumni of NFTE, which I got a scholarship to because I was the first place winner in the Fleet Youth Entrepreneur of the Year Award for New York City for 2000, which I found and applied for after randomly spending 7 hours one day in late January 2001 looking for entrepreneur awards (funny how things work).

Anyway, DharmaBoost, which does web, ecommerce, print, and new media design, may be helping to make the Amazon.com bestseller campaign a success. More on this later.

Posted at 02:07 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Top

30% Amazon.com Discount

Today I found out that Amazon.com is offering 30% off on books over $15. As luck would have it, my book costs $14.95. To take advantage of the opportunity, I submitted for a price change, which takes 4-7 business days. Even though this leaves a lot of buffer time until the 15th, I'm still nervous that something will go wrong so I will be following up with Amazon as much as I need to.

Posted at 01:13 PM | TrackBack | Top

October 29, 2003

Google and Amazon to Change Book Searching

ZDNet -10/29 - Google is in talks with several publishers to build a service that would allow Web surfers to search the full text of books online, according to a report this week from Publishers Weekly's online site. Google spokesman David Krane declined to comment. But such a service would likely allow people to query a database for keywords and then view exerpts from books where those keywords appear, according to the report. So far, Google has made agreements that give it the ability to scan as many as 60,000 titles, the report said.

The discussions come after a newly introduced service from Amazon.com called "Search Inside the Book," which is similar to the one Google is reportedly discussing. Amazon's book search, which launched last week, lets people search millions of pages of books for keywords, view passages and purchase books directly from the site.

The ability to search for books based on their text and not just their title is very interesting. Below are some of my thoughts/ruminations:

1. When I type "The Student Success Manifesto" in Amazon's search, only my ebook comes up now. In fact, the only way I can find to get to my paperback book on Amazon's system is by going to the ebook page and then clicking on a link. This is definitely annoying.
   
2. With the text of books being fully searchable, finding content online changes. Google would probably either integrate the book results with the Internet results or give it its own category. Either way, I imagine this would have a positive effect on the publishing industry as a whole.
   
3. The potential for book marketers to alter the content of books they're marketing to target specific key words or phrases is interesting. This is already widely done on web sites, but with books it may be a touchy subject.
   
4. Perhaps publishing companies will hire copy editors to create multiple versions of books with each version targeting a different key word. If done in the right way, I could see being a the top of a key word resulting in thousands of purchases over the course of a year.

Posted at 08:36 PM | TrackBack | Top

October 21, 2003

Bad Dream

I was happy to wake up this morning and see that all the ratings for the book on Amazon.com were 5-stars today like the day before. Last night, I had a dream that somebody rated the book a 1 out of 5-stars and that 56 of 71 people agreed.

Posted at 03:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Top

Cash Flow Concerns

Follow up on ... Michael Simmons - Young Entrepreneur Journey: 900 and Counting

On September 9th, I made a posting about how we were waiting on $7,000 to come in. Well, this number has risen to $8,000. Everyay, Sheena and I go to the mailbox expecting a check, but instead get a bill or the most recent Land's End catalog. We've followed up with the organizations and it just takes a long time for their systems to process the checks.

Things have become more difficult in the past week as a result of making investments over the past month as if we we're going to receive the checks in the mail on the next day. Some lessons learned/thoughts are:

1. Be prepared for the worst case and best case scenario. In our case, we weren't prepared for some large orders and then the checks to take so long to process.
   
2. We're lucky we aren't at a cash intensive phase of our business where we have a large payroll to meet every other week.
   
3. I feel stupid having things like a $300 air purifier that I bought over the summer, while I'm changing my eating habits to fit the cash crunch.
   
4. I never want this to happen again!

Posted at 12:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Top

October 19, 2003

Workbook Progress

This week has been incredibly
productive (despite my lack of blog entries). I basically rewrote most of the
workbook, and as a result it has improved by about 90%. It is extremely painful
to trash something you have spent a lot of time on, but in writing and business,
I�m finding that�s the way it has to be done. Often a lot of the preliminary
work is not what is published or used as the final project. So in a sense, the
preliminary work (like my first draft of the workbook) really feels like a waste
of time. However, it was definitely essential to do that work in order to really
understand and clarify my ideas about what I wanted to come out in my writing.
After months of working on the workbook, I sat down and in one day wrote 40
pages�and those 40 pages were better than almost anything I had written before.
Now I feel comfortable with the base and I�m working on tweaking minor details.
Perhaps it will not be so long until launch�

Posted at 05:04 PM | TrackBack | Top

October 17, 2003

From Intern to Consultant

After three short weeks, we've decided to change Patricia's title from Intern to Consultant. This title more accurately reflects the major amount of creative energy she has been bringing to team.

Hopefully tomorrow will be another marathon day of progress.

Posted at 10:20 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Top

New Business Idea Test

We're very tentatively exploring the idea of creating a community of extreme entrepreneur blogs. We would be very interested in your feedback on:

1. If you don't have a blog yet, would you be interested in having one if it were easy to set up and free? Why or why not?
   
2. Would you be interested in having your blog be part of the extreme entrepreneurship community? Why or why not? (This would be mean you'd get visitors from the network, but your site would have to have a similar look to other blogs in the network and be hosted by us.)

Posted at 06:14 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Top

October 15, 2003

Great Mentor Meeting

Today I had my first meeting with my mentor from The New Venture Mentor Program, which is part of the 80K NYU Maximum Exposure Business Plan Competition. My mentor is currently the President of The Associated Blind and has a lot of publishing industry expertise including growing a company to 9 million in sales. After our nearly 2-hour meeting (the time definitely flew by!), I came away with three pages of notes. Below are some of the key take-aways I had:

1. Strategically leverage your assets. As the company grows, we will have content, which we can repurpose and license/franchise to different market niches and geographics. For example, if we were to write a book for student entrepreneurs by student entrepreneurs, 75% of the content might be applicable to anybody who wants to become an entrepreneur. Therefore, we could license the model and content to organizations from market niches such as inviduals with disabilities or individuals over 60 years old, both of which may be more prone to starting a business than the general population.
   
2. "As you do things, you become invested in them and think of them differently." I notice that one pitfall of students interested in entrepreneurship often make is that they get stuck in planning or coming up with a billion dollar idea and never actually start anything. If instead, they started small, but moved forward, they would begin to see more opportunities and move in the right direction instead of staying stagnant. For example, many Fortune 500 companies were started by "small-time" entrepreneurs who evolved their companies over the matter of a few decades.
   
3. The government is one of the largest competitor of information providers. In the past private enterprises were able to compete by organizing the information in a more usable way then the government. However, as the government digitizes and organizes more of its information, it becomes a larger competitor. While this doesn't affect me right now, I thought it was very interesting.
   
4. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. She said that during one period of her life, anytime she wanted to say, "Nahh, I don't want to do that", she would force herself to do it. I really like this idea of pursuing what one is uncomfortable with as a way to grow and I think I will start doing this more!

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October 12, 2003

Making Progress

Yesterday was a full day of work/fun. Sheena, Patricia, and I worked over 30 hours combined with Patricia coming to our home-office at 10:30am and leaving in the evening. Sheena worked the entire day on the workbook. Patricia worked on organizing our plans/strategies and finding resources, which we will put on the site with in the next month or two. I worked on organizing and beginning to pursue the Amazon bestseller strategy. The following is the powerpoint document that we created, which outlines our bestseller plans.

Posted at 01:04 PM | Top

October 06, 2003

Cofounder Starts a Blog (Finally)

My girl friend and business partner, Sheena, started her blog today on Extreme Entrepreneurship at http://successmanifesto.com/blogs/sheena/.

I personally look forward to reading and commenting on it. I think it will be very interesting for readers to see a new perspective on Extreme Entrepreneurship.

Early in our relationship, I remember feeling nervous introducing Sheena to my friends and family. I was used to being judged based on only my qualities (Sheena is my first girl friend). Now, the same thing has happened with Extreme Entrepreneurship.

For the past few months, my voice (via my blog) has been the only voice of Extreme Entrepreneurship. While reading Sheena's first blog entry I felt pangs of nervousness the same way I did when we first started going out. However, I must quickly get over this. From this point forward, Extreme Entrepreneurship's brand will be determined based on what we both say as a team. As more authors, partners, interns, and employees join the team we will lose direct control over the brand.

Posted at 09:27 PM | Top

September 28, 2003

Notifications Form Fixed

It has just come to my attention that the notifications form on the left bar was not working (no wonder nobody was subscribing!). It is now fixed. So feel free to enter your email if you would like to be notified when I make new blog entries.

Posted at 03:09 AM | Top

New Blogger

Later this week, Sheena is going to start her own blog and eliminate the unavoidably biased view of the company that I provide. Should be interesting.

Posted at 02:56 AM | Top

Smooth Start With New Team Member

Earlier in the day, Sheena and I had the first meeting with Patricia, the intern, to get the ball rolling. Learning from past mistakes, I spent many hours preparing a document that would help her hit the ground running and explicitly state what we wanted. The meeting went extremely well and set a great foundation for moving forward. Even though Patricia still knows fairly little about our business, she had some surprisingly good ideas.

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September 24, 2003

A New Team Member Joins the Fray

Starting this week, Sheena and I are going to be begin working with an intern who will be working for free. She is a sophomore at the NYU Stern School of Business and is a perfect match. She has worked at Merill Lynch for the past two years and a lot of her family is involved in the education field. Although we met her at the NYU Career Fair, she had purchased the book before hand, which was a very good sign!

Although, we had received over 30 resumes at the career fair of people who were interested in an internship, she was the only one we decided to interview. Looking at resumes from an employer perspective, differentiation is key! Since most people had a good GPA and some work experience, these didn't differentiate applicants. We were looking for people who stood out and it felt like all the resumes just blended together. Going through hundreds of resumes and picking the ones to follow up with must be difficult.

Posted at 08:52 PM | Top

September 14, 2003

Detailed Site Statistics

You can now access detailed site statistics of successmanifesto.com. You will always be able access the link from the "book updates" table at http://successmanifesto.com/michael/. Examples of the information you will now be able to access includes:

• # of visits
  
• # of page views
  
• length of visits
  
• referrers
  
• entry pages
  
• exit pages
  
• etc.

Posted at 04:14 PM | Top

August 28, 2003

Tabling Update from NYU Career Fair

Tabling at the NYU career fair went fairly well two days ago. Special thanks to the NYU Office of Career Services for letting us table for free and saving us over $200. At our table, we had flyers, a banner, books, and information about the company and unpaid internship available.

Some observations:

• It is very funny to look at the different types of job seekers. Some were unshaven in shorts while others were in expensive suits. Some had there resumes binded while others had the worst resume layout I've ever seen.
  
• We started off many conversations by asking people what they were interested in. Some were quick to respond with their interests or admitting that they were open. Others seemed to pause nervously, covertly glance at our materials, and tell us they were interested in marketing and student success, which happened to be exactly what we were looking for. Coincidence?
  
• Standing for four hours is not easy.
  
• Saying what our company vision is and who we were hundreds of times allowed us to get a much clearer picture of what the company is.

Posted at 11:02 AM | Top

August 21, 2003

Unsolicited Testimonials

"I just finished reading your book and I'd like to congratulate you. It is very inspiring and it made me realize that I've been losing time thinking that I need a degree in order to follow my dreams. I am very passionate about creating a day/night care center for children where the main goal is to teach them basic computer skills..."
- Stern School of Business, Nermis Rosario, Sophomore

"Just wanted to say thank you for your site. Your goals/plan have inspired me to persue my own business. I've been into business for a few years now (I'm 18) and have dreamed of owning large corporations, airlines, and what ever else I can get my hands on..."
- Lance Frasier, Student

Posted at 08:50 PM | Top

August 20, 2003

Expanded Idea of Student Authors

This entry is a follow up on a July 9th blog entry I made entitled "Preliminary Idea of Student Authors".

NYU has been extremely helpful thus far (much more than I expected). Some people that have been very helpful are:

• VP for Student Affairs & Services, Career Services
  
• VP for Student Affairs & Services, Housing & Residence Life
  
• Associate Director, Advising & Student Services, Stern School of Business
  
• Dean, Stern School of Business
  
• Manager, Public Affairs, Stern School of Business
  
• VP of Budget/Resource Planning, Campus Stores

Moving forward, we'd like to make inroads with:

• President, NYU
• Director of Admissions
  
• Manager, Public Affairs (all-NYU)
  
• VP for Student Affairs & Services, Office of Student Life
  
• Director, NYU Press

One question I've asked myself is, "Why would NYU be so supportive of a student author?" I think it is because it helps NYU administrators accomplish two goals:

1. As a student of NYU, I am their product. The more successful I become and the more people know about my success, the more I serve as a testimonial for NYU.
   
2. The Student Success Manifesto helps students make the most of their NYU experience.

How does this relate to student authors?
Today I was brainstorming the idea of recruiting extremely successful students from large schools to author short success guides specifically for their school and to co-market these guides with The Student Success Manifesto book and workbook. We would help them by sharing all of the marketing lessons learned from marketing from NYU/other schools and giving them a percentage of sales from The Student Success Manifesto book and workbook. I think this idea would work very well because:

• All of the current student success books are broadly focused. There are no very well-written student success guides for specific schools written by successful students who go to those schools (at least to my knowledge). While these books would not have a broad appeal, they could have a few thousand sales a year and they would be trojan horses for other Extreme Entrepreneurship products to get into schools.
  
• Schools would support their student authors for the reasons given above.
  
• Authoring a short guide would be a good credential, be easy, and bring in some good money for student authors.

Posted at 06:20 PM | Top

August 14, 2003

NYU Marketing Countdown

NYU orientation begins on 8/25 and lasts for about one week. Sheena and I have spent the last few days frantically getting our promotional materials together (something we should have done earlier). In the spring, I spent about 40 hours designing a brochure, but in an effort to clear space on my hard drive on Sunday, I accidentally deleted it! We're back on track now though. Below is digital version of what the poster will look like:

Sheena and I believe that targeting freshman before they've spent all their money and when they're very open to trying new things is key. We are going to be marketing through:

1. Tabling - Setting up and manning tables inside dorms
   
2. Postering - Placing posters with self-adhesive, tear-off pads in dorms and around campus
   
3. Flyering - Handing out flyers wherever we can
   
4. Speaking - Speaking wherever we can
   
5. Bookstore - Getting book placed in NYU bookstore (hopefully)
   
6. Seeding - Giving books to opinion influencers
   
7. NYU Part-Time Career Fair - Setting up a booth
   
8. T-shirts - Wearing Extreme Entrepreneurship t-shirts wherever we go.

We look at marketing at NYU as an opportunity to test various marketing strategies. Once we have an effective model at NYU, we plan to role out to other campuses. We're not sure exactly how this will be done yet. We may use a network of campus reps who receive a percent of each book they sell. If NYU proves to be very profitable, then being a rep could be an easy, proven way for students who embody the Extreme Entrepreneurship philsophy to make some money.

Posted at 03:58 PM | Top

August 05, 2003

The Power of Networks

I'm extremely interested in the power of networks. I was reminded of this when I read an article on Yahoo called, "Friendster Network Grows in Popularity", which is about a web site that used this power to grow to a few milllion registered users in a matter of months with very little money while still in beta.

Moving forward, the major way that Extreme Entrepreneurship will be marketed is through this power. Some ways Sheena and I are thinking about doing this are:

1. All authors having a blog (online journal).
   
2. Open Source: Creating a system where readers can evolve the Extreme Entrepreneurship philosophy by giving feedback and creating there own ideas.
   
3. Giving away the ebook for free.
   
4. Making it as easy and valuable as possible for people to tell others about Extreme Entrepreneurship.
   
5. Having an interactive workbook that generates word-of-mouth.
   

Posted at 02:46 AM | Top

August 01, 2003

Speaking Gigs in the Works

I just found out today that I might be addressing the freshman class at the Stern School of Business of New York University (my school). That's over 500 students and would be my biggest speaking engagement yet.

In addition, my girl friend has it potentially in the works for us to speak to all incoming freshman who are living in dorms. This would be thousands of students, but in small audiences.

I think we could add a lot to these audiences and really make a big difference on the school if we do a good job. This is all very exciting and now I need to brush up my speaking skills. The biggest thing I want to work on is relaxing enough to show my enthusiasm more.

Posted at 09:54 PM | Comments (2) | Top

July 13, 2003

Extreme Entrepreneurship in Ten Words

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - M.K. Gandhi

Posted at 03:58 PM | Top

July 09, 2003

Preliminary Idea of Student Authors

Sheena and I are exploring the idea of extending the Extreme Entrepreneurship brand by digitally publishing youth who embody the principles of Extreme Entrepreneurship and who are experts on specific topics that have a wide appeal to high school and college students.

Who is the Extreme Entrepreneur Author?
eBooks are evolving communities of ideas based on intimate, real-time author-reader and reader-reader relationships. Taking advantage of low variable costs and quick time to market, each work will be an evolution of ideas rather than a static piece of work that is published once. Centuries ago, books were often created as responses to other books. As such, the original ideas that the original authors created were evolved. Extreme Entrepreneur Authors and readers work in tandem to create an evolving body of empowering ideas targeted at youth.

The Extreme Entrepreneur Authors are responsible for:

1. Creating empowering ideas and spreading them through ebooklets, which are shortened (15-50 pg) version of ebooks that cover topics related to Extreme Entrepreneurship such as:
   
   
   
   • Starting and Running a Business
     
   • Investing
     
   • Buying Real Estate
     
   • Winning Scholarships, Awards, and Competitions
   • Leveraging School
     
   • Going to Seminars and Conferences
   • Taking Time Off
     
   • Strategic Volunteering
     
   • Traveling
     
   • Shadowing
     
   • Informational Interviewing
     
   
   
2. Moderating a discussion board related to their book.
   
3. Maintaining a blog with updates on their own life.
   
4. Updating their ebooklets.

Extreme Entrepreneur Author Compensation
Authors will receive:

1. Percent of overall ebooklet revenue - similar to About.com Guide model (not definite).
   
2. Percent of revenues of their book.
   

Submissions
Submissions from authors will be taken on an ongoing basis. However, there will be a yearly EE Author Competition that recognizes the best EE Authors (not definite). Top authors may be selected to have their work become part of the "Extreme Entrepreneur" series.

Thoughts?

Posted at 05:51 PM | Comments (1) | Top

June 25, 2003

Unappreciated eBook Features

Earlier today I was fooling around with Adobe Acrobat and I was amazed by some of the features and I'm surprised that some of them aren't more widely used in ebooks. Beyond improved navigation, mobility, instant access, and search capability, some features that are particularly exciting are:

1. Video - Embedded video clips allow you to watch the video directly from Adobe Acrobat. During the summer, I plan to add video clips of interviews with successful people into The Student Success Manifesto.

2. Sound - Sound has incredible potential to alter people's moods. It would be possible to embed sounds (ie - classical, house, hip-hop, etc.) depending on the part of the book the reader is at. Movies can use this feature brilliantly. Why not books? Perhaps artists will record sound tracks specifically for books in the future.

3. 3. Comment Sharing - If installed on a server, it would be possible for readers to leave comments (like a discussion board) about certain parts of the book, that other readers would have the option of seeing. In the past, books have mostly been centered around author-reader relationships. With this discussion board feature, readers can communicate with each other and add value to the content of the book.

4. Forms - It is possible for people to submit forms via ebooks. These forms could be used to collect personal information about the reader or to be submitted to other individuals. Later this summer, a workbook for The Student Success Manifesto will come out. We plan to intersperse activities throughout the ebook. As the reader fills out forms, the info could be stored in an online profile or submitted to close friends who can give feedback.
   

Posted at 09:22 PM | Top

June 23, 2003

The Future of Ebooks

Most people underestimate ebooks, and I guess I can't blame them. With all the hype from a few years ago, ebooks are still fairly unpopular. However, I should point out that the usage of ebooks is growing steadily and I believe they will continue to do so until they are mainstream, in a few years, for the two following reasons:

1. Cheaper and Rapidly Evolving Hardware and Software - The range of hardware that ebooks can be read on is increasing (desktops, laptops, PDAs, tablet pcs, ebook readers). The price of hardware is constantly dropping, the software is free, and both the hardware manufactures and software creators are constantly increasing the value-added with new releases.

2. Books Aren't Evolving - Books haven't really evolved that much for decades and I don't see anyway they could make an big jumps moving forward.

Posted at 09:02 PM | Top