Young Successful Entrepreneur

Let me start off by saying that I truly appreciate every email that I get from my readers.  I may not be able to get back to you right away, but if you put time and effort into connecting with me and asking a very good question, then I will put an equal amount of effort in my response.  Hence, the person who emailed me last week gets a blog post and video response because of his sincere email and enthusiasm to connect.

If you have any questions about entrepreneurship, relationships, or business, please shoot me an email at me [at] JunLoayza.com and I promise to respond to you with an awesome, well thought out answer.

View the video above to see my video response.  Click on “Read More” below to view my text response.

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I was in the client kickoff call with the Director of SEO and Director of PPC.  After an effective 30-minute conference call, the client asks THE question that will set ALL campaign expectations:

“When should we schedule our weekly meetings to discuss the campaign progress?”

Director of SEO: “Best times for me are Tuesdays or Thursdays before 11am PST”

Director of PPC: “Same here”

Me (Director of Social Media): “My team does not schedule weekly meetings with our clients; instead, our Account Managers send weekly reports at the end of each week.  We will however schedule a monthly campaign strategy call to make sure the campaign is on track and we are hitting our success metrics.”

… a pause…

The client: “Sounds good.  Please email me best times to meet on a monthly basis and we’ll coordinate appropriately.  [Directed to the Director of SEO and of PPC] We’ll meet Thursdays at 10am PST for our weekly call.”

[hangs up phone]

All three departments sat on the same call.

All three departments are expected to hit their target goals.

However, SEO and PPC must take 1 hour each week to meet with the client.  Social Media, on the other hand, only needs to take 1 hour each month to meet with the client.

Read more to learn how to discipline your clients in order to run an effective machine called “work”
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Three miles from my house I hit the wall.  I pushed as hard as I could, but my noodle legs had no effect on my forward momentum.  I tightly gripped the handle bars to maintain a straight course, but my trembling and sobbing hands uncontrollably caused the wheels to shake back and forth.  My visioned blurred and every gasp for air was accompanied by dry saliva.

Never had I felt so tired.  I screamed at the top of my lungs - a feeble attempt at a kiai - but no matter how much my mind wanted to keep pushing, my body gave up.

Slowly I pulled over to the side of the curb, and on a nearby patch of grass, I laid down, demoralized and defeated.

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This is for the professional who drags herself out of bed every morning to go to an unfulfilling job…

This is for the undergraduate who can’t decide on a major or career path, and has no idea how to live happily…

This is for the family who wants to break free of the routine life but has no idea where to start…

If you want to take control of your life, work where you want, live how you want, and be who you want to be, then this is for you.

I present to you: Untemplater

My posts on Untemplater will focus on how I built an internet company with barely any capital.  You can see the first post in my series here: Become a Young Entrepreneur Series Introduction.

The team and I have written a Manifesto that I am honestly very proud of and know that you will thoroughly enjoy.  You can download the Manifesto here: Untemplater Manifesto.

We are launching some great giveaways in the following weeks!  You can follow us at http://twitter.com/untemplater to get all the updates on how to enter to win our great prizes!

Your feedback is more than welcome and always appreciated!  Thank you so much for joining us on this journey and I look forward to seeing you on the site 

I remember my first time so well.

It was Spring 2007, and I was an inexperienced 21 year-old getting ready to graduate and enter the real world.  My brother Yu-kai Chou had already done it and I thought, “Yu-kai seems like such a Fob.  If Yu-kai has done it, then I should be able to do it as well!”

I was nervous.  I had consistently heard my peers talking about how good it felt, and those wild college success stories made it seem like it was just so easy to accomplish.  It was my last year in college, and I knew if I didn’t do it now, there was just no way I’d be able to do it later on in life.

So before graduating, I took a deap breath, took the plunge, and became a man…

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Photo by Rowena

I’ve come to the conclusion that few people have the desire AND the ability to start their own company.  However, the entrepreneurial mindset CAN be applied in the corporate setting, no matter where you work.

For the past year, I have tried to push my girlfriend to start her own venture so that she can escape the “clutches” of her corporate job.  I set her up with a blog and even lectured her over countless dinners about the beauty of lifestyle design.

Kim would always listen to my lectures and just nod her head in indifference, until last week, when I crossed the line and we entered into a full on argument:

“Kim, you need to be more motivated!  Stop watching your TV and shopping and lets work together to build a venture that will produce automated income for you.”

(As a side note, it makes me laugh at the fact that so many of us talk about “automated income” online but so few of us have actually achieved it)

“Are you serious right now!  I work over 40 hours/week, handle all of my family’s finances, blog at http://inourcloset.com, just started guest posting on another blog, and model and act when I get the opportunity.  What else do you want me to do!  Not everyone is like you Jun!”

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(Please take the time to watch the video.  Trust me, Raul Midon is amazing!)

Most entrepreneurs focus on the cash flow, team, market, and product, but neglect one of the most important factors in the success of the startup - morale.  Morale is the thing that keeps you working at 2am in the morning; morale is the element that keeps spirits high when cash flow is running low.  Without high company morale, your startup will feel like it is failing even when things are going very well.

I’ve recently been plagued by low moral.  I had low energy during my startup meetings and I found myself arguing with Yu-kai all the time.  Maybe creating an internet startup from scratch that changes the advertisement game is too hard? Perhaps I should just take the Tim Ferriss approach and create a business that is focused on driving revenue and nothing more.  A self-automated business that allows me to do what I want when I want does sound pretty sexy.

Yesterday I decided to change my state of mind.  I decided to throw out all of my thoughts about Viralogy and focus on it with a blank slate.  This is the list I came up with:

1. We just closed a round of funding (our first ever!)
2. The team is financially secure
3. Talking to agencies at conferences has shown that there is a high demand for our service
4. We have sold our product to clients and validated our model
5. We’re looking to hire a full-time developer and full-time sales person and have the cash to pay them!

I realized that Viralogy has been doing much better than it has ever been before!  Why then do I have such low morale?

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