5 Reasons Why Being A Young Entrepreneur Sucks « Stanley Tang – The Journey of A Young Tech Entrepreneur

Jan 18 2009

5 Reasons Why Being A Young Entrepreneur Sucks

Entrepreneurship, Motivation & Inspiration, Personal Thoughts & Ideas

This is the follow up post to why being a young entrepreneur rocks. This time, I’ll go over 5 reasons why being a young entrepreneur sucks:

You are faced with legal issues & age restrictions. You can’t get a bank account, you can’t get a Paypal account, you need to pay tax etc – many of those issues teenagers haven’t faced in their lives. You must ask your parents for permission for so many of those things which can become an obstacle.
You can’t network with other entrepreneurs. It’s difficult flying half way across the world by yourself and attend events with a bunch of adults. Most of the networking usually happen at a bar and you must be over 21 (in United States) to enter.
You have less credibility. Your customers, prospects and partners will not pay you with the same amount of respect simply because you are a teenager. You come across as less trust worthy and can potentially loose a lot of business as a result.
You sacrifice your social life. Honestly, teenagers should do what teenagers do – play. By running your own business, you are sacrificing your life as a teenager and missing out on a lot of the stuff. You have to balance your life with your business (which is why I’ve been doing so little with my business recently. The only thing I’m doing nowadays is blogging and twittering; I’ve pretty much stopped working on affiliate marketing, list building, information marketing, joint ventures etc side of things so that I can actually focus on school and enjoy life)
You have less experience. Not only in business but also in life. You are more likely to make mistakes and poor decisions. You are less mature in the way you do things and may get involved in immature arguments. The lack of experience can potentially lead to the entire downfall of your business (which is why you need to get a mentor. Don’t think you know everything cause you dont’)

12 Responses to 5 Reasons Why Being A Young Entrepreneur Sucks

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Oliver January 18, 2009 at 4:15 pm
Half of that isn’t true and there are many upsides.

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Jared O'Toole January 18, 2009 at 7:16 pm
You really have to be careful about sacrificing your social life. It can be hard to maintain one but I think in the end you’ll regret not having one more.

I think it also helps keep those creative juices going. Just being in situations and doing different things with different people helps keep your mind fresh.

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TStrump January 18, 2009 at 11:21 pm
The beauty is, you still have lots of time to make mistakes.
Wish I had started when I was younger!

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stanleytang January 19, 2009 at 12:16 am
@Oliver – You clearly didn’t read my other blog post

@Jared – Yup. And I’ll rather enjoy my teenage life because its something you’ll never get to re-live

@TStrump – Exactly!

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Stew January 19, 2009 at 2:50 pm
The positives clearly outweight the negatives…and half that cr*p is an imaginary obstacle anyway. Think challenge, not problem, press on and conquer!

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Alexander Shelton January 19, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Stanley, I was also so frustrated when I realized for most US based seminars you have to be 21+… Perhaps its a case for taking matters into your own hands? I’ve set up a meeting in the UK for teen entrepreneurs and suggest everyone do the same, chance to chill out and chat web2.0 with some cool guys.

Social life has been sacrificed yeah, parents bugging you to get out more that kinda thing, you’ve just got to remember that you’re building an empire, working towards that 4 hour work week or whatever goal you have, don’t give up!

Credibility, I think we should all take a leaf out of your book Stan, you’ve done great, book launch, solid business, it just takes hard work and time huh?

Last point on less experience, very true but imagine how experienced you’re going to be when you’re 30 odd, these are exciting times for young people on the net, we should be excited!

Take it easy dude

Alex

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Bey Luen January 19, 2009 at 3:49 pm
If you start younger, you no need to worry about your living expenses (your parent can support you), you can try out any strategy or skill you learn. And more importantly, you’re not afraid to fail. I wish I could start younger, cheers!

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Loralyn January 19, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Hi. Just think of all of the knowledge that you will have and the “butt” you can kick with all of your new stuff. Good things come to those who wait. You’re great, it won’t be long until you’re “legal”.

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Ari Lestariono January 19, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Does Luck counts? I have seen people in short time can make good result with blogging and others tried many times in long period yet didn’t make anything?? Maybe it’s the wrong path or fate?

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Nicholas Chase January 19, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Stanley,

Yes, those issues you mentioned can be obstacles. I am looking for a mentor myself, and It’s been quite a few years since I was a teenager.

Traditional marketing has these simple tasks. Find a product, put it on a shelf in a brick-and-mortar storefront, advertise it’s availability, and sell the product to a live person who carries it out of the store. There are high costs and low profits associated with this method unless you are Wal-Mart.

Internet marketing is different, you need to understand the customer who is looking for your product, copywrite a compelling text ad, determine the minimum click-budget so your ad appears in the search results, at the right time of day for the search terms entered by the customer.

Create compelling landing pages for each ad campaign that has enough quality content to satisfy Google’s requirements, and tweak the landing pages periodically to gain more interest from the search engines. (SEO).

Then you need to install tracking to see how many impressions (clicks) your ad generates, fine tune or tightly-focus the keyword list in your ad campaign to increase conversions (click-throughs to buy), and determine if the reports you are getting from your ad network are accurate or not.

As a single person performing all of these tasks, including Twitter, email, ad offer searches on numerous networks to find the highest payout per sale, this is the part that sucks for me.

Oh and you need to learn how to be a webmaster so that each campaign has it own unique domain name tightly targeted to your ad group. You need to have your own blog, another time issue as fresh content keeps visitors / subscribers returning to your blog.

I’m not at all surprised that the average conversion rate is 2% for Affiliate Marketers, and 99.9% of them will make no money at all but actually lose thousands of dollars learning how this all works. And then, surprise, Google changes it’s algorithm so that what worked before no longer works! That really sucks, and requires re-building of everything you just spent months creating.

It’s a discouraging process, and then one day you hear about someone making $24,000.00 in one day, with a $14,000.00 profit after $10,000.00 in expenses ie click-budget click deductions by Google.

I’m currently unemployed, and the dream that Affiliate Marketing would replace my paycheck is still that, a dream.

Will I keep trying? YES! Do I expect different results? YES! Can anyone do this work and be successfull? YES!

The next ad you run could be it, and everyone I talked to at Affiliate Summit 2009 was positive about the future.

Respectfully,

Nicholas Chase – future Super Affiliate
http://www.twitter.com/nachase
wwwdonotreadthisblogunless.blogspot.com

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Michael Gaudet April 7, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Sure there are drawbacks, Stanley, I started drawing ‘pencil portraits’ in shopping malls when I was 16. It was an amazing experience, I immediately quit my crappy after-school job packing groceries because I made a lot more per hour doing what I loved! I have never forgotten that great feeling of being self-employed. It gave me a feeling a self-esteem that I certainly did not get packing people’s groceries.
I think you are unusually smart to realize that you are in a special time of your life right now and ought to be enjoying it with your friends who are your peers.
That shows a lot of maturity and insight for a guy your age.
I think it really is a question of keeping things in perspective (which it seems you are doing) as well as maintaining a healthy balance between play, school and career.
Keep up the great work, Stanley, I really believe you will get it right!

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