Today I am leaving for Europe and India to investigate global markets (retail, wholesale and currency). I will be gone for 2 weeks, and many of my friends and family locally can’t believe I’ll be hopping through 5+ countries in 10 days. Yet most of them would have this ability if they realized that the world doesn’t revolve around their area — millions of opportunities exist to better yourself if you open your vision to the world beyond your market’s borders.

If you’re young, this is a great time to think about what businesses might be the future — and where your talents might be best used. Instead of charging US$40 per hour in your local market, you might be surprised that a market is desperate for your talents somewhere else in the world. I’ve found situations where a 2 week contract will pay me almost triple what my local clients pay, even factoring in travel and lodging. Getting past the fear of the unknown is actually harder than finding work on the global scene.

If you’re not a jetsetter and have no desire to do so, the Internet is offering everyone opportunities to work abroad without traveling. Last week I spoke with 10 different companies in Asia who are desperate for language training, and some of them are willing to contract people via the web instead of in person. The youth of the world are desperate to learn English — not just the language but the dialects and accents — so it would be natural to look for the youth in the States to train them.

I’ve been traveling the world since I was 1 year old. My parents instilled in my a bigger and brighter future not through lies and deceit but through actually showing me there is more than just Podunk Illinois, USA — and as a teenager they had no restrictions on me flying out on my own.

Before you can approach your parents (or loved ones if you’re over 17), you’ll want to make sure you’re a responsible adult, even if your years don’t legally say so. Of all my friends, I was the least responsible yet I was able to get away from the community and see what was available in other towns, states, and countries. There is nothing preventing you from decreasing your expenses on CDs, clothing and entertainment — for under US$1000 you can fly to 2-3 countries in Europe and stay for 10 days. Save up some cash, open a discussion with your loved ones, and see what is out there.

In 10 years you might be married with kids, and you’ll realize that life is not as accepting of travel and laboring outside of your home’s area. Take advantage of the energy and drive that is maxed out in your youth, and your future will change in just 10 days.

Discuss this article here. This site is now part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.

Today is as good a day as ever to start your business.

You don’t need money, you don’t need to buy some work at home plan. You don’t need a business license or a rented office or even a phone number or website to become an entrepreneur.

You need direction.

You can start, today, by taking an hour and starting to write down (or type down) your thoughts about what you want to do and when you’d want to do it. When I think about a new business (I am currently contemplating 4 new businesses in the next 6-18 months), you really need a constant stream of ideas. These ideas come to me non-stop, almost 12 hours a day. Sometimes they’re stupid ideas, sometimes they’re big lightbulbs going off, but they’re always productive in the long run. My most profitable business experiences have been from taking a crazy idea from a year earlier and putting it into action once I realized there was a market for that crazy idea.

Get a notepad, even a 99 cent flip. Get a pen. Start to write. I actually like to do this digitally in the most simple fashion: Windows Notepad. I’ll write a few sentences down, save the file to my desktop, and close it. Whenever an idea pops up, even if it is just a fragment of an idea or a thought, I write it down on paper and follow up with typing it into that text file later.

Even if you’re 6 months away, start jotting your crazy thoughts down. Sometimes it might be “pay down debt” or “design a logo.” Other times it might be “bacon and eggs” or other bizarre thought streams that make no real sense now, but actually become productive later on.

If you’re going to become your own boss, you need to start brainstorming — today, right now, ten minutes ago.

I just bought a new notebook, and I’ve got more ideas coming out of me than the paper will handle. I can’t wait for my plane trip to Europe and Asia next week, I will have 20 productive hours (each way!) to jot ideas down. Out of the hundreds of random thoughts, profitable and productive ideas come forth.

If you don’t start today, you won’t start tomorrow or next month. By the time you extricate yourself from your personal and financial responsibilities enough to start your own business, it’ll be too late to find the time to brainstorm.

Just get out and do it. 5 minutes a day is all you need, but you might be surprised at how quickly it become 30 minutes a day or more once you find a way to get in the zone.

The usual cliche is that idea+money=business. I find that a successful business often needs neither — sometimes you’ll find success following in the footsteps of a successful business close to you. Look around at the fast food chains — they usually start one up in an odd area, and in a few years you have 3 or 4. When a product is useful and priced right, and the quality is consistent, you can compete with someone across the street from you and you both can survive — if the market exists.

If you’re still young and are considering the idea of running your own business, the number one thing you have to do is to make sure that you’re prepared emotionally for the ups and downs of business, and that you’re not going to have your business competing with the clutter in your life (and your room). The number one item missing from the idea + money equation is time. Your business will take time, no matter what others tell you. There are no easy ways to make money, even the lottery requires an intense amount of time spent (out of the people who never win) for one winner to collect.

My previous article on clutter is appropriate for more than the junk on your bedroom floor and in your closet. Clean those out now and get yourself to the point of having too much empty space, and you’ll be ready for the next step in youth entrepreneurism: getting rid of the time clutter in your life. As a teen business owner, the number one deterrent to profit for me was myself — I was too busy to handle my workload, my playload, my schoolload and my family load. I’m surprised I survived and profited at all considering all the clutter in my life.

If you’re hoping to run a business strictly for ego reasons, you may want to think twice. Having a lot of friends and going to parties 3 nights a week is a lot of fun, but it is not compatible with running a successful business. As a youth, you’re already one point behind in getting new customers — you have no track record. In order to gain ground on those with a history of good service, you have to make sure you not only have enough time for their scheduled needs, but also for the times people need you in a jam. I’ve seen the most successful babysitters being those who are both impeccably responsible AND always available in a pinch.

Getting rid of the time clutter might mean getting on a schedule, but I don’t believe that is realistic for everyone. The best way to reduce time clutter in your life is to address everything immediately and prioritize your responsibilities. For some youths, school will come first, so always knock out school before addressing step two. If you run a business as a teenager, most customers will understand the school responsibility if you have good grades and prove yourself to be a stand up citizen. For other youths, family will come first. Whatever is at the top, take care of it and get it out of the way. If a girlfriend or a good buddy is always harassing you to drop your responsibilities and spend time with them, you have to make a big choice here: business or friendship. Some friendships are not compatible with a responsible life, but it is better to learn this at 15 than at 35.

Clutter is not just a physical mess — it can also be a scheduling mess or a mess of taking on too many responsibilities when you’re not good at only handling one. As a teen business owner, you have to understand that people will be watching your closer, but you’ll be 5-10 years ahead of the rest if you can not only prove your reliability, but also your resilience and your regard for your customers’ needs. Clean up your time schedule messes, and you’ll find that entering into a small business, even a part time one, will be much easier.

This site is now part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.

In the last 4 weeks, I’ve received numerous e-mails from readers, friends and family asking me about the popular HYIP sites out there. HYIP means “High Yield Investment Programs” and you’ll find dozens of links all over the Internet, especially on forums and on financial recommendation sites. The HYIP is sold as a very high risk very high reward investment program — you put your money in, and you quickly take it out and reap a huge return.

The average HYIP company is offering almost 1% return on your money for every day it is in the system. Because many of these HYIPs have existed for months and continually pay people out, they seem to have a degree of reliability to investors.

I don’t have insight into how the HYIP companies actually work, but I have numerous theories — conspiracy and otherwise. I’ll tell you right now that I have no faith in any of these programs, and I do believe that many of them are backed by people who have an enormous amount of money to spend in order to reap huge rewards over a year or so.

Let me get the conspiracy theory out of the way first. A few years ago I forced myself to think about how people with a massive amount of currency could double it quickly. The scam I came up with that was the best scenario would be to take the enormous amount of money and use it to pay out investors in a gigantic pyramid scheme — give them big payouts, make sure the investors number in the thousands or tens of thousands, and get them to keep reinvesting the money. With a big enough currency base, you could pay them out bigger and bigger and bigger until you ended it with a bankruptcy in your favor.

Imagine 100 millionaires each putting up a million dollars into a pool to pay out the average HYIP. The average investor is putting up a few hundred or a few thousand. They make their 10-12% after 2 weeks, and reinvest even more money. The initial members of the program would be taking big risks with their million each, but they know that the average worker is greedy. Why let the state lotteries take all that money when they could get it themselves? Over a long period of time, the system would seem stable and real — everyone wins, so why not put your house up to really reap the benefits? The casinos work the same way.

The only problem with my conspiracy idea was the law — pyramid ponzi schemes are illegal. So I believed you could get around the law by making the people do some work for the money. I never came up with a way to clear that problem, but the HYIP guys have — autosurfing programs. In order to be part of the HYIP, you join an autosurfing group that performs some work for half an hour a day. If you don’t do the work, you don’t get the reward. This seems to get around the anti-ponzi laws, as the HYIP scheme admits that payouts are partially funded by new investors.

The other way that I see HYIP programs possibly working is to use the investors money in the very high interest and fee loan industry — the payday loan business. When the mob ran “payday loans” they were illegal — they’d charge about 3% a week in interest. The payday loan places got around this by charging a reasonable interest rate (0.5% a week generally) but tacking on fees to let you have another pay period to pay the loan. Once you add in these fees, you see the interest rate be higher than your mob loan would have been. The problem with payday loans is coming up with the capital. HYIPs might be an interesting way to finance the payday loan businesses — but in the long run I believe the economy is heading to the trash, so the HYIPs won’t last in the payday loan business, if that is the case.

I also see HYIPs as being able to operate solely on the ponzi system — pay out what you get in and hope that more people will continue to enter the system. This may be the case, but without the conspiracy theory dollars I previously mentioned, I think the system would collapse very quickly. You could prop the system up longer if you were able to keep the payouts in the system for a few days — telling someone they made a profit, but not letting them have the profit until other new investors put money in. This would mean collusion between the program managers and their payment processing company.

In the long run, I don’t trust anything that pays a profit without offering a real competitive service. I believe you make money by providing others with a time-saving service or product. The more time your product or service can save someone, the more you can charge them for your time. To make the most money, you have to either have a high quantity of people saving a little time (sell to everyone), or a small quantity of people saving a lot of time (sell only to the very wealthy). HYIPs and other high risk/high reward programs always tumble in on themselves.

I believe they’re working initially because of the big conspiracy idea I covered, but only time will tell — once they’ve fallen apart and you’ve lost a huge chunk of money that you convinced yourself you could lose.

This site is now part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.

If you’re looking to get into your own business and have picked a market to sell to, it is very important to make sure your market is prepared to accept your product or service. If you haven’t talked to your competitors and those close to you, do that first. After you’ve contemplated the answers you’ve received, it is smart to see if there are any holes that have recently opened from someone leaving the same business in your market. I’ve seen business fail in very profitable areas because another business in the same field had recently failed, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of consumers.

When I do a market survey or a market analysis, I always try to find who previously failed in the field I am entering. The Internet has made this much easier today than it had been even just 3 years ago. Google and Yahoo are great mechanisms to try to find who in your region had previously tried what you’ll soon be trying. My favorite search terms are city, business type, “out of business and see what pops up. For example, I might try Chicago, lawn mowning, “out of business” as my search term.

Check forums specific to the industry, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If by chance you do find that someone had tried and failed, your next step is to find out who they were serving, and how they failed to provide what that region needed.

This is a tricky step, but it is one that shouldn’t be ignored. I’ve actually backed out of businesses I had planned to open because I had found out that the region I was hoping to sell to was not too interested in my product or service, specifically due to others before me who had ruined the business for the short term. While my advice today may not have very strong specific actions, it is important to try your hardest to find answers that are hard to find. If the answers were easy, there’d be many people before you selling the service or product you’re planning on offering.

This site is now part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.

I always receive questions in e-mail on how to actually raise money to start a business. I don’t believe you actually need money to invest, just to have to keep your bills paid and to keep food on the table. Even that money seems hard to get, but it ties in with one of the my biggest pet peeves since becoming a successful entrepreneur: clutter.

Clutter is everywhere in the homes of most people, even the youth. Clutter could sheets and clothes on the floor, or it could be racks and racks of CDs and books. We really believe we will use the clutter we own, and we hold on to it.

I was a pack rat for most of my life until a mistake forced me to change. I forgot about a storage garage I rented (with probably US$30,000 in clutter in it) and I moved. When I realized I hadn’t been there in a year, I went to the place and found out they hocked my belongings to pay for the rent, and kept the proceeds. Ouch!

Yet after a week of being really mad and even depressed at the things I was missing, I realized that I never used them anyway. Over the next few months I did some tests — I started to put my visible clutter into boxes and sealed them shut. After almost 6 months, the boxes were forgotten (one was used to store more clutter on top of it). I didn’t listen to the CDs, I didn’t read the books again, and I definitely didn’t wear the clothes I figured I would. Even more positive was how my life felt when the clutter was out of the way — no dusting, no sense of disorganization and no frustration with just sitting in the room and being calm. Messes made me frazzled for years, and I never knew it.

The next step was to see how much I could live without clutter, so I put the remainder of almost all my belongings into boxes, but didn’t seal them. This would let me open the boxes easily to get at “stuff” and return it to “use.” Guess how often I did this? Never.

I became a sort of minimalist out of one big mistake and a year of trial and no error. I created an eBay account and started to sell much of that clutter at surprisingly high prices. I guess other people wanted my clutter — one man’s garbage is another man’s treasure?

If you need funding, look around your spare room, your basement, your attic, your trunk or your living room. Look in your drawers, in your cabinets and in your hamper. You might be surprised what you have lying around in disuse. I helped a friend just over a year ago clear out his entire 3 bedroom condo, and he raised almost US$20,000 out of selling off items. Sure, they probably cost him 5 times that amount, but never used them.

I’m not obsessive compulsive or frustrated by messes, but I realized that the organized messes are created a disorganized mess in one’s head. Now I like to look around my rooms in my home and see fewer quality items rather than many low quality items. I took the doors off my kitchen cabinets and downsized the amount of cups, silverware and plates I owned. By downsizing that, I was able to get rid of my dish washer and raise a few pennies from selling it.

Look at the clutter in your home or apartment. Count how many square feet it takes, and then figure out what the clutter is paying in rent or mortgage. You might be surprised to find that 20% of your home is clutter, meaning 1/5th of your monthly payment is making sure your clutter lives nicely.

Clutter is a mess in many ways. Clutter took good money and turned it into disorganization. Clutter holds a nice little fortune that could be used if you honestly don’t have use for the clutter. Clutter takes up valuable space that might actually allow you to downsize your mortgage or rent. Try shoving it all in boxes and seeing if you miss it. If you don’t, get on eBay or go to the local thrift store and get it out of your life in exchange for whatever people are willing to pay. You might be pleasantly surprised at the return.

A very close friend of mine is in the process of losing his businesses due to a sudden change in the market. Of course he accepts the blame for not watching his numbers more closely, which is a very common reason for corporate bankruptcy. I recently lost a business for the same reasons — my first real failure in over 15 years. I had always watched cash flow and forecast best and worst case scenarios, and when I stopped, so did the profit. Lucky for me I have other businesses to focus on, so the correction time is very minimal. For most business owners, they put all their eggs in one basket, and when things start to go wrong, they throw good money at a bad problem, making their lives more miserable.

One big learning experience from both our experiences is to have a proper cash flow forecast. I really could spend the entire month of February on how to manage cash flow, but I’ll just spend a few articles a week helping bring some understanding to a need that isn’t that hard to cover on a daily basis, but will quickly get away from you if you forget to track your cash flow even for a few days in a row.

Another big learning experience is making sure you’re targetting a real market, not a trend or a fad. You can make money on trends and fads, but you have to do so with the full knowledge that tomorrow could be the end of the trend. Before entering a trend or fad market, you must hit profitability quickly, and you have to make sure you’re not committed to anything for the long haul — leases, credit cards or even employment contracts. Always assume that next week will be your last.

You can expand on this even more by looking at the two markets that are the most successful for small business owners: selling to the masses or selling to the few. The definition of masses here is “something that everyone could use,” not a specific market such as 30 year old single men. Selling to the few means “something that only a niche market would understand and want.” The market in between — part specific part quantity — is the worst market to target. As your market target ages or marries or outgrows what you’re selling, you may find that the next target group has no interest in what the previous generation wants. I watched a friend’s business 5 years ago close its doors within 3 months of hitting their record profits. The generation moved on immediately after they hit their high school graduation. Ouch.

When you look at the product or service you want to sell or provide, you have to be honest about who the market will be. Just because you believe that every mother and child and great uncle will want your new rubber widget doesn’t mean that they will. You have to spend the time sincerely asking others for their honest advice. Niche markets can be a lot steadier if you realize that you will grow slow if you treat your limited customer base with an incredible amount of patience, respect and personal attention.

The market in between the two is the hardest to handle. The more limited masses have a higher expection of service and attention, but they also want to spend as little as possible. Niche markets give you the opportunity to sell your time at a premium, and mass markets give you the opportunity to sell-and-forget who you’re selling to. Selling to the middle group means you’ll have to combine the worst situations of the edge markets: personal attention combined with low prices.

If you give it some thought, you can see why so many businesses fail. They’re either selling a niche product targetted to everyone, or they’re selling a mass market product in a niche environment. Both are causes for failure. Chasing the middle group is fine for gaining business experience, but that is what you’ll profit in — experience, not cash.

This week I will be focusing more on cash flow situations. I’ll introduce you to some basic spreadsheets, basic terms and hidden demons that can foul up cash flow without reasoning, unless you know from hindsight what can mess up your best case scenario forecasts.

This site is now part of the Global Unanimocracy Network.