Thought I’d share an interview I did with my school newspaper a year ago. Enjoy!
Originally published here.
What type of business do you run?
I run Beyond Advertising, an online marketing company. Primarily we advertise on social sites like Facebook, traditional search engines like Google and Bing, and buy media on a variety of other sites. We run direct response campaigns to generate sales and leads for businesses and we also work with offline businesses to improve their brand and performance objectives on social media sites.
How did you get started?
I always loved the idea of entrepreneurship and I also loved the internet and computers. I didn’t love computers in a technical sense or for programming, but I was always amazed with the impact computers and the internet could have on our daily lives. I started out by creating a blog and seeing if I could make some money from visitors clicking on the ads on the page when I was around twelve or thirteen.
It wasn’t as easy as it was advertised to be, and making pennies per click wasn’t the way I wanted to spend my spare time, so I gave up on the whole internet thing for at least a year and focused on learning about other cultures, world issues, global peace, that sort of thing. I made a lot of new friends and gained a new perspective on the world through travelling and experiencing other cultures.
In Grade 9 Business class I worked with my peers to create the concept of an energy drink. Although it was just a fun project this cultivated my passion for entrepreneurship and I delved into the realm of online business once again, this time promising myself I would take things more seriously. I started to do a lot of research on other business models online and stumbled across performance marketing. I learned the basic principles and methods of marketing online and started to generate revenue by promoting products. Things weren’t easy at first but over time and through a lot of testing, I started to learn what worked and what didn’t. To date some of the companies I’ve had success promoting are social deal sites like Groupon and online video services like Netflix.
What is it like being 17 in the business world?
There are a mix of advantages and disadvantages of being under age and running a business. Everything from owning a company to getting a credit card is a bit of an extra challenge, but that aside some people don’t take you seriously at first.
The good thing is that action and results tell a clearer story than words, so my proven track record and relationships I have built give me legitimacy in the space and with potential partners or clients. An interesting plus of being 17 is that you tend to get attention when you attend events, as it’s a novelty to have a 17 year old kid there. Another disadvantage is that people can try to take advantage of you given your age, and sometimes it’s easy to trust people you really shouldn’t.
What are some of your future plans?
I have more ideas for new projects than I can act on. Literally every time I go for a walk or take a shower or talk to friends, or business partners I get a new idea. Part of the challenge is to decide which ideas to pursue and which to move on from. That being said, right now I’m particularly interested in advertising on social sites like Facebook. As a natural extension of that I’m looking to focus my company on local lead generation for offline businesses. Basically that means getting more customers to everything from local spas to restaurants. I have some very interesting plans involving local businesses and text message marketing which are in development at the moment.
If you had some advice for people trying to run an online business what would it be?
I love this question because I was just starting out not too long ago and I learn new lessons every day.
If I had to break it down to some concise advice, I would say that the most important thing I have learned is to pick one idea and follow it through all the way to completion. While it can be very tempting to try and manage a myriad or even a handful of different projects at the same time, I’ve always had the most success when I limited the amount of new ventures I am working on at the same time. Once you’ve picked an idea to focus on, the next most important thing is to stick with it. There are exceptions, like if your testing has revealed that what you thought was a good idea is actually terrible, but I’ve seen so many people try out an idea for two weeks and after seeing that it’s not as easy as they thought it would be they just give up and try something else. Jumping around from idea to idea will be your downfall online and something I had to work through initially.
One of my other main tips is to not underestimate the power of networking and the connections you can make. A lot of profitable (not just in terms of money) relationships are formed simply by contacting people and asking questions.
