Tom Williams: Hired by Apple at 14. His full story.

I was recently in Vancouver Canada for a week, considering moving there, when my friend Ariel Hyatt said, “You have to meet this amazing guy Tom Williams. He got hired by Apple when he was only 14. I think the company had to, like, legally adopt him to do it. He's a go-getter like you. Plus his wife, Jessie is an awesome country artist.”

I met Tom for dinner, loved his story, and wanted to share it with everyone.

Especially in this environment of 10%-25% unemployment, his story and philosophy have some inspiring lessons about how to get a job or make huge deals despite a lack of experience.

So I recorded a phone call and let him tell his tale in his own words:

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My mom calls this story my elaborate form of running away from home, except it doesn’t have a stick and a kerchief with it.

I grew up in a very normal, middle class family in Victoria. Very, very happy. But I wasn’t a very good student in school. In fact I was a very rebellious learner. I didn’t even take pen and paper to class. I would interrupt my teachers. I would question what they were teaching us. Every parent-teacher interview was focused on having Tom be less disruptive, and a little bit more conformist.

And at the same time, my parents, in the summer break between 6th and 7th grade, announced that they were getting separated. That really just devastated me. Even though my parents were dealing with that relatively amicably, I was very distraught and quite upset.

I then realized I was quite powerless, and the solution was to find my own income.

I started out selling chocolate bars and quickly noticed I was the top seller in school. However, I only got a Nintendo even though I sold about $2,000 worth of chocolate-covered almonds.

I realized I was getting kind of gypped, so I negotiated to be the direct retailer of this wholesale chocolate bar operation, basically usurping the school. I had my dollar of chocolate and they had theirs. My dad had to vouch that I wouldn't just eat the inventory.

That summer I sold several thousand dollars worth of chocolate bars. This was not some passive kid sitting outside the store, eyes down, hoping somebody would take pity. I was literally walking backwards, chocolate bar in hand. As somebody would walk by me, I'd peddle my very refined spiel about how these chocolate bars were the world's best thing. They were actually called World's Best Chocolate, from which I derived my sales pitch.

As a child I was horrible with math, even with the rudimentary. In fact, I had to go to summer school once. However, I understood when I was being taken advantage of and when I was in control.

With my first lemonade stand I realized I'd have to actually spend money on Kool-Aid. This meant I'd have to spend the entire day selling at five or ten cents, (which was the competitive going rate back then), or I'd have to either steal the Kool-Aid pack, or figure out some way around this huge cost liability.

I managed to put up my sign in the local store, without help from my parents. They were academics and bureaucrats, not in any way entrepreneurial. For me, this thinking about what was a bad deal or a good deal was instinctive. I was hard-wired from day one, always trying to make good deals.

I always relied on my own instincts. I knew that if I wanted to get something done, I had to do it. Nobody else was going to do it for me. Nobody else was going to support me. I didn't expect to be supported. I just knew I had to do it if I wanted to do it. That's how I lived every aspect of my life.

Even when I was interested in bird-watching, I had a newsletter and charged a subscription to family and friends. I was always constantly thinking about how to make money and generate revenue.

Using the proceeds of the chocolate bar sales, I rented an office in the same building as the local sales office for Apple in Victoria. I would go to my office after school, not really having much to do but trying to build edutainment software on CD-ROM. I even had an outsourced receptionist service.

This was the stepping stone. It was clear to me that I wanted to try and short circuit life's path. I didn't want to stay in school until the 12th grade or at home. I wanted to live on my own and be free.

I read John Sculley's biography, who was Apple's CEO at the time, and my hero. As other kids had sports stars or actors, he was my hero. I wanted to be him or be like him.

So I started calling Apple in the 7th grade. Every single morning, at about 8:00 am before I went to school, I would call up the main Apple switchboard number, and ask for John Sculley's office, and they would put me to his assistant.

Every single morning I'd be talking to Jerry, his assistant, and would start for the first few weeks with just my standard pitch. I was taking the business development angle. I'm the CEO of my own company, which was called Desert Island Software, and he's the CEO of his company. Let's have two CEOs talk to each other about how we can work together.

For the first few weeks I'm sure Jerry thought that it was some kind of a prank or weirdo. Eventually I started to be less reliant on the pitch and say, “Hi, Jerry, how are you?” This is the gatekeeper to somebody that is receiving a lot of unsolicited phone calls. I think instinctively I realized that by building a relationship with Jerry, I was building a relationship with the gatekeeper. If they like you and support you, that's really helpful.

Here I was, literally for about a year and a half, calling every single morning. The relationship obviously evolved to “Hey Jerry, what's going on with you?” and “Oh, you know, school's tough this week Tom‚” blah blah blah.

In a parallel track, because I had rented this office, I was developing a relationship with the two local sales guys who at this point had taken an interest in me and who I would stop in on every single day. They wrote e-mails, which somehow came in to Cupertino. I think it was just a benevolent gesture. Here was this kind of young, highly enthusiastic, but different than just a Mac fanatic guy that was trying to build a software company.

They were able to get me forwarded all the way up, back into John's office, Jerry and some other support staff. There was now this loop of several people interested in helping me out and seeing my dream.

My dream was to meet John for five minutes, and then I just meet him, and pitch him in person. I knew that If I was granted five minutes, I was going to be able to extend that into half hour, and that half hour would dictate or drive what would happen next.

Through many, many people's generosity at Apple, they had arranged to give me a free pass to the Worldwide Developers Conference, which I think the ticket price was about $1,500 for the whole week.

Because of the divorce, my mom and I were quite poor. We had to actually borrow money from my grandmother, (it always makes me verklempt to remember her generosity), to fly my mom and I down, May 1993.

In fact the conference registration began on Sunday, which was May 15th. I remember the date because it was Mother's Day, and my mom was thinking we'd have a nice day to kind of celebrate it. We went to one of the hotels near the convention center in San Jose, and I scarfed down my breakfast because I wanted to get my registration at Apple done right away.

There I was, registered, and greeted well. People were like, “Oh, well, we're expecting only one tiny kid from Canada at the conference.” They were expecting me, and John's PR person said, “Okay, first thing in the morning, be here 7:30, bright and early, and before he begins his keynote, you'll have your five minutes.”

For me, this was the night before being able to walk on to the stadium and toss out the first pitch. It was the pinnacle dream moment. I couldn't sleep, my mind was racing with how I would spend these first five minutes to make an impression on him. I knew from his books that he was a concept guy, and loved being able to come up with new ideas on the spot, new ways of positioning things.

I knew the rumors of what technologies were being introduced at the conference and what he was speaking at in the keynote. I was really studying those technologies to come up with my own spin.

At the time it was actually the Newton that was being announced at the conference. It commercially failed later, but was successful from an innovation perspective.

I had my own business cards that said, Tom Williams, CEO, Desert Island Software. I met him and pitched him. I said, “Here's what I kind of think of the Newton....” I barfed out five minutes of stuff that I thought might be impressive to him. That five minutes extended into a full half hour - up until minutes before he was being pulled away to give the keynote.

At the end we exchanged business cards. He had two business cards, one that said “Chief Listener” and one that said “CEO”. He gave me his CEO card because he was out of the other. We promised to keep in touch.

At the conference, I was given VIP access. I sat with all the vice presidents. I was one of the first guys outside of Apple to actually be able to play with the Newton. I was anointed as an interesting guy, and I met every vice president at the company that was there that week.

Three months after the conference, John left Apple. He was booted out in a boardroom coup, and then he went into a company called Spectrum. He stayed there very shortly. It was a bit of a bad story.

As a consequence of leaving Apple, John actually had time to call me. I remember the first phone call. I'd left my office, because my cash was running out from my chocolate bar sales. At this time, I'd left my office, and had my office in my bedroom in Victoria. The phone was ringing in the upstairs bedroom. I was downstairs and could hear it ringing. I raced up, and it was John on the phone.

Because of networking deep at Worldwide Developers Conference that year, other executives at Apple and the engineering team on the QuickTime products team had organized to get me back to the conference, but this time as a speaker.

I was demonstrating a use of the QuickTime conferencing API that a developer friend of mine and I had mocked up. In the QuickTime conferencing API you could build any interface on top of the basic function of video conferencing. We built up this Star Trek-like communications interface. It was visually appealing, met the geek quotient, and I was there to demo that.

Because of that demo, my brain, and Apple being a corporate culture, which at the time was kind of the dark era of Apple, I was getting hired.

We were just at the end of this first era of human capital and innovation, and so the people that were most respected on the campus were of course the engineers. The engineers didn't matter or care what you looked like, or what your educational background was. You proved your mettle with them simply by virtue of interacting with them on the spot - what your brain was like in those conversations.

Even though I was a marketing guy, it was the engineering team, that on a Wednesday of WWDC, in 1994, had offered me a job. They said, “We want you to come work with us!”

At the same time my school year was ending, and John and his wife were doing a CD-ROM multimedia startup of their own in San Francisco, where his son lived. At this point John had become a regular mentor. I'd asked him to join my board of advisors to Desert Island Software, and he agreed. He even sent me a letter that I had framed, acknowledging his acceptance to the advisory board. My mom was comfortable with me coming down to live with his son and daughter-in-law for the summer to get some work experience.

At the same time, I was doing work experience, and going down to Cupertino once in a while trying to figure out, over the course of the summer, how I could take this invitation of work with them - become hired by them even though it was infringing upon child labor laws and immigration issues and so on. What they eventually figured out was that if I was a consultant contracted by Apple through a Canadian company, the Canadian company would be responsible for any issues.

They were able to put the blame or liability elsewhere. Now the problem was I couldn't even be a director of my own company because I was under 18.

My mom, was reluctantly, very supportive of me but always worried about the downsides to my stability, childhood, and all the motherly things that one would be concerned about.

I'd convinced her to at least start the company, that was back in the Desert Island Software days. We had the company established, and literally a week before I was to go back home and start the 9th grade, the team said, “Hey, we figured this out. Want to sign the contract?”

I called my mom on a Monday, and said, “Mom, I'm starting work with Apple on Thursday, and I'm not coming home.” It was a very hard thing for my mom, you know: the baby son, and California, whatever. My mom, knowing how stubborn I was, and all these external factors at play, agreed. She allowed me to do this even though she was very, very concerned that I had negotiated my own contract.

I was later told that she came down and negotiated a different kind of contract, which was to say, “Hey, you know, guys, you are going to be responsible for my child, not only in terms of his physical welfare, but his spiritual and emotional welfare.”

I was a cellist at the time and had a bunch of other interests, and she just wanted to make sure that I maintained a childhood and a sense of balance in my life.

It was such an amazing corporate culture at Apple. There was a lot of people that were looking out for me, and of course, especially given what I was doing there. There was a lot of opportunity to kind of be a young rebellious teen, and I did some of that, but generally I had a really great group of people around me.

I remember there was a beer bash, when we did a alpha or beta launch of a software product. There would be a beer bash on campus, and I remember having a beer, and some HR person getting completely freaked out. There was a bunch of that kind of stuff.

However, I wasn't the youngest. It was Chris Espinosa, who was actually employee number eight at Apple. Because I was never an employee, I was a contractor, I'm the youngest ever contractor I know through Apple. Chris was youngest ever employee, and actually beat me by I think a year or so. Chris actually has the title and will always likely carry that title.

I was hired in QuickTime products group, and I was savvy technically. I was able to comprehend at lower levels the technical concepts, but was a very bad, almost completely dysfunctional, programmer.

The team thought, “What do we make of this guy? What do we do with this guy?” I was put into an evangelist role. It wasn't planned. They didn't say, “Oh, Tom would be great at this.” They just thought I would be a great guy to have around. We kind of had to figure out what my role was.

With QuickTime, we were really trying to build a platform, a media platform, as a consequence of some of the technical portions of later versions of QuickTime. At the time there was a new standard called CD-plus, and CD-ROM, in the music industry. CD-plus was a totally different form of manufacturing a CD. You had a data layer, and you had a audio layer on one CD. The idea was to use QuickTime to demonstrate how we could create interactive content for artists that would increase engagements around the music on a CD-ROM.

This was 1995, and the internet was becoming more and more popular. It was coming out of the academic world and in the fringe technology world. Not so much in any way the mainstream, but becoming more and more, “What can we do with this?, How can we use it?”, etc.

Really our vision for how QuickTime and this online music stuff could interact, was that we could have individual files that would contain the music, but also contain very, very simple data structure describing the song. Being able to use an application which would then be able to look up that data and bring other relevant content in the form of commercial links. Links out to the web, that would allow for greater music discovery, but also allow for the tracking of how that music is explored, and how that fan engages with that particular track.

What we were tasked with was not only coming up with some prototypes about how that would manifest, and we'd pitch differently to artists and labels, but ultimately, I was kind of out there evangelizing to the music community.

I remember hanging out with Radiohead backstage at a show they did in San Francisco in 1995. Tom was already designing his album covers using Photoshop on a Mac. We had a tremendous number of artists who were already Mac users. We were trying to explain, “Hey, there's this new stuff coming!”

In New York, we were part of the New York Music Festival, wiring up 13 clubs. There were 270 bands playing over seven days, and we were live streaming the venues to anybody on the web. On the crappiest of connections - probably four-frames-per-minute, with the worst 8 kHz mono sound quality.

The way that I approached my work in reaching out to the music business was the same approach that I took with Sculley. We are all people, regardless of title, whatever. We were all completely equal and it was all about being likeable and liked.

What was happening before I joined Apple was that there had been several kind of high profile attempts at creating what the press referred to as, “Sili-wood” which was Hollywood and Silicon Valley coming together to create these massive studio-produced CD-ROM projects.

The industry observers were saying that the two cultures were clashing. The Silicon Valley types were saying, “Well this is how we try to impose their methodologies and their approach to business on Hollywood.” and vice versa.

Whereas I was just this happy kid that was very excited about the technologies I was working on. Just being at Apple was my dream job. That enthusiasm and passion was disarming, and the fact that I was a kid.

Literally every single meeting for the first year, any new meeting, everybody would start looking for the hidden camera. Looking at each other for either whose kid this was, or who put up this joke. Then the meeting would start, and again people would still be kind of chuckling. Then five minutes in, as a consequence of what I was saying, and how I was saying it, they realized that this was this freakish but nevertheless real scenario of this kid being at Apple.

The music industry had the exact same attitude about people. They didn't care what package or experience you came in. If you could play your part, that's all that was required for acceptance.

That was the exact same culture that got me in at Apple. Here I was living in this convergence of those two communities, which really worked for me. I was doing really high concept stuff.

I had approached Bill Bottrell, a very famous engineer and studio guy, who had also gotten quite critically acclaimed as a producer. He had produced Sheryl Crow's first album, “Tuesday Night Music Club”, and that album title was no coincidence. In her studio in Pasadena, he was organizing a Tuesday night jam session of friends and musicians that he knew.

Our idea was to wire up the studio so that the outside world could see what was going on and allow outsiders to contribute song ideas and lyrics into the studio. Then if those songs got cut, you would basically, by virtue of membership, be a contributor. You would sign up to get an audio CD compilation, of all the songs that had gotten cut, but you would get a pre-negotiated small kind of cut from the song that you had gotten cut if you were contacted had come in.

If you fast forwarded to 2009, and user-generated media contributions, collaboration online, I mean this is 1995, we just didn't have the bandwidth to do it. We didn't have a user base to do it. Even though Bill was tremendously excited about it, and so was a pretty high level executive within Apple, the concept worked up several layers above me to our vice president's level, what they were looking for was really more.

They looked at our music stuff as more traditionally corporate sponsorship stuff. So the lens was exposure in the music industry, exposure to consumers, without going into too much of Apple's history, you could argue that music was part of the brand DNA of Apple from the very beginning.

Even though Jobs was gone, it was always seen more as, “Hey, if we can do high visible stuff, get musicians endorsing what we're doing.” Remember the, “Think Different” campaign.

The actual technical business rationale of our unit was that 90% of the music industry, we had 90% share of, of computers in studios and musicians from a pure market analysis perspective, the other ten was analog, and those were the guys that weren't moving. If we could create high concept stuff, be seen as real supporters of the industry, perhaps we could move the dial, one, two percent, into that other 10%.

Remember it was Mac platform only that was hosting Pro Tools, Digidesign, and all that stuff. There was a kind of corporate culture that we were in. This was illustrative of the disconnect of the time that I was at Apple, which was under our CEO Michael Spindler, at the time.

I left before Gil Amelio came in. Spindler and Amelio were arguably two of the worst CEOs Apple ever had. Well, there's only been four. This was an indicator of their “let's sell more boxes” mentality, so our music stuff was in the rationale of, “Let's sell, let's move the dial on those analog guys.”

The reality of it, is those analog guys were analog for a reason, and they likely wouldn't be switching because of our sponsorship of Woodstock 2.

Nevertheless, that was the mentality. Whereas internally, as we moved down from the VP into the operating dynamics of our unit, it was just keeping that culture that Apple was famous for. The culture of early innovation, concept, reaching out to innovators, and empowering them through our ideas.

There was that corporate culture disconnect that was very reflective to the whole company.

With the studio deal, even though there was high levels of support, it came down to negotiating a legal contract. The legal issues that an entertainment lawyer brought to a contract, and what our Fortune 500 Silicon Valley lawyers brought, were two very, very different contract legalities.

Even though there was cultural similarity, from a legal perspective, they were so different. It was the legal cultures that were the big issue in allowing us to do deals. As a result, we did a lot of sponsorship deals.

My business card and the title on my office read, “Tom Williams, The Kid”. That was the brand that was created for me, which I quickly embraced, and owned as my own.

I left Apple as my parents were actually going through the divorce proceedings. My father didn't want to pay child support because on paper I was making more money than he was. I had no concept of money, and was spending more than I was making.

Because of the unique nature of our story, it ran in our local paper and it was syndicated very, very quickly across the country. The Canadian media got interested in doing a story on me. CBC National which was the prime-time national news hour in Canada, came calling to me in California to do an interview for a documentary.

I negotiated, and by this time had some ink on me: The Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, A Current Affair. I had a bunch of media, and was hanging out with musicians. I very quickly understood the importance of having control over your own brand. This was not done with the Apple PR people, but directly between me and the CBC folks.

That documentary created brand awareness for “The Kid” in Canada, and as a consequence, I had a number of job offers.

Before the documentary even started, several of our new media guys got themselves hired by Microsoft. Microsoft has been involved quite heavily in promoting their own music stuff, though Apple was far better at achieving the high profile marketing wins.

Microsoft's corporate culture was far different than Apple. Even though they had way more money to spend, and they got The Rolling Stones‚ “Start Me Up” for Windows, they could buy their way only so far. I'd done an interview with Microsoft, as several of the guys I knew from Apple were keen on getting me into there.

By this time, the documentary ran and there was a lot of job offers, one of which I ended up taking back in Vancouver.

That was the launch of the brand “The Kid”, which became, for better or worse, part of my public persona, quite successfully for the next ten years of my life.

During the ten years, it was the same notion of: build the relationship, success requires a persistent misreading of the odds, have access to anyone that was famous or at a certain level. The notion that I didn't or wasn't able to have access to that didn't exist.

There was no psychological intimidation because I always had that level of confidence, or maybe it was just pure arrogance. It's either a supreme level of confidence or truly seeing everybody, myself included, as just peers of everybody else.

All this title was a function of luck, it didn't really imply any kind of specialness that I or anybody else didn't have. Hold the relationship, be friendly, be likeable, and good things come from that.

I remember working as a technology analyst for this really crappy investment retail brokerage house in Canada. Not that I'm insulting the Canadian technology community in the the mid-late 90s, but I wanted to go after the same deals that the white investment banks were going after.

There was a company called Invention Machine in Boston that had a bunch of big venture capital money put into it, and were contemplating an IPO. They needed a few million bucks raised privately before going out IPO, and this was the kind of thing that I did.

I knew that the CEO was a smoker, as we met at a conference in the past where we talked about cigars. There's a comic aspect to this. An 18-year-old talking about his love of cigars to a 50-year-old. Seems so silly and ludicrous now that I can look back on it.

Nevertheless, I literally bought a box of cigars and sent it to him a week before I was to meet with him. I wined and dined him. The night before I was to meet with his board, which included guys from these New York investment banks, and venture capital funds, I convinced him to give me the opportunity to do a private equity round for the company. We shook hands, but he said it's ultimately up to the board.

This very, very powerful board was like, “This is a joke! Why should we do it with you?” I said “Well I'll get it done in a week.” They said, “Everybody says that and nobody does it.” I said, “So then you got no liability if I can't get it done.” He said, “Well I guess you got me there.”

This was a Tuesday. Wednesday I flew to Toronto, met with a mutual fund there. By Thursday we had a term sheet. By Friday they got down there, and the deal closed on a following Wednesday. The commitment was there, pretty much right away. I gained the respect of that team and board.

My favorite quote is from author and management consultant Tom Peters, “Success requires a persistent misreading of the odds.” That's exactly what that was. I didn't know that quote when I did it, but it fit very well to describing part of my attitude and approach to this stuff.

It was about relationships, first and foremost. If people like you, they want you to succeed. If they want you to, they will help you succeed. It has to be genuine.

A lot of people approach their relationship-making as mercenary transactions. As much as you appear very genuine they can see your endgame. Take the time.

Earlier this week, I was traveling back home with my Mom and we agreed to take a particular ferry home, which would allow me about fifteen minutes of face time with a friend and mentor of mine.

She said: “Why bother if it's just fifteen minutes?” I said, “Well, because it's face time, and that fifteen minutes should be spent building and strengthening the relationship.”

What can you accomplish in fifteen minutes? Nothing other than strengthening the relationship.

Recognize that by being useful and good to others, you will eventually build a very strong team of supporters. They'll lift you up to new heights and protect you. If you falter they will be there to bring you back up and support you.

I think it's one of the most overlooked components of business. Simply, we're always able to say that at the end of the day, all you have is your friends.

But, if your friends are your friends, and they happen to be in business, and are helpful to your business, then all that much better, because those people will be there to support you.

Pithy aphorism? Probably. Absolutely true? 100%.

Eluding the Illusion of Time: Douglas Karr on Priorities, Resources, and the Value of Quality

When your goal is to meet a deadline for a project, time can sometimes become your biggest enemy.

It’s not that I don’t understand the work involved to complete a particular task at hand; it’s all of the other unanswered questions that come along with working with clients and teams. I don’t know if my client will provide the resources in time. I don’t know that our team’s resources will be consistently applied. I don’t know if we’ll run into problems with the technology. I just don’t know.

What I do know is that I’ll be held accountable. The problem is that I won’t be held accountable for the result – I’ll be held accountable for the deadline.

When Will it All Get Done?

Recognizing this, I pad project schedules for safety. That said, I am putting my contract and relationship with my client at risk by taking my time estimate, doubling it, and doubling it again… eventually ending up at 4 times the original estimate.

It’s not that I’m lying or trying to delay the project — it’s that I want to ensure it’s done correctly and exceeds the expectations of the client. And, of course, I want to ensure that the client will get the hand-off when they expect it. There are often downstream repercussions when a project isn’t completed on time. This is the critical moment in our relationship. If the client asks their internal staff, the staff will say it takes a fraction of the time. If the client asks a competitor, they’ll undercut me for sure. It’s a critical moment because the only reason why the client would accept my estimate at this point is because they trust me. If they trust me, we’ll move forward. If they don’t trust me, we’ll end the relationship.

It has nothing to do with time and very little to do with the results. Time is an illusion.

What’s Your Hourly Rate?

When I started my business, I responded to one ornery prospect with a rate of $250.00 per hour. He grimaced and literally berated me for the next five minutes or so. He said he could hire someone for one-tenth that rate and there’s no way he would pay it. I asked how much he would pay. He responded $75.00 per hour. So, I told him that I could do it for $75.00 per hour, but that it would take me three times as long as my original quote. I smiled. He didn’t. So I walked.

The illusion of time appears again. Within that discussion, the value of the project at hand wasn’t discussed — only my hourly worth as a human being. If he interviewed 10 people who ranged from $25.oo per hour to $250.oo per hour, I’m confident that the $25.00 per hour contractor would get the contract. I’m also confident that the results were disastrous. Just about every day, we meet with clients who have completely blown their budgets on cheap contractors who couldn’t get the job done.

We don’t manage retainers nor track hours anymore. We set budgets with our clients and have them hold us accountable that the value we generate is greater than the monthly subscription we charge. We like to measure that in increased visibility on search, social, improved conversion rates, and – ultimately – more dollars to the bottom line.

How do you Manage Time?

I don’t. Ten years ago, I started the Marketing Technology Blog and grew a sizable following online. The authority I built, combined with the following, began to drive demand for my services. The demand was enough that I launched my agency 5 years ago. Suddenly, I was a CEO and a blogger. I was recruited to write Corporate Blogging for Dummies. My influence grew, my network grew, and my business grew.

On a daily basis, I have to respond to a dozen or so tweets, a handful of Facebook status updates, dozens of PR pitches, hundreds of emails, a few phone calls an hour… and I need to execute for the clients who are paying my agency. I am surrounded by an amazing team that barely keeps me from drowning and thankfully keeps our clients afloat.

You can’t balance a checkbook when you don’t have enough money to cover the checks. The same goes for time management. When the demand for your time exceeds the number of minutes in the day, there is no time management. At that point, we’re not really managing time — we’re managing priorities.

Prioritization over Preservation

Some folks tell me that what this means is that I’m not charging enough, or I need to grow my business, or I need to say no… but that’s not who I am. I want to stay affordable to most businesses. I want to help more clients improve their marketing results. I want to stay engaged with my following on social media. I want to read every email from a new startup or a public relations professional. I love my disaster of a life!

The result is that I turn away business. Not because of the time it will take or the money it will pay, but because it’s not a fit for my style of work. I’m sure many of you are shaking your heads and some of you probably think I need psychological help, but I don’t. I’m absolutely content with finding and working with businesses that appreciate the value and commitment I bring to their company, instead of holding me accountable for over- or underestimating timelines made for self-preservation.

And I’m not alone. Virtually every client I work with is resource-challenged, and the demands continue to grow. Our service, sales, and marketing staff now balance a plethora of social mediums, a barrage of emails, and the interruption of meetings. They face increased expectations of developing content, nurturing leads, improving customer retention, and acquiring new business — all with less money, fewer people, and just a handful of tools.

Visualization Management

The key to our success isn’t managing time, it’s managing priorities. We balance our publication, our speaking schedules, our sponsors and sponsorships, our audience and our community alongside our clients’ demands. Because of these myriad responsibilities, we use a ton of visualization tools. From cashflow in our accounting platform, to analytics for our audience, to email visualization tools to handle bulk actions (check out Mailstrom), to MindManager and ProjectDirector for identifying obstacles and opportunities to drive business results.

In my opinion, time management is as dead as the corner office, the personal assistant and the flashy gold watch. It’s simply not how we’re working anymore. We have a fixed amount of resources, not a flexible amount of time. The challenge for every successful business is to prioritize their resources effectively — not based on deadlines, but on results.

Entrepreneurship Advice from Marc Hedlund, CEO of Wesabe

This is a guest post from Marc Hedlund, co-founder and CEO of Wesabe, a web-based personal finance tool. Marc was formerly an entrepreneur-in-residence at O’Reilly Media. He also blogs about money at Wheaties for Your Wallet.

A couple weeks ago, J.D. had a conversation with some friends about starting a small business. I liked a lot of what was said, but I’ve had some different experiences, and would like to offer my perspective. Here are some things I’ve learned from my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Starting a business with friends can be fantastic
Both of the companies I’ve co-founded have been with long-time friends, and while of course there were hard parts about it, in many ways it was a huge help.  We knew each other well enough to figure out how the other would react in a lot of situations, and had a base level of trust that is always helpful.  Of course there are plenty of counterexamples, but it can work.  

What matters is that you have a partner with whom you can communicate — if that person is a friend, great.  

Write someone and ask them for help every day
It’s amazing how well this works.  Just make a habit of coming up with one person each day that might be able to help you in some way — with an introduction, an idea, a conversation, anything. If you think of someone you already know, then it’s easy to ask for help, but don’t be bashful about asking people you don’t know for help.  

When you tell people you’re working on starting your own business, many of them will get excited or interested, and be willing to offer a hand. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hear back — just try someone else the next day. When you’re starting a new business no one knows what you’re up to, so reaching out and asking for help very often can do an enormous amount to get things rolling.

People matter more than anything
When you’re looking for partners, employees, attorneys, accountants, or anyone else to be a part of your business, find someone you really get excited about working with, or just keep waiting and looking.  Don’t get caught up thinking you need someone, just anyone, to support you.  It’s far better to wait for a star.  

The early people in any company shape everything about it — its enthusiasm, public face, ethics, and quality. You can’t afford to have any of those aspects be anything less than stellar when you’re starting your own business. (If you’re not sure about a person, try using them as a contractor first, and bring them on full-time when you’ve had more time to evaluate them.)

Don’t worry about the idea
Entrepreneurs often get all worked up — or hung up — on The Idea; that is, what business exactly they’re going to pursue. Don’t worry so much about The Idea. Choose something you know a lot about and see a need for, and go for it.

The people you work with matter more than The Idea; hardworking, talented people working on the wrong idea will figure that out and adjust, while the wrong people on the right idea are likely doomed anyways.  

The only thing that really matters about The Idea is how you (and your partners) feel about it.  If you can’t stop thinking about it for weeks on end, get up out of bed to write down brainstorms about it, and don’t get tired of working on it, that’s the right idea.  If you have to convince yourself to keep going on The Idea, that’s the wrong one.

Take money from other people as an absolute last resort
Many entrepreneurs get an idea, write up a presentation about it, and hit the road looking for angel or venture capital investors.  Don’t do that.

First, investors will always prefer to invest in running, growing businesses, not ideas; and second, you will immediately give up control of your business to people you likely don’t know very well.  Supportive, patient investors definitely do exist, but they are the rare exceptions.  

Take investment only to accomplish a specific goal for your existing business that you know you can’t achieve any other way.

Know your customers
Do everything you can to put yourself in direct, frequent contact with the people who will be giving you money — your market.  When selling to consumers, make sure you’re talking to someone who would actually have a pressing need for whatever you’re selling; when selling to companies, make sure you’re talking to the person who could actually authorize a purchase of whatever you’re selling.  

Anyone in your company shaping its products or services should be in direct, frequent contact with your market, too.  Listen to your market.  Talk to them all the time.  Ask them if what you sell is working for them, and take everything they say seriously.  

Most importantly: ignore every other source of “feedback” — competitors, reviewers, two-bit commentators, whatever.  If what these other sources have to say matters, you’ll hear it from your market directly.  If you don’t, what the other sources say is irrelevant.

Have confidence in yourself
Things are going to suck for a while, pretty often.  You’ll win sometimes and lose sometimes, often on the same day.  Take care of your home life, make sure you have great support from your family and friends, and listen to your gut.  These simple, basic steps will get you through the dark times that inevitably come, and lead you to the rewards that can follow.

Treat people well
Most entrepreneurs fail several times before they have a success.  If you can fail with your integrity intact, you’ll build a network of people ready to help you when you’re ready to try again.

Young Entrepreneur Scholarship Winners For Yanik’s Underground Written by Michael | Posted in Young Entrepreneurs

This is the third year Yanik Silver has offered young entrepreneurs around the world a chance to come to his seminar for free. For the past two years, I have hosted the competition on Retireat21! Every year we say we will accept 10 winners, but it’s more like 12 because we have so many great applications, this year we accepted even more because of that same reason. Check these guys out, expect to see great things from them in the future.

If your heading to Underground this year, let us know! Will be great to see everyone.

Top Young Entrepreneurs In The Making

Benjamin Jacques

My name is Benjamin Jacques and I’m the founder of MeltingWaves.com. I’m a graphic design student at the Savannah College of Art and Design and I live and breathe art. I created Melting Waves with the intentions of helping artists in college share their artwork and make a name for themselves so that they can be set when they graduate from school. If you look at any marketer that has products to promote and services to sell, you’ll see that there’s a talented designer behind them making everything look nice and marketable. Well what if designers themselves learned how to create their own products and services to sell and really jumped into the “make money online” business? They wouldn’t have to hire anyone else to design for them because they already have that knowledge! I created Melting Waves to show designers that they have a tremendous advantage in this industry and that they can get started a lot faster than anyone who doesn’t have design knowledge. I really just want to see artists do well because they bring so much creativity to the world and they would have such an advantage over the crowds trying to make money online if they just knew where to begin. That’s where Melting Waves takes them by the hand and shows them how to use their skills to their advantage, to make a name for themselves, increase their incomes, and dive into online marketing industries that they have probably never considered before. I want to bring more creativity into an already beautiful world, and I know I can do that by giving aspiring artists a helping hand when it comes to creating success.

Eddys Velasquez

Eddys Velasquez always knew that the 9 to 5 job was not for him and because of this he decided to take massive action and become his own boss going from $0 to $60 per hour within 1 year, at the age of 15.  He then stumbled on a twitter post that introduced him to online marketing where within a few short weeks he made his 1st $1,500 online in a span of 3 days.  Soon after that he discovered that his passion was to help his friends achieve the same success doing what they love to do and that’s why he decided to start IncomeBoss.com

David King

I started off in myspace marketing when myspace was still cool and built a business using myspace and myspace groups.  As myspace faded away I evolved as the web did and started using facebook, twitter and youtube and blogging.  I began affiliate and info-marketing through search engine optimization and social marketing and haven’t looked back since.  I have been working full time from home online for 2 years now and love every minute of it.  I have info-products in the health markets and in the internet marketing/biz markets and will continue to create more. Consistency and persistency really pays off!

Kirsty Price

My name is Kirsty Price and I am 20 years old, from Aberdeenshire, Scotland. I am in my final year of studying Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen. I started my first business at the age of 19 and I jumped head-first into entrepreneurship to help me pay my rent! At that time, I set up my first ecommerce site and I also dabbled in ebay for a while. This first site was a failure because I really had no idea what I was doing, so I went back to the drawing board and learned from my mistakes. A few months later I started my second business. This time I was determined to succeed. This was another ecommerce site called Mademoiselle Boutique which sold luxury adult products primarily to females. This business did much better because I went away and studied everything I could find about online business in my spare time. I loved running it, but I still wanted something more that my ecommerce site wouldn’t allow for. Before I became interested in online business and entrepreneurship, I wanted to be a teacher. I realised that I still wanted to teach and inspire, but not in a classroom. Thanks to the internet, I could! So in late 2010, I moved on from my ecommerce business and I decided to combine my passion for teaching and online business to create my current business, Laptop Rebels! Laptop Rebels is still very new, but it will soon sell information products and online courses for other young (primarily twenty-something females) people looking to learn the basics about starting an online business so they can avoid working a 9 to 5 job they have no passion for.

Brian Moran

Created Get10000Fans.com after making it big on Facebook in the baseball industry. Using Get 10,000 Fans to teach other small business how to use Facebook to actually grow their business, increase sales, and build a huge following of loyal fans.

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Dusty Reron

My name is Dusty Reron and I am from Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada). I’m the founder of iJailbreak.com, a leading web blog covering everything latest about jailbreaking/unlocking Apple’s iDevices, Sony and any other revolutionary device that can jailbroken. We provide in depth tutorials, app and product reviews, and have been featured on many popular sites. It’s a blog that stands out from the crowd with our focus on building a community that you need to see to understand.

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Jaden Easton-Ellett

My name is Jaden Easton-Ellett and I am from Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada). I am currently 16 years old and I am the Co-Founder of a technology blog called iJailbreak.com. Where we focus writing in-depth news, how-to’s and reviews on electronic devices such as the iPhone. Our blog is also a leading promoter of jailbreaking (opening up electronic devices to user driven modifications), where we share our knowledge and help other users jailbreak their devices. Ever since we started iJailbreak.com we have been big believers in running a culture based blog that cares about our readers; not just our profits. This has lead to the success of our blog and has brought us phenomenal results in only 3 months that you need to see to believe!

Molly Dunkle & Katie Barstow

Katie and I started our company together in 2006. We began with a hobby for making lip balm and turned it into a full business. We are just revamping our company website (www.sweetscosmetics.com) this month, and we are hoping to have it finished by March! Our goal for this conference is to learn some techniques and tips for selling online. Looking forward to meeting everyone and networking! Thank you again for a wonderful opportunity, it is going to be a great trip!

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Jack Cascio

I am Jack Cascio and I run an online business “Jump Out The Gym”.  I started this business with the former strength coach/physical therapist of the New York Mets (Jeff Cavaliere).  My business is dedicated to increasing an athletes vertical jump.  I have seen continuous growth with this business and am looking to get into other niches (speed, quickness, etc) as well as releasing my own workout supplement line.

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James Sun

My name is James Sun and I am a Grade 10 high school student at Earl Haig Secondary School who has a passion for business and entrepreneurship. I also am very involved with sports,public speaking, DECA and I also chair a Student Advisory Board for a new non-profit organization called One Prosper International. I first started doing business last year as the President of a Junior Achievement company called RAWR which sold gift baskets and candy kebabs. We had our ups and downs and I learned a lot from the mistakes. This learning experience got me excited to do even more business!

As a result, after our company liquidated, this year, I became the President of another Junior Achievement company named Top-Out. This company has twenty student employees from over the Toronto area. Our slogan is “A Story Behind Each and Every T-Shirt” because we sell unique hand-made customized t-shirts. What really distinguishes us from our competitors is that our products are considered affordable artwork created by students.

Freeman LaFleur

I am the twenty three year old cofounder of LoDo Magazine, Denver’s alternative lifestyle and entertainment source. I’ve been involved in a variety of different startups since the  age of seventeen, including a clothing line, a non profit, and multiple websites. I am a strong advocate of entrepreneurship and personal branding because I know how life changing your first sale or client can be. My eventual goal is to coach others through DIYPersonalBranding.com on how to take their business or service to the next level by getting it online, promoting it effectively, and automating it. I truly believe that we are about to see a massive jump in the number of entrepreneurs over the next few years, as people begin to realize that it has never been easier to start a business and that digital marketing is the biggest game changer in history.

Mattis Weiler

My name is Mattis Weiler, I’m 20 years old and a starting internet entrepreneur based in Munich, Germany, I had the pleasure to meet Michael at the Awesomenessfest in Costa Rica before Christmas. Since I had always been madly into 3D graphics and animation, but was not keen on working 60h+/week on a feature film production as an average paid specialist only following orders and fulfilling somebody else’s dream, I was looking for alternative ways to get make some money with my passion. So I started freelancing and did some minor project work, but it still didn’t fit for me. When I got to meet Michael in December, I was highly impressed of his techniques and the lifestyle he had, and decided to work out a plan of combining my two passions, 3d animation and the internet, and my desire to work where I want, whenever I want.

My website ww.cgiant.com is going to provide a free video tutorial search engine and recommendations covering (3d animation, video, web and photo as categorys)to allow users on specific skill levels to gain quick refferal to the most suitable instructions on their needs. I also plan on providing interviews and reviews to various products like training, software and other goodies related to the making of computer graphics.

Daniel McClure

Daniel McClure is a young entrepreneur that is working towards his dream of running a digital empire that can be run from anywhere. Currently based in the UK, he serves clients from around the globe developing membership websites and blogs that enable business owners to share thier vision with the world. Whilst initially only offering one-to-one web development and marketing services you can now find everything from; review sites based upon real experience, through to marketing focused WordPress skins amongst his digital portfolio.

About Michael

Michael created this website back in 2007. Since then, it has gone on to receive millions of visitors, featured in newspapers, magazines and some of the worlds top websites. If you want to do something similar, keep reading.