Last March, at my Underground Online Seminar 6, I met Nick Tart. He had just published a book of interviews with 25 of the world’s top young entrepreneurs: ‘50 Interviews: Young Entrepreneurs (Vol. 1) – What it Takes to Make More Money than Your Parents‘.

The awesome thing is that five of the 25 young entrepreneurs spotlighted in this book are former Undergound Online Seminar scholarship winners. It also features Michael Dunlop and a UG6 speaker Andrew Fashion. I got to sit down with Nick and his partner in writing and business, Nick Scheidies, for a quick interview.

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Yanik: How did you come up with this idea?

Nick T: I saw all of these kids doing mind-blowing things with entrepreneurship and really taking it to the next level with their fresh perspectives. I wanted to get inside their heads, find out what makes them tick, and uncover the secrets to their success. If there had already been a book out there like that, then I would’ve just bought it. There wasn’t, so we wrote it ourselves.

Yanik: Is there any common element in most successful young entrepreneurs you’ve interviewed?

Nick T: Perseverance. Sabirul Islam was rejected by 40 publishers before he decided to self-publish ‘The World at Your Feet‘ (he promptly sold 42,000 copies in nine months). Just imagine that: being told, “This can’t be successful,” 40 TIMES and never losing heart. That’s the type of tenacity you need to succeed. It WILL pay off.

Nick S: Absolutely. But I think it’s a lot easier to take those punches when you love the fight. Every kid we talked to had an unwavering passion for their project. There’s no way it’s a coincidence: it’s a lot easier to put in the hard work when it hardly feels like work.

Yanik: Do you think entrepreneurs are “born” or “learned”?

Nick T: We wouldn’t have started this project if we didn’t believe that it would help transform the lives of people around the world, “learn”-ing them to be better entrepreneurs. But one of the most striking commonalities shared by our interviewees is their instinctive drive to start early, selling things like pokemon cards before they had even heard the word ’entrepreneurship’. To me, that hints at something of an entrepreneurial DNA.

Nick S: A year ago, I couldn’t have cared less about entrepreneurship. I didn’t think that I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body. But when I started listening to these kids tell their stories, my ears perked right up. I’ve still got a long way to go, but I truly believe that the entrepreneurial spirit can be awakened in anyone. We’re counting on it.

Yanik: What was most surprising from your interviews with these success young entrepreneurs?

Nick T: I expected to learn a lot from the interviewees, but I didn’t expect them to turn my entrepreneurial world completely on its head. That impact is probably my biggest surprise. I’ve never had a more clear vision of what it takes to excel in entrepreneurship — not just in theory, but in nitty-gritty reality.

Nick S: It’s surprising to me that these kids aren’t getting more attention. Adam Horwitz had a million-dollar product launch last week, breaking all sorts of ClickBank records. He’s 18. The fact that he sat down with us for an hour — along with Catherine Cook (myYearbook.com), Michael Dunlop (incomediary.com), etc. — is pretty amazing.

Yanik: What have you learned about internet marketing through this process?

Nick T: Every internet entrepreneur should have a blog. But before you ever launch, make sure that you’ve got something to give away for free — like an eCourse, a report, or a pre-recorded webinar. Once that’s in place, you can begin leveraging it to collect the information of the people who are interested in your message. Build that community, provide them with truly valuable content, and you can’t go wrong. Eventually, they’ll want to give you some of their money.

Take Joe Penna, YouTube’s Mystery Guitar Man, for example. He makes 2-minute videos twice a week, for free. Through his videos he’s built a community of over a million subscribers who will buy just about anything he sells.

Yanik: What advice would you give to someone who wants to live the internet lifestyle?

Nick T: Go out and learn from the people who are already doing it. There’s no better resource. The more you learn now, the fewer mistakes you have to make down the road. Of course, at some point, you’ve got to stop learning and start forging your own path.

Nick S: If you want it, then go get it. You can come up with a 100 reasons why you’re not living the life that you want, but nothing and nobody has greater control over your ultimate reality than you. Recognize that and you can’t be stopped. Every one of the 25 kids we interviewed were once in your shoes, struggling to break through, and they simply bent the universe to their will. You can do the same: stop making excuses and start making it happen.

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Nick T. and Nick S. have also made a few videos with some entrepreneurial quotes from the guys in their book like the one below:

And this book isn’t just for young entrepreneurs – Barry Dunlop, a Maverick Global Intrepid Member, had this comment: “Nick and Nick – just wanted to say this is one of the best Young Entrepreneurs videos I have ever seen on YouTube. Very inspirational – even for an old entrepreneur like me. Well done guys.”

As you may know, part of my life’s mission is to inspire one million young entrepreneurs by 2020 and this book is going in the right direction. Nick and Nick are giving away a free interview from the book at YoungEntrepreneurs.50interviews.com.

A few weeks ago we held our 2nd annual Maverick Business Insider Summer Extravaganza event for Maverick Global Intrepid members and Maverick Business Insider newsletter subscribers. This 1-day event covered the maverick philosophy of make more, have more fun and give more. (If you weren’t there – you missed out!!)

(I’ll be posting some of the highlights and fun pics including a chicken suit skydiving experience)

Now one of the all-new presentations I delivered at our 1-day event covered 6 profitable online trends to pay attention to right now. And this is part of what we talked about for the first trend…

Plugging into the Facebook Network:

This is one trend that cannot be ignored, the Facebook juggernaut is growing bigger and bigger. That’s not really a surprise, but what is trend-worthy is integrated with the wave & using it for your own benefit. One of the easiest things you should consider integrating is the Facebook “Like” button.

In just a few months of being released it’s already spread to hundreds of thousands of sites. And why not? It’s cool and helps you get tap into social traction. If you haven’t seen it yet here’s an example from the Levi’s site:

So if you’re shopping (or anywhere) you can just hit “like” and if you’re logged into Facebook that action will get logged to your wall so your friends can get alerted (creating awareness and traffic). I was playing around with this before my presentation and my Facebook friends saw that I liked toddler’s jeans. Hmmm

Another variation of the like button is to show your friends faces who like the page. This has been tested to have people hit the LIKE button 4x as much as just the thumbs up icon. I also really like the way when posting a message the Facebook setting is automatically pre-checked to post to their wall. So now if I leave a comment on a blog it will show up on my wall and once again alerting my network and creating a viral effect.

We’ve been testing the ‘like’ button with comments on one of our upcoming Maverick Business Adventures Covert Ops bootcamp and it’s already got at least 1 new qualified attendee we wouldn’t have seen without this (Almost $10k – so not bad for adding a bit of code).

And then at the bottom of the page we let people post comments via their Facebook profile. It’s interesting to see the conversation there:

Exponential Social Proof

You can add even more heat to fire when you when you allow your customers to share with their network the action they just took. Here’s what I saw from one of my friends on Facebook after he bought an item from Groupon. (Notice how it created a small conversation and interaction about their brand.)

One person really blowing this up in a big way is my buddy, Mike Filsaime. He’s got a launch for his new AffiliateDotCom program with Chris Farrell and it’s just amazing how they’ve incorporated the Facebook multiplying effect.

Throughout the launch they’ve had their videos available for comments by people through their Facebook account. (We already covered why this smart since it creates the conversation and virally propels it.)

You can see the videos here

Side note: I totally recommend you check them out on 3 different “tracks”. 1) For how they’ve created them – you can see how much proof they’ve put into their videos. 2) For the Facebook viral elements I mentioned and 3) For the content. (The material is really killer especially video #2 and #3. I think you’ll have to opt-in to get in there but do it – well worth it.)

What I really loved that Mike and Chris has done is adding in the social proof of comments from buyers on the final sales video. I guarantee this helped convert some skeptical or ‘on-the-fence’ prospects. When I wrote this post they had over 1,500 people who “liked” their product after buying and have 5 pages of comments from new buyers. That is really, really powerful! You can only post on this particular wall if you’ve purchased. It has a big call-out that says “Look Who Just Joined Only Customers Can Post on this Wall” (WOW!)

This is a powerful concept you should consider applying to your own business. Here’s the link for Facebook developer tools if you want to add this to your site.

And if you want to see some of the other cool things Mike & Chris have been doing with Facebook – watch those videos. I was blown away with the concept with a simple “sidedoor” to finding the right audience for your product or service. Now if you want to get involved in their program, I think it’s closing down tonight at midnight.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing with this idea or anything cool in Facebook – leave a comment.

As Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Bzzzzzz! Wrong!

I think one of the most overlooked aspects in your marketing is naming a product or service. There’s a lot to be said of coming up with the right name that helps propel your business forward instead of slogging along. And when I talk about new names here, keep in mind this applies to domain names and titles equally.

I mean, think about it: in Hollywood, actors have known this since the start. Do you know who Marion Morrisson was? Nope? That’s John Wayne’s real name. He adopted a stage name because Marion doesn’t exactly conjure up a tough guy image. Or Norma Jeane Baker changing her name to the more glamorous Marilyn Monroe.

Here are a few more examples…

Ever heard of a Patagonian Tooth Fish? Sounds delicious, right? Not quite – but when they went with “Chilean Sea Bass” sales soared. Or how about the “Chinese Gooseberry” – wouldn’t you like to have that for a snack? No? Oh, ok then maybe “Kiwi Fruit” is a better name.

Names are quite powerful. Here’s a historical example to prove my point. Originally, the U.S. was protected by its “Department of War”; later they changed to a more peaceful sounding “Department of Defense”. One name brings up the notion that the U.S. is constantly waging war on other countries and (without turning this into a political discussion) renaming it around ‘Defense’ is significantly more palatable – even if the function is the same.

Yes, there is a lot in a name, and I’ll share with you what I consider before I give a name to a new product, service or business. In a haphazard way I’ve known how powerful names can be, starting when I was 16 years old and working with my Father selling medical equipment. We created a private label X-ray film to be sold to our customers and my Dad tasked me with naming it. I came up with “Ultimate X-ray Film” and it turned into a major best-seller.

Now, I got to thinking of names the other day because Missy asked me to help her friend come up with a name for her new speaker management company. She was going to go with her last name i.e. “Sxxlor Management”. Yuck! Boring!

I started thinking about the ultimate benefit a speaker would want. To me, it would be something about moving up to a higher level of fees or being completely booked. So I came up with “Booked Solid Speaker Services”. I thought that was way better and included a serious benefit. I guess not. She went with her generic last name for the company name. In my opinion – big mistake! There’s no differentiation and no benefit.

Since I started really as a copywriter I know that words are incredibly important. Each one has a distinct difference. And if you get the name right you get “branding” as a by-product of powerful direct response advertising for your product or service.

Okay, so let me give you some of my ideas around naming, boiled down to 8 things to consider:

1)      Alliteration – A name needs to sound good being said aloud. A lot of times I like alliteration, like “Maverick Mastermind” with the 2 M’s. A part of this is you need to say your product name aloud and make sure it can’t be screwed up on the radio or in conversation.  Like does “Computers For You” have a number “4” or just a letter “U” in it? I see this mistake a lot for domain names (btw – all this advice holds true for domains.)

2)      Benefit-oriented – Many times I like to use a name that has meaning to it. If you heard it you’d know right away what it is. For my first ‘real’ book, “Moonlighting on the Internet”, there’s an instant benefit with the term “Moonlighting” – it brings to mind a spare time venture and was perfect for my book which is all about 5 ways to make a couple hundred dollars extra online.

3)      Beware of the Web 2.0 syndrome – For some reason after companies like Flickr or Delicio.us got big everybody wanted to create some sort of mildly dyslexic spelling for their company name that seemed cool. (I still don’t know if you spell Flickr with an ‘er’ or not. And I definitely have no idea how to spell delicio.us without looking it up.)

4)      Beware Initials – Yes, some of the biggest companies like AT&T or IBM have gotten away with initials but I wouldn’t hold my breath thinking that’ll work for you too. And why would you – it’s so damn boring. And along the same lines, don’t use a generic name that doesn’t mean Jack. Hmm…was I supposed to call “Capital Paper Solutions” or was it “Senate Paper”?

5)      Use Specifics – I like using numbers, days, etc. My buddy Tim Ferriss’ book has made quite a splash with the title “4 Hour Work Week”. It’s a pretty specific and compelling name. Other works that have sold well just from their ‘specific’ titles include “8-Minute Abs” and “5 Hour Energy”. Personally, one of my best selling eBooks has the title of “33 Days to Online Profits” – once again playing up the specifics here.

6)      Who is the marketplace? The kind of name will help you define who is attracted to your product or service. You might remember years back when ‘Boston Chicken’ changed to ‘Boston Market’. I thought that was a bad idea because it was more generic – apparently others thought so too and it began losing sales. They changed the name back but the damage was done already. Personally, I think more people should embrace tight markets with their name and not try to be everything to everybody.

7)      Is it Trademarkeable? This is an important consideration depending on how big you want to build your brand – but it’s always worth checking USPTO.gov or a new site called Trademarkia.com.

8)      Bonus: Can your name help create unique language? This is a bit more advanced and much of this will come organically if your customers have a high affinity – but it’s something to consider. Look at TED, the conference for Tech, Education and Design. Now attendees call themselves ‘TEDsters’ and have been developing rituals and languaging around the event. (Read “Primal Branding” for more on this notion.) With Maverick Business Adventures® members use the term ‘Maverick Moments’ to talk about a funny incident or story that went on during a trip.

Let me share with you a few of the names I’ve created and give you the thinking behind them.

• Instant Sales Letters: Uses the benefit-driven name with the prefix ‘Instant’ added to the generic item I was selling. This was my very fist $1M+ product and I think the name had a lot to do with it.

As a side note: I’m a big believer in using prefixes or suffixes to help you get the domain you really want. (i.e. Instant, Ultimate, Magic, Formula, System, etc. Names like Autoresponder Magic or UltimateDiscountDomains.com)

• Underground Online Seminar – The term “Underground” immediately brings to mind something secretive so it was a perfect name for our seminar series around real-world people teaching about how they make millions online. (Note: The very best discounts and bonuses expire January 20^th so you don’t want to wait until the last minute to attend. www.UndergroundOnlineSeminar.com)

• Internet Lifestyle – I’ve liked the word “lifestyle” ever since I saw it featured in “Words That Work” by Frank Luntz. People can relate to a lifestyle because it’s different for everybody, and the ‘Internet Lifestyle’ embodies a lot of what I do.

• Maverick Business Adventures® – this was a name I’d worked on for a long time. Originally the name was going to be a “Millionaire Business Adventures” – I definitely didn’t think it had the same ring to it so I kept brainstorming. I liked the ‘MBA’ initials as a play on a real MBA – and that’s when the word ‘Maverick’ stuck.

I don’t think I’ve ever shown this before, but here’s the logo for Millionaire Business Adventures. We were going to have different adventure activities on cuff links but alas I scrubbed it.

Hopefully, you’ll agree ‘Maverick Business Adventures’ was the better choice. The word ‘Millionaire’ comes loaded with some interesting connotations around who millionaires are. I think it’s a good word for something that helps people achieve millionaire status – we own “Maverick Millionaires” and there’s been an ongoing program called “Maui Millionaires” that has done really well. Though for targeting a group of millionaires – I’m not so sure even though ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ seems to defy this.

The ultimate test of your name is your marketplace and you can always test different names using Google Ad Words. That’s what Tim Ferriss did for ‘4 Hour Work Week’ before releasing it. And I did the same for “Moonlighting on the Internet” vs. “Moonlighting Online” as the publisher wanted to call it for brevity.

Here’s an interesting case study – http://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/domain-product-name-testing.html

One product name (StockScreener 5.0) performed 17% better than the next best name. They tested 22 different names and the worst performed at 300% worse – just by changing the name. Hmm…maybe you should you shouldn’t choose a domain name, product name or service without running some Google Ad Word tests?

What do you think? Leave me a comment and let me know…

At Maverick Business Adventures we always work on making business breakthroughs and sessions in unusual settings and more fun! (We’ve done sessions on the side of the Colorado River, in air hangers, grass thatched huts in Baja, on Safari with breaks for elephants and more!)

Over the last few years we’ve invented and customized different business “games” to develop business strategies, ideas and interactions among members.

I was really excited when I found the book “Gamestorming” written by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo. I’ve never seen a compilation of the coolest, most creative ways to get teams and individuals engaged and playing. It’s a cool little playbook and they also want to create a community of other Gamestormers beyond just the book. In fact, I just recently posted on the Gamestorming blog adding the wiki one of the games we use at Maverick called “Air Time Mastermind”. Check it out and leave a comment!