I'm 16 and want to create a startup in the future - should I start it now or prepare first?

Start by educating your prospects through content. Content marketing’s purpose is to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating relevant and valuable content with the intention of changing or enhancing consumer behavior. It is an ongoing process that is best integrated into your overall marketing strategy, and it focuses on owning media, not renting it. This generation of customers are taking drastic steps to avoid marketing messages. As consumers, we use DVRs to skip television ads, pay internet radio subscription fees to avoid commercials, mentally block out — or use plug-ins to avoid — internet click ads, and gloss over road-side billboards, rendering them useless and ineffective. So how are marketers supposed to combat this shift? Education. Consumers are still buying and making purchases, but the way they go about making a decision has changed. With all of the world’s information at their finger tips, savvy consumers are doing enormous amounts of learning and self-education before stepping into a showroom or talking to a salesperson. Knowing this is a huge opportunity for brands. If you know consumers are looking for information, be the source of that information. Not with sales-y content that puts your priorities before theirs, but information that the buyer really wants and needs. Content marketing closes this gap by using brand-created educational content to satisfy the prospective buyer while helping the sales team convert anonymous visitors into buyers. Thought leaders and marketing experts from around the world, including the likes of Seth Godin and hundreds of the leading thinkers in marketing have concluded that content marketing isn’t just the future, it’s the present (see the video below on the history of content marketing). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OHgMMpGLzk The key ingredient to using content to attract new customers is in the advanced planning. The strategy. What is a Content Marketing Strategy A content marketing strategy is a roadmap; a “User’s Guide” to how your brand will do the following: - Meet the customer at their specific point within their buying cycle - Align the customer’s needs with your knowledge and expertise - Use your brand’s assets to meet these objectives Business-to-Business marketers who have a documented content marketing strategy are 66% more likely to consider themselves effective compared to only 11% of those without a documented strategy. A content marketing plan helps you see the end-game before you have even started. Further, it gives a clear, articulable vision for your entire team and keeps you on track throughout the campaign. Just like New Years resolutions often fade into a foggy memory, our intentions are good – but we allow resolutions to fail. To be successful in any strategy, we need to be intentional. For proper sales and marketing alignment, and for the success of your bottom line, you must have a plan in place. How to Start Your Content Strategy The framework of a content marketing strategy is fairly straight forward: - Who are you targeting? What are their needs? - How are you going to reach them? (Attract new and nurture existing) - What content do you have now to get started? - What is your plan to develop and share more - How will you measure your efforts 1. Personas Take some time to consider who you are targeting. Are they male or female? Does it matter? Do they have a career? Children? Are they affluent? Coupon cutters? What are their goals? What happens if they do not reach them? Is their a monetary penalty for them? Will meeting this goal further their career? Will it make them happy? Clearly defining your targeted personas will save you a lot of time, energy, and money as you continue your business. With this person in mind, your content marketing strategy will begin to fall into place and you will feel that you are having a conversation with this “person”, rather than blindly throwing stuff out there. 2. Outreach Content marketing and social media are often used synonymously. This is a mistake. Content marketing is a broad method of marketing whereas social media is a tool that complements getting your content seen. "Content is fire, and social media is gasoline." Jay Baer, Convince & Convert Imagine your website as your online hub, where all of your brand-controlled content resides, your social media profiles are spokes that lead back to your home base. Social media has the power to reach incredible numbers of potential customers, influencers, existing customers, and even the opportunity to convert customers from competitors. Social media, in and of itself, is not content marketing. It is one of your outreach tools. 3. Available Content Next, take stock of materials you have on hand already. Many of us sit in offices filled with brochures, flyers, handouts, manuals, and documents loaded with helpful information, but we do little to extend that information to potential customers on the web. Make a list of the content available to you immediately and start identifying which persona is most aligned, where they are within their sales process, and what pain point they are currently facing. Getting started, you can use what you have on hand. But I recommend expecting this low-hanging fruit to run out. You should plan on developing your own, unique content. For a number of reasons, search engines reward fresh, unique content. Further, your prospective customers will be looking for information that is not available everywhere. Your unique perspective and “voice” (the tone in which you talk, the way you communicate, and what you share) may be the first experience a prospective customer has with you. This is the beginning of a long business relationship. 4. Schedule and Share Your Content After you have compiled your educational materials, grab a calendar. I recommend looking out 3-4 months to start. Mark holidays, special events, and milestones. Working backwards, prepare your marketing message for these campaigns. For example, one client of ours hosts 4-5 annual sales. They all surround major US holidays (New Years, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Thanksgiving/Black Friday). By knowing this, it is easy for us to prepare everything from banner ads, Pinterest images, blog posts, Facebook Status, videos, and even newspaper ads (don’t shoot the messenger). Once you have those events marked, consider a “theme” of the week for those 3-4 months. With that theme, and your personas in mind, write out the following for each week: - 2 Blog Posts - 8-10 Facebook updates - 20-30 Twitter updates - 4-5 product photos for Pinterest - 3-4 Instagram ideas - 1 Video By no means is this list all-inclusive. It is a starting point to get you thinking about how to plan content. To get a specific content marketing plan designed for your brand, I need to interview you and understand your goals, personas, and timeline. 5. Analytics Finally, how are you going to measure your work? Remember when we set up our goals earlier? Were you specific in identifying how many leads you want to generate? “Get more leads” is a horrible strategy, better is “Gain 50 new leads by September 1st” or “increase from 6% conversion rate to 12% conversion rate” These types of goals are easily measured and tracked. Do you have a mechanism in place to measure, monitor, and gauge your efforts? Further, do you have the right people on your team to help you know what is working and what is not? Can you explain why certain marketing dollars are generating a return on your investment while others fall flat? I can already think of many ways you can do this with your self-sufficient students. Let's book a call and we can discuss further. -Shaun

I recommend a cleanse. It should not be a knee jerk reaction, but should be calm and calculated. There is a wonderful blog post about this at http://realitywithrashell.blogspot.ca/2009/05/life-enema-try-it-youll-like-it.html

The Systems Mindset would work for your personal life. Consider the following quotes from Sam Carpenter's book "Work the System" : "Unhappy people are not in control of their lives because they spend their days coping with the unintentional bad results of unmanaged systems. Happy people are in control of their lives, spending their days enjoying the intentional good results of managed systems." ..."each of us is a system of systems. But here’s the rub: some of them—each of which, always remember, can be visualized as a distinct entity—are headed in oblique directions, confusing our efforts to reach our conscious goals." So basically, we act as Project Engineers who constantly work to tweak and perfect the various systems that make up the various aspects of our lives. To move forward in an integrated manner rather than "firefighting" or constant crisis management. We start this by taking a stance "above and apart" from the issues so that the distance gives us the detachment to study the various systems that we are part of. Think about the 3 main documents that Sam Carpenter talked about in the book which he says is vital for business. These are :- 1. Strategic Objectives 2. Operating principles 3. Working procedures In your personal life, your strategic objectives would be your ultimate purpose or life mission. Operating principles would be the principles you use to make decisions and should be congruent with your strategic objectives. And working procedures would be how you do any specific "thing". For instance, if one of your strategic objectives is to live with integrity, your guiding principle for that would involve asking if a particular action is congruent with your sense of integrity. Then one of the working procedures for your relationships would deal with honest communication. Eg. in your "Late going home" procedure, you might have the following steps : 1. Call spouse 2. Inform true reason 3. Inform what time you can be expected back. "Inform true reason" would be congruent with your objective. You would communicate the true reason and not an excuse. The above is a rather simplistic example but this entire approach can be useful to all areas of our lives even if we don't create detailed working procedures as we would for businesses. This is how the Systems Mindset can be applied to our personal lives. It would help us identify our values and live more in line with them. And to live more effectively and efficiently too.

Erghh...tough to answer because at 18 I know I didn't listen to many people...and I thought I was a "nice kid." A lot of this stuff is learned through trial and error, and this saying (which has been attributed to many people from Mark Twain on down) is accurate: “Good judgement is the result of experience and experience the result of bad judgement.” So at least in this model, you have to go through the bad to understand the good. I'll say this, from my own experience: The time will pass. In three blinks of an eye you will be 40. I know it seems like a far away point now, but trust me, time accelerates as you get older. Each summer you plan to learn how to sail a small boat. Each summer passes and you have to work, you can't take the time off to do the course, the sunny days pass by. Suddenly you are 30. Blink. The time will pass. If you want to get good at something--business, music, art, whatever--start now. Persist. The time passes, quicker and quicker, whether you like it or not, and if you stick with whatever it is, you will develop that skill... ...and suddenly, in two blinks of an eye, you will realize you are a professional. I have perhaps 25 functional years left in the workforce. The full force of this is in my face every waking minute. Be the person you want to be--or be a flake. That is fate's demand. Don't be too concerned about money at your age. You can build it. Live beneath your means. I didn't, through my mid-20s, and it bothers me to this day. Put a percentage of your income aside every paycheck. Then you can take vacations when the opportunity arises, buy stuff on sale that you really want when it comes up, take that sailing course and get started on the road to enjoyment and perhaps mastery. Don't let circumstances rule you. Need to get out of work early to take that course? Talk to your boss about it. Start a side business now, if you're so inclined. You can make all the mistakes early and it won't cost you much...and you can be a pro at 28. Because, trust me, the time will fly by. Make the things you want to happen...happen. Don't be too interested in pleasing other people. It doesn't pay off. They will simply take advantage and then take more. Take care of yourself first. If a choice comes down to doing something you know is important to your life, or pleasing someone else and suppressing your desire or interest, choose yourself. You can always get another job. Speaking of jobs...don't let anyone tell you that "you have to pay your dues" or "you have to have more experience." That is the Chicken Little way of the world and those people do not know what they are talking about. Someone told me I couldn't be a factory manager when I was 24. I quit, and within 4 months was a plant manager. People do not know what they are talking about. Even me. Trust yourself. Find your own truth. There are MANY ways to success--not just one. Not just the single one advertised on television. You can figure it out your way, and you'll probably be a lot happier. Oh, and invest in some solid real estate as soon as you can to get a passive income going.

I am not an attorney and this is not "professional advice." Consult a lawyer. If you get involved with a partnership ever again, get an operating agreement in place and TALK ABOUT SEPARATING at the beginning. Get it figured out immediately. Be up front with it: "We should talk about what happens if one of us dies. Or wants to move on." It's not offensive, or confidence-gutting...it's smart (as you probably now see.) Generally speaking, an agreed-upon independent third party firm would assess the value of the company. This firm would be named in the operating agreement provisions so there wouldn't be bickering at the time of separation. Another typical provision is that partners have first right of refusal on share sales. But since you don't seem to have such an agreement in place, it's probably going to be tough for you now. The more you fight the more the other shareholder is going to fight back. Consult an attorney. Find out if there are any restrictions on selling your shares. My guess is that with a negative cash position due to debt, the company isn't worth a whole lot. You may be able to have a value assessed based on revenue...but if you leave, how much of that goes with you? Is the business model based on repeat customers, or one-time sales? You need more expertise than a Clarity answer to solve this one. And remember, the more mean-spirited you approach this question, the more resistance you will get. My opinion--which again is not "professional advice" and is merely for discussion--is for you to quietly discover your options by consulting an attorney and accountant good at digital business evaluation (most are not), and wait for the company to return to profitability.