Why Being Young Makes You a Great Entrepreneur – Part Two: Your Network
Being young has a lot of advantages. Wrinkle-free skin, the ability to drive at night and the ability to bounce back after an all-hours party.
With all that said, youth isn’t taken as seriously in business.
This post is part two of an ongoing series with a focus on why being young is a real advantage to you in business. This post wlll talk about you, your network of friends online, and how that’s a huge advantage when you’re starting up your own little business.
My mom is “new to the computer”. Maybe your mom is too. With moms just getting their e-mails set up, or inaugurating their new Facebook account with a non-sarcastic “is on Facebook” status update, I’m pretty sure that they weren’t our mothers, we’d call the newbies. My mom’s friends probably don’t know how to “work the internet” let alone have an email account.
By contrast, we as a generation are heavily networked. Technology has allowed us to make contacts with more people online than we could interact with in person. It’s easy to follow 200 classmates on twitter than it is meet each one every day and give them a “what’s up?”.
Moreover, there isn’t a question about whether they’re on Facebook or have email. I don’t know anyone in my circle of peers who doesn’t log on to the ‘net daily. It’s all old hat to us.
So why is having all your friends hooked up a big deal? It means that if you have something to sell, you already have a network to sell to.
Selling to your peers has so many advantages. You know your demographic because you’re likely to be your own demographic. You know where you hang out online, how much money your friends have to spend, and what’s cool and new. Big corporations pay big money to marketers to research information you already have and to make connections you’ve already made.
Moreover, you’re there first. How many years had you been using Myspace before you started seeing big movies and music artists get their own Myspace pages? The big boys are chasing the trends you already know about.
On top of all that, you have a network of people who know you and are willing to vouch for you. If you tell your network that you’ve started selling a particular type of product, some people will buy, some people will let others know about who you are and what you’re doing. Because they know you, they’re more willing to recommend you. Personal recommendations like that are impossible to put a dollar value to.
The lesson: broadcast what you’re doing to your network. Tell people what you’re selling and ask them to spread the word. You’ll be surprised how great the results are.
What do you think? Would you tell your myspace/facebook friends that you’re starting a new venture?
Thursday’s post: How to price your products to sell (without starving yourself!)