7 Year Old Entrepreneur Sells Beer Instead of Lemonade
January 10, 2009 by Steven Seppinni
When I was 7 years old living in Queens New York is when my first entrepreneurial spark hit me. We lived in a new apartment complex and many of the buildings were still under construction. So I thought as opposed to creating a lemonade stand to sell beverages to the thirsty construction workers I would sell them ice-cold beer.
I reasoned that construction workers would prefer beer (especially Rheingold, my first demographic study) than lemonade. As you can imagine I ran into a bit of resistance. The liquor store refused to sell to me, and my parent’s cabossed the idea.
As entrepreneur’s we have many first, the first idea big or small, the first business plan, the first capital raise, the first business and now for me the first blog.
As a business owner and consultant I applied to this task the same attitude as if I were starting a new business. My rational is simple; this blog is part of my personal brand. My personal brand if developed properly has a monetary value. Therefore I should apply sound business practices to building this blog.
So lets start out with a few things I did not do. Outsource its development. Tell my assistant “do the best you can with it”. Have my logo designed using clip art. Use the first blog platform I found on google. Give it to my brother in law to do he needs to make some extra money (full disclosure, I’m not married but you get the point).
Here are a few things I did do. I had a professional graphic artist design my logo (and yes I trademarked it). I went through many blog themes till I found what I wanted and then had it customized. I hired Marty Stewart at Publicity Staffing to assist me in promoting the blog (what good is a blog if you don’t get traffic to it?). I even had the background (the blue gradient you see on the sides of the blog) custom done.
If you treat your personal brand as a business it will reward you for years to come (just ask Donald Trump). A friend of mine defines blogging as your conversation with the world. Well then, hello world.
