Here is another interesting interview for you, this time it is with the entrepreneurial 15 year old Benjamin Lang. I hope you enjoy it!

Firstly, could you please tell us about yourself? (Who are you, where do you live, how old are you, what do you do for a living?)

I’m 15 years old. I live in New York currently. I’ve lived in a few different countries and speak 3 languages. I started an eBay selling business about 7 months ago, the real spark came when I was on Channel 12. From there business grew and I started working on web design. So now I sell stuff on eBay and I am starting to design people’s sites.

You have a variety of websites and skills, why did you start these and how did you go about it?

Well as I learnt more and more I became more curious… so I bought a few websites, started doing a few different things and learnt on the way.

How do you keep yourself motivated?

I don’t need motivation, I’m always motivated!

I know that you went to Israel, how did this help you and what did you learn there?

Well Israel was a turning point in my life not only in the business aspect. I did though start my ebay business there. I started by selling my grandfather’s camera equipment online. The cash started pouring in because it was quite expensive equipment. So I thought, maybe if I sold other people’s stuff I could make even more… which eventually lead to the creation of my business.

Have you ever had times where you thought yourself or your websites as a “failure”? If so how did you stop feeling like it? If not how do you keep yourself so optimistic?

The only site of mine that’s not going very well is www.teenbizstarter.com. I wanted to help out other teens start businesses but I can get the site how I want it so it’s not really going anywhere.

Do you believe that entrepreneurialism is in the blood or that it can be learned?

I think its both. My dad is an entrepreneur but I think that you can learn how to be one if you are very motivated.

What advice would you recommend to other young entrepreneurs?

I would say networking, perseverance and creativity is very crucial. I’ve been working on networking very hard. It takes a lot of effort but pays off. Perseverance I feel that I’ve mastered, I try very hard to be successful at everything I do. Creativity is very important and I’m still working on it.

What plans do you have the future?

I’d like to start bigger companies and work as an entrepreneur for my whole life. Hopefully by the time I’m 21 I’ll be competing with Google.

Thank you very much Ben. I am sure you can see why this is inspirational, everything he says shows that he has dedication and purpose. I wish him the best of luck, perhaps he might even stick around here and help give tips?

Hello,

I have not posted anything in almost 2 weeks, so I thought I should give you all a little update. As you know, I am 15 so I am currently going through a lot of exams. This means I have had to do a lot of revision and have not had time to do anything to Success Circuit. I will try my best to get posting more but cannot promise anything as I have exams until the 22nd of June.

However, I would like to run a little test of my own. As you may know, there are many websites similar to this one. So I have been searching for new approaches. Personally I believe that you can learn a lot from history, and other subjects, which can help you be successful. It is very similar to learning from interviews, as you are able to learn from others mistakes. So I would like to open a new section of Success Circuit, which will be called Knowledge for now, to help you by using these ways of learning. I may also be able to incorperate my revision into this so it helps everybody!

Please let me know if you ever think of anything that could help with improving Success Circuit. Also contact me if you want any advice or help about anything, I am always happy to help.

Thank you,

Shane Hudson

A man that needs no introduction… it’s Dean Hunt!!

Firstly, could you please talk about yourself? (Who are you, where do you live, what do you do etc.)

Sure thing, and thanks for having me. My name is Dean Hunt, I am 26 years old, from the UK, and am best known as the leader in the world of buzz marketing.

I got into the Internet as a form of income back in 2002, I had previously been training to play golf for a living, but a knee injury put an end to that. So I turned to the Internet instead. (note: my knee is fine now)

How, and why, did you start Buzz Marketing and blogging about it?

I got into it kinda by accident. I just wrote what amused, entertained or interested me, and other people seemed to also get excited by it.
I got into it just by trying to stand out from the crowd and getting noticed.

Who, or what, was your inspiration?

It sounds strange, but I don’t think I have one. I have always just done what has entertained me… so I suppose I am my own inspiration

How do you keep yourself motivated?

It has been tough, but for me, I try and outsource all the boring stuff. If you remove all the boring things, you are just left with the fun things. Sounds simplistic, but it can be done.

Also, be wary of working from home… it might sound good, but you are always at work, it is hard to differentiate between work and personal life.

You are a marketing genius – you have killer bunnies, 1 million dollar reviews and Adolf Hitler hates you! – How did you become so creative? Do you believe it is in your blood or can it be taught?

I am 100% confident that creativity is a skill. I see it like a muscle, the more you train it the better it becomes. I study creative thinking, and I know a few tricks and secrets to appear like a creative genius I teach them at www.buzzprofits.com.

On your sidebar there is a video, are they the rabbits from Rayman Raving Rabbits?

Initially they were… I found a video from Rayman Rabbits, and it made me laugh… at the time, I was editing my blog, and I put it on the blog as a joke. I intended to remove it the next day… however, people started emailing me and saying they loved “my video”.

So I stuck with it… I also had a designer create some new bunnies.

I, as well as I expect the majority of readers on here, am very interested in “spicing up” my online identity however I do not think Success Circuit would work so well if it had bright pink dragons with rainbow coloured chickens riding them. Do you believe any site can be marketed the way you teach on your blog and at Buzz Profits, if so how would one go about it?

It is not about killer bunnies… it is about being different from the norm. Most people use sports cars and dollar bills in their marketing sites, so I wanted to be different. If you do not stand out from the crowd, you will not get noticed.

Here is a quick secret to instantly appear like a creative genius:

Do the opposite of the norm.

So for example, if you are designing a website, you could write down all the things that would normally be true. e.g header is at the top, it is a certain shape, a certain size, it loads automatically, looks professional… etc… then, ask yourself, “what if I do the opposite?”

This is a great way to appear like a genius.

You say you have 6 billion RSS readers, would you be prepared to tell us how many you REALLY have?

Haha, I honestly don’t know. I messed up my feedburner feed, so I no longer track the details. My guess is that it is between 5,000-8,000

What were your goals when you started? Have you achieved them yet? If so, how did you manage this?

I don’t think I had any goals when I started.. I just tried to amuse myself and my friends and family. I have vastly exceeded anything I could have ever expected.

At any point have you thought yourself or blog as a “failure” or had any major problems? If so how did you manage to get through this and what did you learn?

I had issues with hackers, but managed to fix them. I have never seen it as a failure, mainly because it has opened so many doors for me. For example:   I was recently paid $1 million from the team behind www.ConstructZero.com to have my personal brand sponsored. Basically, I wear their website logo on my clothing at all public appearances, photos, videos etc… this shows the value of a powerful personal brand on a blog.

If you could tell yourself one thing when you started this unique career of yours, what would it be?

Outsource where possible, focus on the things that make money, find a mentor, be yourself, everyone else is already taken… oh, and, you have to value your time before anyone else will.

What plans do you have for the future?

I am writing a book later this year, I am in talks with a leading book publishers at the moment. Also, to continue to make www.buzzprofits.com the leading site for people who want to create buzz and escape the average.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I would like to thank you and your readers for reading this… I hope it was helpful. Feel free to grab my free tips at http://www.buzzprofits.com/maxtraffic/index.cfm

Thank you Dean.

I found that to be a very interesting interview, and I am sure you all did too. Please comment with any questions, I am sure Dean would be willing to answer!

Shane

Hi, I am very sorry for the lack of content lately, and it will only get worse over the next month. This is because of my GCSE exams and revision for them. Do not worry though, Success Circuit will be back and better than ever after the exams are over. For now though the show must go on, just with shorter posts for now!

I just had a shower, people usually have ideas on the toilet but mine came whilst I was having a shower. The shower only got built in a few weeks ago, before that we had a bath. Why am I telling you this? Well, it is because I noticed something incredible: The hotter the shower, the less water there is.

I expect some of you have realised my point now. If you have a very generalised website then you could reach hundreds of thousands of people but they would not stay for long at all. However, if you write very posts of a very specific niche then you will reach less people but they will stay longer and probably become regular visitors.

I love the community atmosphere of some websites, particularly ProBlogger, and it is one of my biggest aims for Success Circuit. To be part of a community. It seems to me that niches have the best communities because of their purpose. A niche is a hot shower.

This is a very short post today so I shall make sure to update it when I can. Perhaps you could discuss it using our new Disqus commenting system? It has many more features so I have decided to give it a test run.

I hope you benefited from this post,

Shane

In this post, Tom Swanson from Sick Logic shows us how to grow trust and readers through consistency.

You can always count on Rossie O’Donald to have something shocking and
outrageous to say. She’s consistently saying something. She consistently is current, outrageous, and contagious. She is a prime example of someone who follows SickLogic’s rules to start a swine flu epidemic. Find the previous post here :
http://www.sicklogic.com/concept-behind-swine-flu-yields-healthy-business/.

The Followed

TMZ is a gossip website and television show in which they follow celebrities and report on what they are doing world wide. There is a reason behind why the always follow the same individuals around. It’s because they know they are consistently going to put on a show for the cameras.

Integrating a unique consistent business approach into your online ventures is a must in order to succeed. Today I’m going to outline three positive ways to gain your readers or clients trust by being consistent.

1. Linking or Commenting on Previous Information -
   Whether a blog or a service provider, you can accomplish this simple
   step. If you provide content to readers, simply referring back to previous content with a link or simply by mentioning it can show that you still stand by your word. If you are a service provider, simply refer to your slogan often. This not only builds a better brand, it builds a level of trust behind your name.
2. Don’t Change Your Brand -
   A sure-fire way to show that you are unstable and not confident in what
   you have is by changing your brand on a consistent basis. I’m
   specifically poking at service providers that are getting a new logo,
   site design, and target audience every few months.Don’t get me wrong, I understand that we sometimes make mistakes and
   have to change our brand. but making minor adjustments over a long
   period of time is a better alternative.
3. Careful Planning -
   I’m someone who likes to make fast decisions because I know what I
   want. This can be a very productive personality trait, but careful
   planning must be integrated into everyone’s personality, including
   mine. Writing out a business plan yields a healthy consistent
   business. Be sure to check out SickLogic.com for our next article
   which will be on how to write a better business plan.

Thanks.
Tom Swanson

Tom Swanson runs the blog Sick Logic which is a very good blog to read about Making Money Online, other authors of the blog include Dean Hunt and JD Rucker. Remember, the Making Money Online niche can teach you how to do a lot more than just that. I urge you to subscribe to Sick Logic’s RSS feed right now!

I am not a psychologist, so this post may not be 100% accurate, but obviously many of you are interested in it as my post about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has been Success Circuit’s most visited post since I wrote it! As you know I started Success Circuit with the ambition of inspiring and motivating you. But I soon realised that there are many meanings of both words. So today I would like to jump head first into a Psychologist’s brain and explain what learned motives mean, there are many types of motives as you can see from Maslow’s Hierarchy but there are too many to be explained in one post. If you would like me to make a series from this then let me know.

One of the many meanings, and the one that we will be using today, of the word motive is “Specific need, desire, or want, such as hunger, thirst, or achievement, that energizes and directs goal-oriented behaviour”.

We are not born with all of our motives intact, even motives such as hunger and thirst are partly learned. Throughout our childhood, and even into adulthood, it is possible to learn new motives.I shall not go in to much detail about all of the motives as only a few relate to what we teach at Success Circuit.

Aggression

Our first motive is Aggression, behaviour that is intended to harm others. It is not aggression if you harm somebody accidently. When babies are born they are not aggressive so they must learn it from somewhere. I have seen people blame many different things so here is a list to show them.

• Parents
• Visitors
• Media
• Music
• School

I do not believe that any one factor is the reason, it is a collaboration of them all. The aggression is developed as we grow, for example, through sports such as Rugby and Boxing.

Achievement

This is a very important motive. If you are a regular reader of Success Circuit then chances are you have a desire to excel. Some people try to excel in everything they do, some just try to do their best at one activity or task.

It is unknown where this motive is first learned because everybody is affected by it is different ways. I believe it is this motive that defines the word Entrepreneur. Achievement is closely linked to work orientation (the desire to work well), mastery and competitiveness (comparing one’s skills to another’s). Here are another couple of motives that are useful to know.

Power motive – The need to be influential and recognised.

Affiliation motive – The need to be socially involved with people.

As you have probably noticed, this is not my strong point. But it is one I, and many of the readers here, am interested in. So if you know more about it than I do please email me at Shane@shanehudson.net and either let me know how I am improve this post or perhaps even write a guest post!

I hope this has got you thinking about how it is useful to know about motives. Please comment with your thoughts,

Shane