A few normal distractions that we as young entrepreneurs face:

• School – Probably the biggest distraction you could face at a young age.
• Relationships – Boyfriends and girlfriends can easily get you off track and take up a lot of your time. Learn to balance the relationship and set some ground rules for when you need to be focused on your business.
• Friends – During school you’re friends are always looking to be going out, partying, drinking, and getting crazy. After you graduate, it doesn’t change too much but it may slow down some. Saying “no” to your friends is a hard thing to do but if you’re going to be starting a business while also working a job after graduation, you need those evening hours and weekends to hustle and grow your business.
• Life – Sometimes you just may not feel like doing any work or just want to have a normal relaxed evening. That’s fine; just don’t let it happen every day, otherwise your ambitions of starting your business up will quickly slip away.
• Sports Fan? – Are you a big football fan? Don’t waste 4 hours on a Sunday sitting in front of the TV drinking and eating, being non-productive and wasting your time. Either record the games, read the highlights the next day, or leave it on in the background while working. For young entrepreneurs, especially dudes, sports can be a major distraction…almost every night of the week. Don’t let it overcome your life like many people do. Watching a 4 hour football game won’t better your life; building your business will.
• Work – I know, it sucks. There’s no two ways about it. If you’re an entrepreneur and stuck working a normal “9-5” type job, you’re just itching to get out and leave that place.

In all of these cases, it comes down to one thing – your passion for your business and future. If you’re passionate about your business, then you HAVE to keep moving on and not let these distractions get in your way. Now, on the flip side, it’s also important that you do have a life outside of your business, don’t think that I’m suggesting you don’t.

There has to be a balance of work and play, and you should try to not blur that line as much as possible. If you are passionate about what you are working on it, then it will be easy to stay driven and focused. This is the key to success, and everyone is talking about it! Being passionate about your business, your baby in most cases, is what makes the difference for most people. Just working something on the side for a couple hours on a weekend is cool and all, but you’re clearly not passionate about it. If your driven, you’re going to be working on that business ever moment that you are awake.

Are you focused on your success?

It’s time to get inspired.

The opportunities to connect with millions of like minded people are limitless through the power of the internet. Social media has made it incredibly easy to meet people who want more out of life than the average person you’d meet walking down the street. It’s not that every person online is inspired or on a mission–it’s the ones that stand out who are. The people who reach out to you, who you seem drawn towards, who are intriguing to talk to, are the ones who are doing the leading. The conversations they are having make them leaders, make them popular and make their businesses grow. They’ve achieved this success online because…

They took the leap.

It’s time to stop thinking and start doing. It’s time to open your mouth or moving your fingers to have real conversations with real people. Want people to know about your brand? Your Twitter search better be streaming at all times, tracking your industry. Get into the trenches and start conversing, answering people’s questions and finding people who have the same passions you do. It’s this network of people who will grow your brand for you.

Don’t know what you stand for?

Start meeting other inspired people. The biggest leaders will shout from the rooftops to get the message out about what they believe in. Reading blogs and surfing Twitter are great ways to get to know people who love what they do. Starting taking notes from these people who are completely lost in their work.

Follow these passionate people:

@SmallBizTrends (Small Business)
@ProBlogger (Blogging)
@JohnnyCupcakes (T-shirts)
@TomZiglar (Personal Development)
@GaryVee (Wine)
@LivestrongCEO (Health)
@Under30CEO (Entrepreneurship)
@BarryMoltz (Customer Service)
@GrowthCoachCorp (Business Coaching)
@Philanthropy411 (Non Profit)

Matt Wilson is co-founder of Under30CEO. Learn to create your rock star online presence at http://RockStarBusinessSeries.com

…okay, still with me? Alright, here are a few simple goals for 2009 that I’d love to meet.

1. Grow Dorm Room Biz RSS subscriber numbers to over 250. The count is currently at 109, which is good, however, I want to grow that a lot. Reaching a broader audience will then help grow the site and help me achieve more of my goals.
2. Generate over $250 a month from Dorm Room Biz. I’m on the way to doing this, as each month lately I have been around $100-$150. Reaching $250 should not be a problem. However, there is an evil side to this. ALL of that money does not come from Dorm Room Biz, about 15% comes from two other sites. But because it is a little amount, I just include it within the Dorm Room Biz income. Too much of a pain to sort it all out when the payments are combined!
3. Completely redesign and restructure the website…this is coming soon. With any luck, by the end of January I will be releasing the new theme for the site and I hope to keep it for at least the rest of the year.

A couple non-Dorm Room Biz goals that I have are:

1. Launch 2 more celebrity focused websites. I currently have TheRavenSymone which preforms pretty well in the search engines and brings in small change each month. I’m building my second site now and will be making a bigger announcement about it towards the end of January when I have some more content up. I’d like to get at least 2 more sites up and running by the summer so that they can continue to grow throughout the remainder of the year. The sites will probably be static HTML sites rather than being based on WordPress, but we will see what happens with that.
2. Grow my website development business to at least $3,000 a month in revenue. Over the past couple months I have slacked on actively promoting it and looking for new clients. 2009 will be a new year and a new leaf turned for the business. I’m working on getting a new logo for the business and a new website will follow. When these are done, it will be time to fit the ground running to find new clients.
3. This final one is a long shot, but I’d love to launch my eBay company into a retail space and make it a fully self supported business. This would include finding the store front, possibly securing a loan to help upfront costs, and then growing my inventory as well as going to back to offering a drop off service (you drop off an item, I sell it, and you get most of what it sells for). This is also dependent on some factors involving a possible full internet tax and the state of eBay sales in the second half of the year. In order to accomplish this, the eBay business would need to generate at least $4000/month in sales. I’m about a third of the way there right now.

So there you have it. Lets make our goals happen together – leave a comment with your goals or a link to your post about your 2009 goals as I would love to check out what other young entrepreneurs are working towards!

Well, now that I am graduating college and moving home in a couple weeks, I wanted to sell off some of the stuff I have around the apartment. I started doing some searching on eBay and there are some other people out there selling these similar motivational/inspiration prints and thought I would throw some of mine up there too.

They are basic 8 by 10 inch prints. They come with a piece of cardboard behind them to keep them flat and safe. You can even opt in to getting a black wooden frame to go with it!

Anyway, they are up on eBay for pretty cheap and reasonable. Check them out if your interested in getting some motivation! I have about 10 of these but have only put up 4 of them so far.

Command: The power to impress – the design to conquer & the ability to command respect.

Group Effort: It is the ability to work together which determines success.

Authority: It is the strongest who prevail.

Success: Success is not happiness – happiness is the key to success.

Drop me a line if you are interested in any or all of them or seeing the others that I have! I’ll update this post later this weekend when I get them all on eBay!