Top 10 Entrepreneurs Under 30

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only nonprofit organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs. The YEC promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment and underemployment and provides its members with access to tools, mentorship and resources that support each stage of a business's development and growth.
When recently asked to name the top entrepreneur under the age of 30 who deserved an award for the work they've done in the past year, YEC members had the following to say.
1. Dave Morin of Path
It's been inspiring to watch Dave and his talented team at Path take their app from something that no one was paying attention to to one of the top apps out there. Path revolutionized iOS design by releasing one of the most beautiful apps out there, and has been on a roll ever since. —Ben Lang, founder of EpicLaunch
2. Shane Snow of Contently
Shane Snow is absolutely the most impressive individual I know for his accomplishments in recent times. A TechStars NYC alum, Shane developed Contently with his team and recently raised $2 million in a Series A round. In addition to that, he's the top infographic artist, period. Shane is also the coolest journalist you'll ever meet, having written for Mashable, Fast Company and Wired.com. —Danny Wong, co-founder of Blank Label Group
3. Drew Houston of Dropbox
Drew Houston, CEO and co-founder of Dropbox, led the startup from a simple vision—making it easy to store and share files in the cloud—to a massive business success with millions of users and sales. I am so impressed with his focus on an exceptional user experience. Drew and his team created a product that betters productivity and data storage so much, it's hard to imagine the Web without it. —Doreen Bloch, CEO and founder of Poshly
4. Nick D'Aloisio of Summly
Nick D'Aloisio, he's creating a way to summarize the Web. Not only is he young, but he caught the world's attention through Om Malik's expose on his app. The app is a window into a much more powerful concept around how content has become digestible in tidbits—especially content lacking opinion. It could be quite fascinating to companies that manage tons and tons of content that needs to be indexed. —Brian Wong, CEO and founder of Kiip
5. Ben Silbermann of Pinterest
There is a reason why Pinterest is getting so much attention right now. It's a beautifully designed product that solves a problem that nobody knew the Web was facing. It's the co-founder's vision that made it the impressive application that it is today. —Logan Lenz, president and founder of Endagon
6. Ben Milne of Dwolla
Ben Milne is the CEO and co-founder of Des Moines-based Dwolla, a peer-to-peer payment platform disrupting the mobile payments industry. Milne and his team have quickly scaled the business and is now moving over $1 million per day. Dwolla recently raised a $5 million round of funding, led by New York-based Union Square Ventures and a solid supporting team. —Jeff Slobotski, founder of Silicon Prairie News
7. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest self-made billionaire in history and arguably the greatest entrepreneur of our time. Facebook wasn't created in the past year, but Zuckerberg has presided over its continued dominance of the social Web and the company's skyrocketing valuations. And he is only 27. —Emerson Spartz, CEO and founder of Spartz Media
8. Catherine Cook of myYearbook.com
While most people want to say Mark Zuckerberg, I'd give the award to his female counterpart, Catherine Cook. Not only was Catherine just 15 years old when she started myYearbook.com, but she managed to stay under the radar by operating outside of Silicon Valley—in Pennsylvania. The site was recently acquired for a reported $100 million...while Catherine was still attending college! —Matt Wilson, co-founder of Under30CEO.com
9. Brent Beshore of AdVentures
Being a great entrepreneur isn't just about profits. Brent Beshore leads AdVentures (which was no. 28 on last year's Inc. 500), so he's made his share of money, but what I respect is his entrepreneurship for his community. When his hometown—Joplin, Mo.—was destroyed by a tornado, Brent used his skills to raise over $1 million in four days to rebuild the city. We should all strive to use our success for good, as Brent does. —John Hall, CEO of Digital Talent Agents
10. Jeremy Johnson of 2tor
Jeremy Johnson is 27 and is already changing the face of higher education. His current project, 2tor, is a visionary startup that helps top-tier U.S. universities bring their degree programs online. Jeremy, along with co-founders John Katzman and Chip Paucek, is on a mission to transform education, and as the highest funded U.S. education tech startup, 2tor is bringing that vision alive. —Zach Cutler, CEO and founder of Cutler Group

5 Leadership Lessons From Successful Small-Business Owners

No two businesses and industries are alike, but successful leadership principles are largely universal. So, learn by emulating what successful business owners and leaders have done to succeed.
We asked several successful business owners for their best leadership advice. Some fundamental concepts were cited over and over again.
1. Communicate vision and goals
It's not enough for successful leaders to simply have a clear vision. A true leader must communicate that vision and those goals to employees, investors and customers. Without a clear sense of goals, it is easy for everyone involved to lose sight of the larger picture and get lost in the details.
“Much time is wasted in the entrepreneurial process, because the entrepreneur is not clear on the desired outcome," says Dr. David Washington, founder of Washington and Company. "The lack of clarity is then passed down to the followers, which results in missed objectives.” Washington is the author of Life is a Choice: A Guide to Success in Life.
2. Listen
Leaders must be able to listen and understand, as well as communicate.
“Leadership has a core fundamental for me, and that is dialog," said John Spiridigliozzi, vice president of business development at Infinit Technology Solutions. "I have had instances where I was sure I was communicating only to find out I was publishing.
"Engaging in a dialog with team members [is an] opportunity for clarity…. Learning to listen is not simply keeping quiet while others talk. It is comprehending what is being said, assessing the value and responding accordingly.”
3. Build relationships
People are your greatest resource: clients and customers as well as employees. Find ways to strengthen the level of trust you have with everyone involved in your enterprise.
“Be considerate. Be transparent and consistent. Be fair. Be constructive. Be realistic. Be decisive," says Larry M. Elkin, CPA, CFPR and founder of Palisades Hudson Financial Group. He says it all comes down to trust. "We all say we want team players, but many leaders forget to act as part of the team. It is not only important that your workers trust each other: It is vital that they trust you as their leader.”
4. Set the tone
Company culture, tone and attitude come from the top down. A passionate and compassionate leader can energize an entire company. Set an example of cooperation, trust and openness. Focus on solutions and positivity instead of blame and backstabbing.
“You can go through thousands of dollars in consultants to shape your culture, but it will still come back to the owner's approach," says Kristi Hedges, leadership consultant and coach at The Hedges Company.
Hedges favors a hands-on approach. "If you're motivated and happy in your role, then others will follow your lead. And if you're burned out and tired, that energy will permeate everything. Owners need to make sure they shape their role, and their company, to make them fulfilled and excited. If you put yourself last, you're hurting the entire organization."
5. Share ownership
In a tough economic climate, it is more important than ever to be open-minded and employ a community-style approach to leadership. It's a “many heads are better than one” approach.
A good leader allows both employee responsibility and creativity to encourage growth and new ideas. Successful leaders understand the value of customer and community input. Soliciting and listening to feedback and suggestions can lead to a better understanding of what needs to be done and also generates company loyalty and a brand following.
“In our business, we've learned that a little transparency can go a long way toward increasing employees' confidence, commitment and energy,” said Ethan Willis, CEO of Prosper Inc. and co-author of "The One-Minute Entrepreneur."
Royale Scuderi is a freelance writer and success coach. She is the founder of Productive Life Concepts and has been featured on Stepcase Lifehack and The Huffington Post. You can find her musings on life and business at GuardWife.com and Twitter.com/RoyaleScuderi.

Guru Review: Great Leaders GROW

Ken Blanchard is one of the original business gurus, and the inventor of the modern business fable, so it's my pleasure to review his recent offering. Ken rose to guru status with The One Minute Manager, which started out as a self-published book. Ken has just published a new fable, called Great Leaders GROW: Becoming a Leader for Life, with Mark Miller, vice president of training and development at Chik-fil-A. It's their second collaboration, and Mark's third book.
Great Leaders Grow continues the business saga of Debbie Brewster, a character the authors introduced in their previous book, The Secret. The emphasis in Great Leaders Grow is showing leaders, and aspiring leaders, how to ensure that they'll be able to effectively serve others throughout their careers.
Debbie Brewster has become an accomplished leader, and now becomes a mentor to Blake, the son of Debbie's former mentor. She teaches him not just how to lead, but emphasizes the critical importance of continually learning and developing his leadership abilities throughout his career. She identifies four areas in which every leader must continue to G.R.O.W.:
Gain knowledge of themselves, others, their industry and the field of leadership. Every leader is a learner, but many leaders fail to gain knowledge because they have too much to do–they're going too fast and trying to accomplish too much.
Reach out to others both formally and informally. As a leader, your role is to teach both by sharing information as well as by probing questions.
Open your world at work and outside of work. If you get too busy with your job to grow, your influence and your leadership will stagnate and ultimately evaporate.
Walk toward wisdom through self-evaluation, feedback and counsel. Wisdom is the application of knowledge, discernment, insight, experience and judgment to make good decisions when the answer may not be obvious.
The best way to review a business fable is to interview the authors about applying the key messages they're trying to communicate through storytelling. So I sent Ken and Mark the following questions. Here are their answers:

How will people be able to tell whether they are growing or not?

They have to be able to answer "yes" to questions like: Are they responding to the challenges of their roles in new and fresh ways? Are people seeking them out for their counsel on issues?

What is the number one mistake someone makes while growing to become a leader?

Quite simply this: confusing leadership with a position or a title.

How is the mentality of a leader who is willing to grow different from one who isn't? What are their advantages? Any possible disadvantages?

Growing leaders understand how little they really know about the world. They have an appropriate humility regarding their roles and their accomplishments.Leaders who aren't willing to grow have misplaced confidence in their own abilities. Their egos are huge obstacles to their future success.

What is the biggest hurdle a leader needs to overcome when growing?

The biggest challenge is not getting too caught up in today's challenges and ignoring the future. A leader's first priority is to ensure that there will be a future for his or her organization. Unless a leader is extremely vigilant, the current challenges will always win the day over future challenges. Only the disciplined leader will make time to grow, yet growth is absolutely required.

What is the most important advice you would give to current leaders? Newcomers?

The advice is the same for both: Assume responsibility for your own growth as a leader. If your organization will help, that's fantastic. However, your growth is not your organization's responsibility.

How have you personally implemented these lessons in your life?

Personal growth is a daily priority for both of us. We understand that our capacity to grow determines our capacity to lead and practice the four strategies on a regular basis. In the "Gain Knowledge" arena, we read widely, spend time with mentors, attend seminars and the like. We "Reach Out to Others" by teaching and equipping leaders around the world. Mark leads a group that has been studying leadership for 13 years and recently started a blog to serve other leaders, called Great Leaders Serve. The third strategy, "Open Your World," is the most fun for us. In recent months Ken spent time in Australia and Mark took a trip to Antarctica! We "Walk Toward Wisdom" by proactively listening and learning all we can about ourselves and others. For example, Mark recently completed a self-initiated, anonymous survey of friends and associates around the things that he should Stop Doing, Start Doing, and Continue Doing–and learned a lot!

12 Key Success Areas That Drive Business Growth

For nearly a decade and a half, Victor Holman has been consulting large businesses and government agencies on performance management. But somewhere in the course of advising them, he realized small businesses could benefit from the best practices and strategies he collected in his work with the big guys.
Especially because they often lack the over-abundance of resources that big corporations and government agencies enjoy, Holman says, small businesses need to make sure they’re spending their time, energy and resources the right way to ensure success. That’s where his work as CEO of Lifecycle Performance Professionals comes in.
Holman has found 12 specific guiding principles, he says, and if a small business owner can refine his or her approach in each of those areas, his or her company is virtually guaranteed to thrive. Some of them are straightforward, some a bit more daunting–but what they all have in common, Holman says, is that they’re entirely learnable. But it all starts with taking an honest look at your operation.
“A lot of times, we avoid the areas that we're not comfortable in, that we're not good at,” he says. “If we just focus on trying to improve, small improvements in multiple areas will lead to huge gains and huge yields.”
Strategy
Have a plan and know it intimately. Simply drafting one and filing it away isn’t going to cut it.
"Many businesses, they have the strategy, but it's always good to continue to come back to your strategy, to update it and see what opportunities you can take."
Customers
Invest in getting to know who your existing and ideal customers are. More than ever before, you have the cater to them if you want to keep them loyal to your brand.
"We have a new type of customer today," he says. "You have customers that are very informed. They do their research, so if you don't have a plan to actively retain your customers, they're going to go elsewhere."
Finance
One of the most daunting parts of a company for a leader without accounting or finance expertise, it’s also one of the most important. If you aren’t confident in your skills, find a way to boost your savvy – take a course, find an experienced adviser or hire someone highly qualified.
"You've got to understand they key financial ratios within [your business] and what your ratios mean within your business. You have to understand the components that go into your income statement, your balance sheet, your cash flow systems," he says. "You can make a major difference in your business very quickly just by applying a couple of strategies."
Distribution systems
"You have to have a plan for getting your product to your customer with the least amount of effort for them and the quickest amount of time," he says. "You've got to constantly understand, what are [the] better ways that you can get to your customer."
Marketing
Gone are the days when basic marketing strategies were all small business owners needed.
"You've got to be able to know the exact customer that you have," he says. "A lot of successful businesses will take advantage of a niche or very targeted marketing–that way, you can compete with the bigger companies because you're focusing your dollars on a very targeted customer that brings in the biggest return."
Products and services 
"Unless you're able to analyze the products and services well–[that is,] you have a system for doing it–you may not quite realize that the actual products and services, what types you can make that can [have an] impact on your sales," he says.
Pricing strategies
Know your products and understand their worth to consumers. That means objectively evaluation their quality so you can come up with the best price and selling strategy.
"A lot of business owners don't take pricing strategies into consideration as well as they can,” he says. “Just a simple change in your pricing can make a major impact on your sales and your revenue."
People
Human resources are among your most valuable. Know your people, and make sure your staffers resonate with your organization’s values, and vice versa.
"It's very important that you have your people that are on the same page, that they understand what they're doing impacts the overall mission of your business," he says. "As a business owner, you [must] understand the drivers of good and poor performance, because if you identify employee performance problems early so that you can correct them, it doesn't affect your business as much."
Performance

"[Business owners need] to be able to measure their people, they've got to be able to measure their processes and they've got to be able to measure their system performance,” he says.
That means having consistent metrics across all divisions of your company.
Sales
"You've got to make sure that your sales people are equipped with the right tools to be the best sales people they can be," he says. "You've got to develop a solid system for getting appointments, you've got to teach your sales staff how to overcome resistance, that means you've got to really understand what are all the possible [forms of] resistance you'll probably get with each of your products."
Technology
Among the most important aspects are cloud technology, a solid email program and security protection for your IT content.
"These are all things that the savvy business owner is looking for," he says. "They're look at tools that can help automate, they're looking for tools that can help speed up and simply processes. They're looking for tools that can drive their business success, so that's important."
Personal development
"Just like you set goals for your business, you've got to set goals for yourself. You've got to have a personal method. You've got to have your values, what you're going to put first in your life," he says. "Ultimately, your business relies on how much knowledge and how much growth you can sustain personally."

5 Leadership Lessons From Martin Luther King Jr.

One morning in 1965, Robert Ellis Smith, then-recent Harvard University graduate, received a phone call that would change his life. On the other end was a former fellow student who was starting a newspaper in Montgomery, Ala., strictly dedicated to covering the Civil Rights Movement. The voice on the other line asked Smith, former president of The Harvard Crimson, to lead the project. Without hesitation, he took the job and headed down to the Deep South.
“There wasn’t a lot of newspaper coverage of small communities, so that is where we put our focus,” he says, adding that the newspaper was titled The Southern Courier. “We also wanted to produce a publication that would be read by both blacks and whites, which was a new concept at the time.”
For the next year, he covered the movement and often interviewed the legendary Martin Luther King, Jr. In addition to remembering his lively sense of humor, Smith recalls King’s superior leadership ability—evident in one particular exchange.“Coming up on December 1965, the 10^th anniversary of the Montgomery bus boycott, I called Dr. King to ask him to write a piece for our publication,” says Smith.
When King turned in the article a few days later, Smith was struck by references to Greek philosophers and became worried that the words would not resonate with King’s largely uneducated audience. Even so, Smith ran King’s piece on the front page and the next day’s paper was a big seller.
Today, Smith lives in Providence, RI, and is founder and publisher of Privacy Journal, a monthly newsletter focused on personal security. As a small business owner himself, he looks back on his time covering the South and gleans leadership lessons from King that he uses in his own business to this day.
Don’t underestimate low-level employees
Just as King didn’t hesitate to quote philosophers in his written pieces, great small business leaders should not underestimate even the lowest level employees in their organizations.
“I was worried about the references, but he assured me that wisdom is present in people even in the most humble circumstances,” remembers Smith. “He taught me never to underestimate anyone below me, that they have wisdom, life experience and are introspective.”
Embrace fear
King didn’t hide his fear. He was scared before every speech and worried that his points wouldn’t be well received or that he would be met with violent protests, says Smith. But instead of hiding, he talked about it and faced his fear head on.
“He used to tell me, ‘If you are not anxious, that means you are not engaged, that you shouldn’t fear fear, you should go with it,’” recalls Smith.
King’s willingness to embrace his fear is a great lesson for small business owners. As Smith says, entrepreneurs may fear competition and new technology in today’s business environment, but instead of shying away it is important to face these obstacles head on and not to be afraid of change.
Encourage ‘creative tension’
Every time King visited a new city to spread his message, community leaders would blame him for disturbing the norm. But to King, that was the point.
“He used to use the word ‘creative tension’ to explain that fairness and change come only when you shake things up,” says Smith.
Today’s small business owners can use this lesson within their own organizations by encouraging new ideas and internal criticism from employees, he notes.
Know the ‘why’
Over in Washington, D.C., Daron Pressley may not have known King personally, but as a small business owner, he looks to the Civil Rights icon as a beacon of inspiration in his company.
“I think Dr. King’s biggest leadership lesson that translates to my business is to make sure my team knows why we do what we do,” says Pressley, founder of The Premier Athlete, a student athlete development company. “It isn’t just to make a profit, it is knowing your purpose, cause and belief.”
Instead of giving an 'I Have a Plan' speech, King gave his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech, says Pressley. He recommends small business owners use this fact to talk to employees about what they believe, the real reason for starting their business and whom the business is helping. By doing this, entrepreneurs can inspire those around them, just like King did.
Involve everyone
King inspired community involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, and it worked partly because people wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves, notes Don Phillips, author of Martin Luther King, Jr., on Leadership: Inspiration and Wisdom for Challenging Times.
“In a small business, people really perform when they feel like they are part of something special,” he says. “King used to say ‘people derive inspiration from involvement,’ so the lesson is to get your people involved.”
Phillips says small business owners can utilize King’s words by involving all levels of the organization in company goal planning. You never know what great ideas will surface.
Illustration: iStock