In the new March issue of Fast Company brothers Dan & Chip Health kick off a new column “exploring how and why ideas succeed or fail” with a great read called The Myth About Creation Myths. (You need to be a subscriber to read the whole story online, or purchase a copy at your local newsstand)

…Or keep reading below for a short summary of the article and one man’s viewpoint on the subject.

This first article for the new column is focusing on “the power and perils of a great backstory.” Using examples of iconic start-ups like Apple and YouTube, the Heath brothers explain why we love a great story… even more than the truth.

We all know the stories, we dream about them at night when we drift off to Entrepreneur la-la land. A place where we fantasize of the days when we too will be the heroes who triumphed over great odds… but just how great were the odds for Apple and YouTube? Over time stories become greater and greater, but was Apple started by two geeks in a garage?… or by two high-level programmers at some of the biggest tech companies of the time?

As for YouTube…
“Consider two of the founders of YouTube, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. Both cut their teeth at PayPal-in fact, Hurley was one of PayPal’s first employees and even designed its logo. (He is also the son-in-law of James Clark, who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics.) Top-tier venture-capital firms were calling them, offering money, counsel, and connections, within months of launch. That’s not quite as uplifting as hearing that twentysomething buddies created a cool site to swap videos with friends.”

more

We have just sold our fourth TLA and I wanted to see if they’ve benefited the advertisers in SEO. The easiest way to test that is to search on MSN’s Live Search (link:www.thedomain.com) for the sites linking to each of the advertiser’s domains.

First up, H&R Block (Tax Software). This is a gigantic company so there are obviously tons of sites linking to it. Surprisingly enough, Mike Rundle’s Business Logs (9rules) shows up on page 10 of the results, Mind Petals page 11, Tyler Cruz and YGG on page 12. Not too shabby for such a large company.

Next, Levenger (Briefcases). YGG shows up on page 4 along with Innovation Zen and just after Shmula. Pretty impressive.

Third, Safe-T-Water (portable water filter bottle). We are the third from the top of the first page. The first being GoBackpacking which features Safe-T-Water via TLA as well.

Last, Franchise Gator (Work at Home Opportunities!). TLA sold this ad less than an hour ago, so we obviously don’t show up in the results yet. But other bloggers like Yaro Starak (page 1) and Mind Petals (page 9) do, thanks to Text Link Ads.

For the larger of the four companies, H&R and Levenger, someone would’ve noticed that their search results weren’t accurate and/or not too many sites were linking to them. In steps TLA.

For the smaller two, Safe-T-Water and Franchise Gator, TLA seems to be an easy way to get larger sites to link to them and in the end, improve their PageRank.

When it comes to Text Link Ads effect on search results and keyword relevancy, a simple search on Google is the ultimate test.

more

I wonder how many times that headline’s been used before?

Anyways, I was having a conversation with a fellow young go getter well into the morning last night. We are both interested in creating an advertising agency at some point down the road, and have different directions we’d like to take them.

That discussion triggered a memory of a campaign from last year for Volkswagen. For anyone that hasn’t seen the spots for VDubs Rock, they were offering a First Act guitar with the purchase of a new VW. The custom guitar was made to match your vehicle and you could connect the guitar to your car stereo and play it wherever you wish.

Until seeing some pictures on rm116 yesterday, I hadn’t seen any detailed pics or known of anyone personally that received one of the guitars.

Through a little more digging on Flickr I found quite a few pics that focus on the details of the guitar and the box it arrived in.

more

This is one of those random rants I’m allowed to have every once and a while thoughts that came to mind, bear with me.

The iPod and cigarettes:

Both tell a story visually.

They represent a counter-culture.

Both are items of limited access. Legal smoking age and high-price point of iPods, must be old enough and must be rich enough.

Ironically, both are white in colour (for the most part).

Some would say equally addictive.

Many can’t live without either for an elongated period of time.

Both instantly include you into exclusive social clubs.

Influential teenagers are the advertising target of both products.

Both products advertise themselves while in use; cigarettes via smoking, iPod via headphones.

Coincidences? I think not.

Often when I hear someone talking about being an entrepreneur or read an article about it… I hear the word “entrepreneur” being said with the same hollow, commercialized tone that a used car lot advertises their “Sunday Funday Super Sale!.” Our world has been polluted by late night infomercials hacking get-rich-quick schemes and self-help gurus selling books with good common sense packaged as mind-blowing, paradigm-shifting wisdom.

Being an entrepreneur is a risky business, and it isn’t for everyone. It takes dedication. Passion. (The kind that gets an athlete up every morning at 5am to run 10 miles. / Not the kind of passion where he loves how he looks in his running suit.) I didn’t make the decision to be an entrepreneur because “making millions and owning my own island” sounded like a pretty good life… I can’t turn the ideas off in my head, and if I wasn’t actively trying to build them I’d go nuts.

Going out on your own as an entrepreneur is a scary journey in un-charted waters where you either reach a distant land filled with riches, or sink along the way. The problem is, people are willing to pay for advice or help in order to make the journey a little easier… and there are always sharks in the water waiting to help you out.

Entrepreneurial self tests or articles like this one kill me. You might as well replace the title of the article with “You might have a pulse if…”

A better list of questions for Entrepreneurial Self-Evaluation:

more

The Origin of Brands by Al and Laura Ries, is the book I’m reading at the moment. One of the chapters I just finished talked about convergence and how all the major media companies said 5 and 10 years ago that TV would be interactive.

You’d be able to check your e-mail, host meetings, have shows and movies suggested, change the camera in focus, communicate with others watching the show, etc… Many of which are available but as a whole have failed miserably at revolutionizing the “boob tubeâ€?.

The closest we’ve come to such an interactive experience is TiVo, allowing us to record shows without requiring tapes or media, skipping commercials, and finding somewhat relevant content. Still a far leap from what the big boys said would be available in this day and age.

I think there are some obvious clues that hint as to what television will be like several years from now. The three that I see most important are YouTube, obviously, Pandora, and StumbleUpon’s Video app.

Here are a few attributes of those sites that when combined, dare I say converged, paint a pretty accurate picture of the future of television in my opinion.

more

It was only a matter of time until we had enough partners to each claim a letter of YGG. Now that this treacherous trio is officially formed, we are proud to introduce Darius A Monsef IV.

You may have noticed a couple of blog entries snuck in by Darius last week. That was to help him get his feet wet and see this community from the inside out.

Back in early December, we had proclaimed our love for COLOURlovers. Who’d have thunk that its creator would ever become a part of YGG, involved in several other projects, and invite us into the world of an A-list internet wonder, all by noticing a smidgen of traffic from our site.

If you ever have the opportunity to choose a partner in your ventures, Darius would be the type you’d have sign on the dotted line without any hesitation.

He brings a plethora, yes plethora, of experience to the table in real estate, philanthropy, and online business. You don’t have a chance in hell of one-upping him when it comes to name-dropping, he knows everyone. Trust me, I’ve tried.

We think we’ve made a huge leap in the right direction with this latest version of YGG. But there’s still tons of room for innovation and Darius is the guy to help us make the next big leap.

Now that we have a platform that everyone seems to love, and a partner that we sure as hell love, our emphasis will shift to consistently creating remarkable content, improving your overall experience, and developing invaluable relationships with other young go getters.

We appreciate everyone that reads the content on YGG, participates in discussions in the forum, and has stuck with us through the thick and thin.

Hopefully we’ll be able to help other young go getters as we tune our voice and bridge the competitive gap between all the entrepreneurial resources and communities. All of which are now within reach thanks to the addition of Darius.

So please give a warm welcome to our new Portland partner. Welcome to the family Darius.

PS - You can read a bit more about him on our About Us page.

When it comes to forums, the selection has always been limited to vBulletin, phpBB, Vanilla, and a few clones of each.

Same for blogs. You’ve got WordPress, Typepad, Textpattern, and hosted versions like Blogger, Vox, etc…

We use WordPress and Vanilla for YGG, which each have their strengths and weaknesses.

Through the process of building the current and previous versions of this site we’ve learned a lot about communities and the apps available to create and maintain one.

I think all of them are significantly broken in some way.

more

In 2005 I organized 2,000+ volunteers over the course of 5 months on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. I was responsible for the lives of up to 200 strangers; feeding them, providing shelter, managing projects… Strangers who daily drove off in 12 of my vehicles to use power tools they weren’t experts with… The chaos can’t be controlled, only managed.

Here are 9 chaos management tips for anyone running their own business… or trying to juggle 2 bowling pins, a baby and a nail-gun.

more

“Go Green. Get Rich.” was the headline on the cover of a recent issue of Business 2.0. In an economy where consumers have an enormous amount of influence and impact on the products companies are producing, the people’s concern for a more sustainable future is fueling the fire of a rapidly growing industry.

Clean air vehicles, renewable energy, carbon offsetting, feeding starving children, solid waste management—not the sexiest of syllables, but the numbers are easy on the eyes.

Feeding starving children a nutritional meal doesn’t sound like a great business model. Last I checked, most starving children couldn’t afford healthy snacks. Nonetheless, Nutriset‘s sales last year topped 25 million with its major buyers including UNICEF.

PyroGenesis is hot shit…literally. The Montreal-based company has refined a process called plasma arc gasification, turning solid waste into marketable by-products. Using this technology, Carnival, the $11 billion cruise ship operator, reduces 5 tons per day of cabin and food waste on its vessels into a few pounds of harmless sand. In not too distant a future, wasteland might just be the land upon which we stand.

The world is filled with serious concerns. Those that can build an intelligent, creative solution will discover that there is profit to be found in doing good.

more