"Part 11: Cameron Johnson Is Recognized As One of the Youngest and Most Successful Business Consultants In the World Today Who Teaches His Clients How to Be More Productive With Less Effort While They Create a Real Business" by Ralph Zuranski
Listen to Cameron Johnson's In Search Of Heroes by clicking this link.
Ralph Zuranski: How does it feel to be recognized as an Internet hero?
Cameron Johnson: Well, I don’t know that I would go that far, but it is an honor to get an e-mail from one person saying I have motivated them in business in any way, or helped them try to find success. I probably get 100 e-mails a month just like that, and that is motivation for me.
At the same time, it’s extremely rewarding and surreal, and almost unbelievable, so I totally can’t even put words to it.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, why do you think you are selected for this unique honor?
Cameron Johnson: I think through interviews and through talking and everything, I think there is just so much value that can come out of just a conversation.
By sharing a conversation, just as we are having right now, Ralph, with an unlimited number of people, I just think so much value is created for them, and so much value is created for you and me by having this conversation, that I think it just creates value and gives back to society.
Ralph Zuranski: How will being recognized as an Internet hero change your life?
Cameron Johnson: Well, hopefully it will change the life of others and of the people listening. But also it changed my life just by thinking about the questions we have talked about today, and I hope that further discussion on these questions will not just help me, but help everyone who is listening.
Ralph Zuranski: How are you making your world a better place?
Cameron Johnson: I am trying my best! I have a book coming out that is not a book I wrote to try and sell and become a best selling author. That is really not one of my goals.
But one of my goals is to help young people and parents and adults and everyone, business leaders and small business owners make smart and educated business decisions. I think my book can help do that, and I think the book will definitely help change society, maybe in a very small way, but in a way.
Also, you know the non-profit organizations I am involved with, and the speeches that I give, I get so much reward from that. So that is definitely how I get so much satisfaction these days.
Ralph Zuranski: Do you have any good solutions to the problems facing society, especially racism, child and spousal abuse, and violence among young people?
Cameron Johnson: I think that it is just a lack of positive influence, and a lack of heroes in the country and in the world. I don’t even enjoy watching the news anymore, because anytime you turn on the news, the only things you see are the number of shootings that occurred today, or car accidents, or anything else. It’s almost impossible to find a good, heartwarming story.
Or if you do, it is on page 12 of your newspaper. So I mean I feel like we are doing it to ourselves, and it is ridiculous, and it’s disturbing, and I don’t know how you change that. Because we, as a society, only get to see whatever it is the media brings out to us.
There are so many hundreds of thousands of positive stories that we never hear of, that we would really rather hear about, because it motivates all of us to try and do things like that rather than go out and commit crimes.
I think that that’s part of our society’s and our country’s fault, but I don’t know how we are to go about changing it. But it needs to happen.
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Cameron Johnson started his first business at the tender age of nine. By age 12, his company was selling Beanie Babies™ over the Internet and he profited $50,000 that year. At the age of fifteen, he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company and published his autobiography in Japanese which became an instant best-seller.
At the age of 21, he has founded and sold more than a dozen businesses and has been featured in more than 250 media outlets worldwide including Newsweek, BusinessWeek, the New York Times, USA Today, CNBC, and MSNBC. He’s served as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and is a frequent speaker to a variety of audiences including high schools, colleges, and corporate executives. In January, 2007, his new book titled You Call the Shots: Succeed Your Way – And Live the Life You Want – With the 19 Essential Secrets of Entrepreneurship is being released by Simon & Schuster. Cameron Johnson lives in Blacksburg, Virginia. Visit his official website http://www.cameronjohnson.com.
Why work for someone else when you can call your own shots, pursue your dreams, and find success on your terms by starting your own business? So many people end up bored with their jobs, stuck in the corporate grind, never following their true passions. As wildly successful young entrepreneur Cameron Johnson shows, you don’t have to live that way. We’ve entered a new age of entrepreneurship, with the Web making it easier than ever to start and run your own company.
As Johnson’s remarkable story reveals, the entrepreneurial way of life is a great way to make sure you love what you do—and offers the potential to achieve extraordinary success by following your gut and going for what you really want.
What about the risks? Don’t you need lots of money? Don’t most start-ups fail? Johnson shares his essential secrets to entrepreneurial success that show you how he got into the life at very low risk, and with very little money, took an idea that excited him and ran with it, achieving great success and satisfaction with businesses he loved. He didn’t have an MBA; he didn’t even have a college degree. But he had learned the simple but vital secrets he reveals.
Cameron Johnson is a seriously happy entrepreneur who started his first business when he was nine with $50 and a home computer. Before he’d turned twenty-one he’d started twelve successful businesses and was offered $10 million in venture capital to grow his hot web company CertificateSwap.com—praised by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the leading-edge “Web 2.0” business successes—even bigger. He has never taken out a loan or racked up any debt, and every one of his businesses has been highly profitable—so profitable that he’d made his first million before graduating from high school, and he’s put away enough cash that he could retire today. But that’s the last thing on earth he’d want to do; he’s much too happy starting up new companies.
Through the story of his own impressive career so far, in You Call the Shots, Johnson takes you behind the scenes of entrepreneurial success and empowers you to hit the ground running with your own great business idea, no matter how young you are or how little money you have to invest.
Cameron Johnson had started, run and sold 12 successful companies by the time he was 21. His business successes have been featured in Time, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, USA Today and many more, as well as on the Today Show and Good Morning America. When he was fifteen he became an advisory board member of a Tokyo-based company, and his autobiography, 15-Year-Old CEO, published in Japanese, became an instant best-seller. He has consulted to Fortune 500 companies and spoken at the Wharton School, among others. Every one of his businesses has been a success, even in the worst days of the Internet bust. As a freshman in college, he started CertificateSwap.com, an online marketplace for gift cards, which was a runaway success and for which he was offered $10 million in venture capital. He lives in Blacksburg, VA.
Advance Praise for Cameron Johnson and You Call the Shots
Cameron Johnson wrote me a letter when he was eight years old. I didn’t write back to him, but I responded with a surprise for him when he visited New York City. Thirteen years later, he’s given me a surprise—he’s written a terrific book! No matter what your age, you will enjoy and learn from Cameron’s book about his accomplishments thus far. I’m sure there will be more to come.
— Donald J. Trump
You Call the Shots is for everyone committed to following their dreams. Cameron Johnson thoroughly outlines the strategies it takes to remove obstacles to entrepreneurial success. This book is essential reading for anyone with a passion for life.
— T. Harv Eker, #1 New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
If you want to be an enlightened money-maker, read my friend Cam’s brilliant book now—and apply it.
— Mark Victor Hansen, coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
and One Minute Millionaire series
Cameron Johnson’s extraordinary entrepreneurial journey has made it possible for him to develop more sophistication and business savvy by the age of twenty-two than most professionals accumulate throughout an entire lifetime! In You Call the Shots he shares his personal secrets, experience and advice in a warm and friendly way that’s sure to motivate people of all ages.
— Jennifer Kushell, New York Times best-seller Secrets of the Young & Successful: How to Get Everything You Want Without Waiting a Lifetime