"Part 9: 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: Well, who are the heroes in your life now?
Cameron Johnson: The heroes in my life now are people that are very close to me, and of course my dad is a hero to me, and my mom, and my family. But in the business world it is very similar to what I grew up with. Michael Dell and several people in the technology industry serve as my heroes.
Ralph Zuranski: How important is it to have trusted friends or a mastermind group to bounce your ideas off?
Cameron Johnson: I think it is so important that you have trusted friends. First of all, if you have friends you can’t trust, then you can’t bounce an idea off of them. You have to be able to trust your friends, and your friends also need to be able to trust you, likewise.
I think a mastermind group is so rewarding, because it is not just rewarding to you to be the center of that group, but it is rewarding to everyone who gets to participate. I am a participant in several mastermind groups, and I have one myself.
It is so rewarding to just bounce ideas off for each other and help all of us move forward and be more successful. I think it is also probably one of the most important things you can do, and the most cost effective, to bounce an idea off of someone before you spend the money or go out and write the check to do it. So I think mastermind groups are so rewarding and so valuable.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, how did they make a positive difference in your life?
Cameron Johnson: I think they save you a lot of time! They save you a lot of time from trial and error. You can read books about things that have worked and things that haven’t, and you can also ask people that have been in that exact same situation.
You can see what decisions they made and whether they would agree that they were the right decisions or the wrong decisions. You can use that advice to move forward, and hopefully to make better decisions in your life, and to save time.
Because we are only here for a certain amount of time, so we need to be as effective as we can be. So I think that is exactly how they can make a positive difference every day.
Ralph Zuranski: Who do you feel are the real heroes in our society today that aren’t getting the recognition and rewards that they deserve?
Cameron Johnson: Well, when you just read me this question, on of the first things that just came to my mind was that Warren Buffet just gave $43 billion to charity and he made the news for three days. He didn’t do it because he wanted his name on the cover of every newspaper for a certain amount of time, or anything else.
But he is clearly a hero in that every value that he created his entire life, almost every penny, has been given back to charities. With Bill Gates’s foundation, a large portion of his donation went to Bill Gates’s foundation, and that is exactly what Bill Gates’s passions are now.
He has already set a time frame for when he is leaving Microsoft and how he is going to be less involved. He is going to be working with the charity full time because that is where he gets value, and that is where he gets rewards.
I think those are true heroes, those that give back in every way possible through the creation of these successful businesses that they have built. They are now able to give back to our entire nation and the world. They are there for the long term through their donations.
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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