Tim Sykes Got His Business Noticed with a Compelling Personal Narrative

How many times have you seen websites run by someone who's made millions in real estate or the stock market and is now going to show you how to make millions, too? Just subscribe to their newsletter, attend their seminar or buy their DVD and they'll share their secrets. There are usually videos on the site of real people testfying to how much money they've made using the systems taught in the various educational materials. Do you ever ask yourself, "If this guy is so rich, why does he need to bother with helping me get rich?"

That's a good question -- but suspend your disbelief to learn something from this particular story.

Timothy Sykes is a thirty-ish entrepreneur (and also a dead-ringer for Ben Affleck) who has made millions day-tradng stocks and has developed educational materials he sells online and through conferences. What I believe separates his approach from thousands of others is not his system, which I don't know anything about. It's his personal narrative.

To separate yourself in a very crowded field, you need one thing above everything else -- differentiation. Sykes has a couple of things going for him. Youth and good looks help. But those factors are not enough. Here's the differentiation that I think has made him slightly famous: he made his millions by taking the $12,000 in bar mitzvah money his parents gave him when he was 17, and parlaying it into seven figures. Now, that's a great story! He has told and retold that story on CNBC, CNN and ABC. Each television host introduces him with the bar mitzvah riches-to-riches story, and it's irresistable. So, Lesson One of getting recognition for your entrepreneurial venture: have a compelling narrative.

Sykes is very forthcoming about his mistakes and successes along the way. First the mistakes:

1. Burning Money. "Spending $20,000 on PR and $30,000 on web development after the success of my first book and study guide made the business profitable from the get go. Never blindly trust the experts. Make them prove they are experts first. The biggest mistake wasn't just the money, it was the time of going in the wrong direction and then restarting the search for others who could help me go in the proper direction."
2. Multitasking. "Trying to do too many things. At first I was trying to gain exposure by writing for and doing daily videos at MSN Money, AOL Finance and TheStreet.com. Within a few months, I realized I should focus solely on my website and my own content."
3. "No honor among thieves."Underestimating how much BS there is in finance. I always knew there were some cheats, but I didn't realize literally everyone who espoused market wisdom publicly was either a fraud, liar or incompetent. I gave these people too much time and credibility when I should have created sites like Investimonials, a Yelp-like site for financial products now with over 13,000 reviews in the past year since inception, and Profit.ly, from the start. Profit.ly is my newest website where traders prove they are profitable by linking their broker accounts and showing their track record publicly, now with 6,000-plus traders sharing openly. I only started these websites two and three years into my Internet journey. They should have been the first thing I did."

And his best decisions:

1. Confidence. "Believing in myself and sharing everything openly. Given that 90% of traders lose money and I have consistently made money, I have the easiest job in the world, simply explaining what I do that makes me successful, while admitting my mistakes, too."
2. Zig when others zag. "Focusing on an untapped niche. I specialize in exposing scams, those dirty penny stocks you sometimes get emailed about and the entire finance industry looks down upon them. Well, I write honestly about them and that helps my nearly 2,000 subscribers trade these stocks better despite all of Wall Street hating on them. Long story short, always go where there's demand, ignore conventional industry stereotypes."
3. Outsourcing. "I'm fairly ambitious, but I cannot do everything myself so I have nearly 20 part-time helpers who help with everything from video and graphics, to editing, advertising and web development. Focus on what you do best, outsource the rest."

Tim Sykes is a member of the Young Entrepreneur Council (Y.E.C.), an invitation-only nonprofit organization comprised of promising young entrepreneurs. The Y.E.C 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. This is part of an occasional series reporting on some of its members.