Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about why 99% of entrepreneurs fail. But before you have the potential to be a failed entrepreneur, you need an idea. And many aspiring entrepreneurs don't know where to start.

Why are good ideas so hard to come by? Because most people try to think of them in either the wrong venue, or from the wrong-perspective. You need to stop thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur when you're thinking of an idea. You need to experience life as the world's victim, experiencing the flaws of the human life, and figuring out ways to improve on it.

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How can I be the person with billions of great business ideas?

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1) You're born with the ability to see the world in an abstract way, and can immediately come up with ideas on how to rid the world of its problems. You look at the world around you, and ideas are popping out as fast as babies from teenage girls. In other words, you're lucky.

2) And then there's everyone else who can't think of any good ideas. For the other 99% of the entrepreneurs in the world, including me, you struggle in the pursuit for ideas. You either need to retrain to be an idea person, or steal an idea from someone else. Or do both. So how did I do it? How did I go from having no ideas for a business/nonprofit to having more ideas than I could possibly work on? I followed the following "idea life-cycle":

It isn't simple, but I'm going to suggest that you change your perspective on the world in one select way: It's as retarded as it gets, but be a picky bitch who can identify everything wrong in the world, and not be scared to share it with others. Everyday, you experience minor inconveniences in your life that are waiting to get solved. But after learning to become "mature adults," you've conditioned yourself to be happy with what you have, leaving the flaws in life untouched.

If you want to expose yourself to more ideas, you need to train yourself, and in every obscure way possible. Don't settle for anything that you're not content with. Experience the world for what it is, and be absolutely freaking honest with your feelings and frustrations in life, and come up with ways to fix them. Let's take one "simple" exercise that I remember doing in elementary school, and analyze it. Here was the thought process of my 6 year old mind:

I'd go to a restaurant with my Daddy. The wait is 15 minutes long and I hate waiting. Why can't I order my food NOW, and have it ready for me when a table is ready? Why do I have to wait on a line before I can even order? Why is it annoying to flip each page in the menu? What have my friends tried and liked? Why do waiters take so long to come take my order when I know what I want to order? Why is the portion so massive... couldn't they give me something I could finish? Why does it take so long to pay? ... And Daddy, why are you staring at the waitress?

I could go on and on with this story for pages, describing everything sucky about the way restaurants work. As you could probably assume, I was a very picky, impatient (and curious) child. I'd often share these thoughts with my parents, and they'd tell me to shut up and be appreciative with what I have. Fortunate for them, I've since become a jolly human being.

But unfortunately, I've lost this incredible ability! Think about the possibilities -- If you and I were able to experience the world like 6 year old Jessica Mah, then we'd have hundreds of potential business ideas each day. Sure, you'd probably be a life hater and that lonely kid on the playground who didn't have any friends. (which I was) - but at least you'd have lots of ideas, and perhaps even one fantastic idea for a company you could start.

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Train yourself to be a child who sees more bad than good in the world.

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If you fit into the second category of entrepreneurs that I listed above, (not being born an idea-person) then it's imperative that you train yourself to be the snobby 6 year old girl who has no problem complaining about the flaws in this world, then asking her daddy to fix them. For every flaw you see in this world, write it down in a journal. Be as general as possible. For example, based on my thought-process in a restaurant, I'd be able to come up with these ideas:

- Waiting on lines sucks - Waiting for servers sucks - Having people not know your preferences sucks - Comparing dozens of options with each other sucks - Life in general sucks

Now bring those general ideas back home with you, and get out of your 6 year old la-la land. Start thinking of ways the world sucks in all of those above ways, and ways to fix them. I hated waiting to get seated at a restaurant, so how can I improve that? Since the problem was so general, ("waiting on lines sucks") how could I apply this to waiting for anything in life? This simple example applies to waiting at theme parks, airports, traffic, waiting on new mail, and I'm sure dozens of other things that are totally not worth waiting on.

And for each of those ideas, we can break it down further into dozens of potential solutions. The airport example is being fixed in a lot of great ways that you can see: Online check-in and the Clear Pass, just to name a few. Commercial flight has been around for decades, yet nobody has thought of the above ideas until just a few years ago. This suggests that fantastic ideas are all around you, just waiting to get found.

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So to recap on the lifecycle of finding ideas

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As they say, the best ideas come from entrepreneurs who are fixing a problem that they saw in the world; not from any profit incentive or selfish motive. And there's no better way to do this than to see as many flaws in the world possible. Think of as many ways that life sucks. Every context you're in provides new opportunity to think of ways to improve on the world. Most of the ideas you come up with will suck, but many will hold great opportunity if you don't dismiss them so fast.
Then, apply these flaws to everything else in life. I'm serious -- keep a journal with all of the flaws in the world. Then in the bathtub, start brainstorming creative solutions to those problems. When you have a list of problems to solve, you have a framework from which you can think of brilliant business ideas.

With that said, go experience the world starting now, and be honest with your true feelings on why your life sucks. (even if it doesn't.) Then, transfer those ideas into entrepreneurial concepts. As a good idea-person, you're capable of finding every minuscule flaw in human life. Just try not to bring this to the business... and especially not to the bedroom.

Isn't it frustrating when you do something "wrong" and a random person tells you that you can't do it because it's against the company/school/organization's rules? This can be in reference to virtually anything -- a hotel employee or restaurant waitress tells you that you're not allowed to do something because it's against company policy. The issue being that this so called employee has no clue why the rules exist in the first place! If your company has rules in place, make sure that employees know why they exist. Make sure your employees can offer good explanations for why they exist and reasonable alternatives around them. Real life example:

1) As I write this blog post, I'm in Boston. As I was checking into my hotel, I noticed a hotel customer and hotel employee arguing over something. The hotel customer was clearly a tourist and had brought in a cooler box, when the employee stopped him. Apparently, cooler boxes weren't allowed into the hotel. What? Why? Of course, the hotel employee didn't know why. He responded by saying, "it's just against hotel policy." Now why isn't this explanation good enough? Because the customer gets even MORE aggravated. He's thinking what to do with this cooler box he just bought. What does he do with the many drinks inside? The proper response would be for the hotel employee to say something among the lines of, "You can’t bring the cooler box inside because it's against state law, but I'd be happy to hold onto your cooler box until the end of your stay." Except how many employees are trained to do this?

2) Or another example I've dealt with throughout my childhood: Teachers asserting authority by punishing kids for rules that haven't a reason to exist: I was sitting on my friend's lap when a random school aid told me not to. I got off her lap and asked the school aid why I wasn't allowed to sit on her lap. Of course, being that I'm Jessica Mah, I get accused of being an arrogant teenage brat because I'm curious enough to ask about the reasons for rules existing. Next thing I knew, I was being threatened detention and a trip to the principals office. Had it ever occurred to the school aid that it was a stupid rule that should be changed? Probably not -- it makes them feel good about themselves to assert their authority over me. In an ideal world, the school aid would tell me why I can't sit on the persons lap. If the school aid doesn't have an answer, she would tell the school principal that the rule was meaningless, and that it be removed.

The bottom line: If your customer does something that's "against the rules," be prepared to give them a good reason as to why the rules exist, and promptly propose a suitable alternative. If no alternative exists, make one, even if it isn't your fault. If my flight from New York to San Francisco is delayed, I don't care that your plane broke down and I don't care what your reimbursement policies are. I want a suitable alternative or reimbursement. Make sure your employees know precisely how to react in these "unique" situations, and what they are authorized to offer as alternatives. Better yet, tell your employees that they can do whatever they would like in order to please the customer. If customer service is your number one priority and you give employees full authorization to do whatever they want to meet that mantra, your customers will be satisfied even when they can't do something or if you're not allowed to let them do something. I promise!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

I love speaking out about companies who've done wrong. I've done it with companies such as Serverbeach and Comcast, and plenty more. I'd say about 50% of the time, I receive a response from the company. When I hear from a company official, there's a 99% chance that my issue will be resolved and that my service will either be reimbursed and/or improved. Here's a list of my top three examples of companies doing the RIGHT thing to satisfy their customers:

So lets take bad service company #1: Serverbeach.

On the morning of October 20th, my ServerBeach services went offline. The reasons are beyond me and irrelevant to this topic. The company had a service level agreement that promised reimbursement for my services if there was any downtime. I blogged about my complaints, and I received an email from company officials within an hour. Since then, the company has provided me over $100 in reimbursement and my servers have stayed online since. I'll call this success and forgive ServerBeach for that mishap.

Lets make bad service company #2 Comcast.

Just a few days ago, my comcast service was shut off. The service has always been buggy, and their customer support was slow and non-existent at super late hours. Of course, I blogged about it. Within 24 hours, a company official contacted me to help address the situation. A customer rep called, my service was put back online, and my co-founder (who's using this comcast service) claims that our cable speeds have gone way up! I'll call this too a success. Yet again, it shouldn't take my bitching to fix the problems.

Last, but not least, I'll give my final award to Jajah.

Back in December, I was trying to make an outgoing call to my mom when all of a sudden my Jajah service cut off. Ended up that my account was out of funds, so I tried to make payment with a new credit card. It didn't work, so I blogged about it. Within two hours of posting my complaint, the director of marketing gave me access to a company account and fixed the issue by the next morning. Talk about good customer support! Why can't all companies be this good?

I've wrote negative reviews about plenty of other companies who never got back to me. Take for example United - I blogged about them a few days ago and no company representative has contacted me. I complain about AT&T quite often and they're yet to make me happy for the hours of my time they've wasted. I once wrote about how oDesk is better than Elance, but amazingly enough, Elance company officials invited me to their office for (beer) and pizza! It was surprising, yet amazing. Again, why can't all companies be that way?

I'm sure there are plenty of other companies I can add to this list. But for now, the three I mentioned deserve some praise for actually taking care of customer complaints.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Oy vei... firstly, eBay had been getting a lot of crap lately from angry sellers. Why?

Buyers can leave negative feedback for sellers. Sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers. Many sellers are outraged, showing their comments on auctionbytes. Sellers don't seem to hate the fee changes, but they absolutely despise the feedback rule. In another video, Kipp Knight and John Donahoe speak about eBay from Washington. They both speak like robots, but in person, they're as normal as can be.

And although all of the sellers are going ape-sh*t about this, I can look at things from eBay's perspective. I wanted to start a company that would be a marketplace to buy and sell services, and it would have many similarities to eBay. However, every minute change made to the system would result in major ramifications. For a site of eBay's scale, the problems are only multiplied. No matter what you do, some sellers will be unhappy. It's fact, it's nature, and it's something that eBay has been dealing with since the day it was launched.

This change represents the first of many by the new CEO, John Donahoe. It took me a long time to make the mental connection: but basically, I had lunch with the guy back in July! I was in Boston, looking for a place to eat lunch at the eBay LIVE conference. I didn't know anybody, but this very friendly guy asked me to sit down with him. We chatted, talked about many topics that had absolutely nothing to do with eBay, and wished each other well. Ends up that the guy (at the time) was the President of eBay Marketplaces! I honestly had no clue until the end of lunch, at which point I asked him what he did. Wow, I'm pathetic. But in any event, I'll advocate for him: He's interested in his users, he wants to learn about the issues they're facing with eBay, and figure out creative solutions to them. That's one of the most important assets that a CEO can have. Although he may sound like a robot and (somewhat fake) in his public speeches, he's nothing like it in person.

I'll try to contact him and get a follow-up on this. On another note, 10 minutes before meeting John, I also ran into the President of Stubhub. Purely accidental, I promise! We were on the escalator and we said hey whats up blah blah blah. Anyway, more to come!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

So many books talk about how entrepreneurs did this or did that, but it's all about the team. I didn't do jack compared to my counterparts. I found a few super motivated kids my age who wanted to join in on the business venture, and we split the work out depending on where our skill sets were. I did business, sales, marketing, and intermediate level tech support. Alan was a hardcore techy. Tyler filled in for both me and Alan. This brings me to my next lesson from when I supposedly ran a business back when I was 13: Your team matters more than you do. Make them happy, and they'll save you when you need them most.

Mishap #1: (4 months in business, 300 customers) I was driving down the freeway with my family on a rainy day in July. We were driving up the Jersey Coast, going to our next vacation destination. All of my responsibilities were temporarily designated to one of my co-founders, Tyler, and I received a terrible phone call:

"Hey umm... our servers are down! All of our customers are bitching at us!"

Oh. Bloody. Hell. We had downtime for the next 48 hours and eventually found out that one of our customers, once again, was phishing. In other words, somebody with an account on our primary machine was pretending to be PayPal and sent out fake emails. All of this from OUR server. This cost the company a few hundred dollars in revenue and thousands more in potential business, but it was a good lesson that I learned young. a) invest in security, b) figure out ways to get your customers online if such a problem ever happened, c) compensate them for having suffered through your stupidity, and d) be transparent and honest as to what happened. We failed to do all of the above when we needed to. Fortunately, we learned from these mistakes. We ended up giving out heavily discounted services and emailing updates to customers when they suffered through our careless mistakes.

Mishap #2: (9 months in business, 700 customers) I was in a hotel room on December 31st a few years ago. It was 11:59 and 15 seconds (+/- 10 seconds) and suddenly I get a phone call. Of course, another problem while I'm trying to enjoy my vacation. Co-founder Tyler tells me that some f**khead hacked into all of our servers and wiped off our clients' accounts. Not. Funny. Except this time, we learned from our mistakes. My other co-founder, Alan, was also a nerdy Asian. He was brilliant. An absolute genius. He found out what happened and he patched the problems up within 15 minutes by reverting to our backup machines. Since this was new years, nobody was looking. We were so fast with getting things back online that not a single customer sent us a support ticket. This brings me to my next super important lesson: Always critique yourself and learn from your mistakes. If something terrible happens, (such as if some dickhead deletes all of your customers' accounts,) then learn. Figure out what happened, patch it up, and promise that it'll never ever happen again in the future. And if somehow it does, you're going to lose business.

More to come on my stories from when I was a stupid, arrogant, teenage entrepreneur!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Arg, it's raining down here in Nevis. Oh well, I'll give you guys a blog post.

Edit: The following post is based on supposedly false information. One of the founders sent me a nice email addressing the situation, which was a really smart move. Whenever someone writes false and misleading information about your company, immediately address the situation. Well done, Mr. Co-founder. See here. ANYWAY,

I was reading up on my juicy tech gossip at Valleywag and heard about a site, Famesource.com, buying Indian users at 10 cents a piece. The website sets out to connect wanna be celebrities with fans and representation. For example, if I wanted to be a famous rock star, I would upload my bad music and hope that fans vote me up and a talent agency signs me on.

The company is supposedly buying these users at 10 cents a piece because it will help gain traction and attract the eyeballs of investors. My primary concern would be how this could backfire on the founders. Investors will want REAL traction that will bring REAL revenue, and a scam plot like this can only look bad for the young company.

In an interview with one of the founders, he says that its all about "getting exposure..." except isn't it so obvious that the type of exposure is a primary concern? If I'm a wanna-be rock star, why would I care about random guys from India if they aren't going to be true fans? If I was that wanna-be rock star on famesource, I'd be pissed.

But of course, they have a spot on CNN's weekly airing of "Young People Who Rock." I'll let you know when it's my turn. :)

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Word in the blogosphere is that T-Mobile is blocking Twitter for all customers... and of course, the customers aren't happy. Firstly, what could have caused this?

T-Mobile CLAIMS that Twitter isn't an authorized third party service, as noted below:

"T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate “… some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion.” Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation.”

Some believe that T-Mobile considers Twitter a small startup, and that's the reason why they're blocking the service. Sounds more like a cover-up for the truth.
However, my original thought was that Twitter caused a substantial traffic load. The passionate Twitter users would post an update of where they are and what they're doing every half hour. These passionate users are friends with hundreds of other Twitter users, so there are so many messages going back and forth. Over the course of several months, it has been adding up, and T-Mobile wants to save money from this overload.

So what does this mean to the company?

1) Bad: Passionate Twitter users aren't only go leave T-Mobile in favor of a better service, but they'll also make word known in the blogosphere that T-Mobile is anti third party services. There's an exponential negative effect here because T-Mobile loses customers while those customers prevent prospective customers from signing up with them. All of this for just a few cents saved from less traffic?

2) Maybe it was a good move, for all we know. Maybe there was some deep security threat, or the price of allowing Twitter users on the network was too high. Beats me.

Either way, it's important for big companies to keep in mind that any change they make, no matter how *minor* it may seem, may potentially hold a significant impact for the company, or more importantly, customer loyalty.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

Update: Jajah.com contacted me within 30 minutes of publishing this post... they got me a temporary account ASAP, and had the credit card problem fixed in under 24 hours. That's what I call superb customer support. Now if only my Jajah Firefox sidebar didn't screw up constantly...

Original Post: Firstly, I love Jajah when it works. It's a great concept that I've spent so much time using ever since coming to college. For those out of sync from the tech startup world,

Jajah lets you call from any landline for 3 cents a minute just by typing in your phone number and the destination phone number while logged into a Jajah account.

In any event, I had about $1 and my credit card died on me. Secretary says I maxed it out, so I decide to use up the rest of my account balance. I finally get down to my final cent, and as I'm having a bonding experience with my mom over the phone, it disconnects us! So far, no fault to Jajah. So I log back in, change my credit card number, and it says that I can't pay with this new card because I'm already paid with another card. But doesn't that defeat the purpose of me "changing credit cards?" Why even give me the option if you won't let me do it! Observe:

Notice how I only have 1 attempt left... that's after trying two different credit cards, both confirmed working. (Tested by purchasing "How to Win Friends and Influence People" for my mother just a few minutes after my botched payment attempt) OK - Point is, there's nothing more frustrating than finding a product you love only to find that the company doesn't have the technology to allow you to pay! Pity...

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

As you might have already read, BlogNation really got dicked over today when the US editor Oliver Starr posted a public letter of resignation on the front page of the blog he was resigning from. It talked about how the CEO of BlogNation, Sam Sethi, wasn't paying his people anything.

The validity of his claims are irrelevant. He's gone, the world now thinks that Sam Sethi is a terrible CEO and shady person to do business with. What's Sam Sethi to do?

1) First off, Mr. CEO needs to take a stand. He needs to openly discuss the situation at hand and either make a full blown apology that discusses in detail why he hasn't paid, or deny it in its entirety and possibly provide proof that he did in fact pay and that Oliver Starr is just trying to screw him over. Either way, Mr. CEO needs to say something to the world, or else people will take his silence as a guilty confession.

2) Mr. CEO needs to make sure the other editors are happy. Discuss openly with the other editors what happened and how to assure that such a thing won't happen again. If they too start posting open letters of resignation, BlogNation might as well just pull the plug.

3) Or the best of the solutions... PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES AS YOU PROMISED!!!

On another note, after TechCrunch posted Oliver Starr's letter, an editor from BlogNation China posted a comment:

Ladies and gentlemen –

1. We express our concern about Oliver deciding to air his own concerns on blognation.

2. Readers may wish to note that reports about blognation on TechCrunch may contain bias. It most certainly is not the “neutral point of view” that we expect from the Wikipedia.

3. As part of the blognation team we are experiencing difficultings in launching and in being with a new startup. Our determination to establish the brand and to aim for victory after victory, however, remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

4. Quite a bit of content on blognation (and blognation China at that) are unique, as we have good roots in our community. We grow with the community.

5. Please rest assured that blognation (and in particular blognation China) will continue to provide you with news every day of the week like we have been doing for the past two months.

I do realize that some of you have different opinions. We will respect each other’s opinions knowing that responsible freedom of speech is a good thing.

Your support is appreciated.

Best regards,
David Feng
Editor, blognation China
http://cn.blognation.com

I'm sure you've already found some flaws in the above comment. This David Feng is giving the absolute lamest excuses for Mr. CEO's problems. TechCrunch readers are definitely biased, but the post itself didn't have so much. Just cause you're a startup doesn't excuse you from paying employees you've promised to pay. If they were under an equity agreement or barter, that's different.

Unfortunately for Oliver, I'm not sure if there's much legal recourse for him. He didn't sign a contract with his employee which leaves him utterly screwed. I'm sure he'll learn for next time. as for Mr. CEO, best of luck.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

Who knew that our world's youth would become so internet obsessed to a point where there'd be rehabilitation camps for these nerds?

Simply put, we're becoming so reliant on our computers for everything. Our communication, our finances, our news, our homework, our research, our fun, etc... it just never stops. If you find that your children or significant other(s) are becoming too much geeky for their own good, send them to rehabilitation camp, where they'll be taught to appreciate the REAL world!

Just imagine yourself at such an awesome place:

According to the Post, one clinic in the Beijing suburb of Daxing keeps some of its 12 to 17-year-old patients locked in rooms with barred windows for most of the day, treating them with a combination of counseling, medication, and military-style discipline. At the Daxing clinic, these troubled teens whose "souls are gone to the online world" are housed together on the third floor of the building, where they are subjected to hypnosis and even mild shock therapy in an attempt to rid them of their love of surfing.

Hmm... sounds like summer camp to me! I sense a minor problem with all of this. The people running these camps may not understand the root of the problem. Many 12-17 year old boys become computer obsessed nerds because they find more success and popularity in the virtual world, whether it be via Myspace or World of Warcraft. Matter of fact, one of these geeks just so happens to be a cousin of mine. There's no stopping him from shooting to his computer immediately after school. His social life at school is pathetic, but he's definitely thriving in Warcraft.

The geek rehabilitation camps are trying to treat the symptoms. It's all about punishment without relating actions to a core reason, which definitely isn't sustainable over the entire course of a nerd's life. Chinese people seem to have the problem of punishing and instilling fear in people rather than actually teaching them something. For example, If I went to China and openly admitted my bisexuality, I'd basically be signing myself up for intense shock therapy. (
However, if any of you come across a geek rehabilitation camp that doesn't use isolation and shock therapy for treatment, please let me know! I'll pass it onto my geeky Cousin.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.