At age 19, as a young entrepreneur in college, Jennifer created the first online community for young entrepreneurs on the CompuServ network with two friends she had met through The Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs (ACE). First it was known as The International Directory of Young Entrepreneurs (IDYE), then later YSN.com (Your Success Network), which grew into a community that connected over 10,000 entrepreneurs in 70 countries.
Jennifer’s career supporting entrepreneurs really took off when she was a student at BU. Frustrated by how difficult it was to find peers, resources & moral support for her own ventures she realized that she wasn’t alone. That epiphany set her off on a mission to help the gaining numbers of aspiring, emerging & successful entrepreneurs that shared the same passion for entrepreneurship. The result – a global movement that exposed the trends, caused people to pay more attention and respect to young business owners & a powerful platform and voice for young entrepreneurs everywhere who lacked the support and guidance that they so desperately needed.
To do this, Jennifer realized she first needed to build her own credibility in the market. She got her first taste of teaching entrepreneurs through Junior Achievement, just one year after she herself graduated, and continued volunteering with various educational programs for years after. Including becoming a certified entrepreneur instructor though the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE). She then created a newsletter for young entrepreneurs called Visions, began speaking at a wide range of conferences and events, and wrote her first book with Random House/Princeton Review entitled No Experience Necessary (1997).
Later that year, The Network released the first national psychographic research study on young entrepreneurs. Sponsored by the International Franchise Association’s Educational Foundation and first released by the Wall Street Journal, the study provided some of the first hard data ever available on this booming demographic.
With an estimated 60 million aspiring entrepreneurs under 35, in the US alone, news of the study and profiles on The Young Entrepreneur’s Network spread like wildfire throughout the mass media. Jennifer was called the “guru” of her generation’s entrepreneurial movement by US News & World Report, and began working with hundreds of journalists to track emerging trends & profile the hottest young leaders around the world. From there, Jennifer joined the advisory boards of The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship and the National Mentoring Partnership, began drafting the first NFTE Advanced Entrepreneurship Curriculum for schools, and published The Young Entrepreneur’s Edge (1999).
During a vacation in 2000, Jennifer and her partner were struck by a huge epiphany. They realized that the staggering number of young people entertaining entrepreneurial dreams were not all necessarily interested in owning a business, but rather taking control and ownership of their lives. This new discovery and paradigm led to the birth of Los Angeles-based Young & Successful Media Corp. (Y&S).
Y&S focused on providing young adults with highly relevant and practical strategies, tools, resources, and support needed to achieve success and personal fulfillment, as they enter and establish themselves out in the real world.
Jennifer and her partner, entrepreneur Scott Kaufman, soon set out to create the first practical real world guidebook for achieving extraordinary success at an early age. In 2003, within three weeks of its release, Secrets of the Young and Successful™ hit the New York Times Bestseller’s list before its official publication date, becoming the #1 business book and the #3 book in America at Barnes and Noble.com … just behind Harry Potter &; South Beach Diet.
The success of Secrets added new fuel to the Y&S movement. Y&S soon launched a strategic consulting division that worked with a variety of major corporations and organizations, such as VISA, American Express, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Business Week, Ernst & young, MTV, 1-800-FLOWERS, Subway, Jack in the Box, Staples, Mobil Oil, Junior Chamber International, Oxygen Media, SCORE/Kaplan, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, The National Mentoring Partnership, Boston Public Schools, and the Australian Government.
Y&S played a significant role in a national campaign called “Ideas Happen”. Sponsored by VISA, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and First National Bank, in collaboration with MSN, Ideas Happen gave young adults the chance to pitch their dreams to an online audience of their peers, and to live audiences at events across the country for the chance to win $25,000 to help make their ideas a reality. In its first year, the program delivered over 4 billion media impressions. In its second year, the program delivered over 12 billion media impressions.
Today, Young and Successful Media Corp. is known as YSN.com (Your Success Network). YSN.com (Your Success Network) is committed to ensuring that every driven young person, anywhere in the world, has access to opportunities to realize their full potential.