Focus Focus Focus

Sometimes you just have to go heads down and focus on the task at hand.

The past couple weeks (really month) have been just that way. Blog posts have been few and far between which means my todo list of blog posts is now something like 32 items long.

All that brings me to something, as much as I have always been a bit high energy and enjoyed having 30 things going on at time, which is pretty much everyday after launching a new business (on that note have I mentioned we broke our one year mark...) , there are times that you must shut all other things out and focus on the task at hand.

This goes without saying I know, but sometimes people have a hard time recognizing when they are in the type of situation that require strict prioritization. It comes down to recognizing and then executing on the opportunity at hand.

People like to say they cannot pick which item they are working on is number one, they are all number one.  That is not always true, there are many (I would say most) times that if you really admit it there is a number one. Pick that opportunity and execute.

There are some great things going on lately with Localtek and that means that ancillary items like this blog, side projects, etc tend to take a back seat for a few weeks and the larger business takes the front seat. I have read blog posts by other domain bloggers in the past that blogging is not the most effective use of time, there are many times this is VERY true. Many times the time being spent putting out posts could be spent pushing the real business forward. That does not mean that you should not blog, but it does mean that if you are really focused on growing your business there are times it is no productive to be doing certain things (in other words, does 30 minutes working on the perfect marketing pitch for your new website provide more value to your business than a blog post).

The great thing is the hard work is already starting to pay off and I see light at the end of the tunnel. I cannot wait to blog about it when the time comes.

Thanks to Owen Frager for making me think about this a bit, yesterday when we were chatting he asked when I had time to blog, my answer was right now I don't. Well, ok maybe just this one post : )

Not sure when the last time I went this long without a post was, back to focus focus focus now though....

Starting A Business Is Bad For Your Health

Wow, what a difference a year can make. I am just kidding about the title of the post but I have been a major failure at keeping myself in shape this year. I just saw some Christmas pictures from last year while we were looking at some digital pics from this year and all I can say is CRAP!!!

It is time to get my no excuses attitude back towards staying in shape and eating right. It is something that for several years I have been almost religious about after seeing the difference it made in my life. When I was 29 years old (I am 36 now) I was 244 lbs, in comparison in 2008 between September and December I did a triathlon, multiple half marathons and a full marathon along with a few bike races and smaller races.

Not only that, running, biking, and eating right makes your brain work better, period. It has been proven over and over again. I can say without a doubt that I focus much better when I am running or biking everyday.

Well, this year I let it all go, as much as I am much more sane now that I stepped away from my past world I am really unhappy with the fact that I let myself make excuses for not staying in shape. I am not back where I was at  when I was 29 but I am not where I was last year at this time.

This is not a New Years resolution (New Years resolutions are crap, if you want to stay in shape you make a LIFESTYLE change). This is me realizing that I improved my life on one side by starting a business but failed miserably by letting one side of my life go in a bad direction.

Time to fix that. I think it is time to pick a marathon to run and start training, I like goals....

Focus On What Could Be And Not What Is

It still amazes me (ok, probably not actually) that people ask me why I took the time to start a business on a dot me domain name. Why waste the time???

Well, as I have mentioned in past posts, the first thing domain investors need to do when they start to think about building a business is step outside of the inward focused thinking we all do since we are so close to our domain investments. We need to quit thinking about the NAME and more about a business model.

Much like buying the right domain names to resell is about building the correct domain investment model, the same goes when you have an idea for a business based on one of your domain names. No less than three times I have had people say why not just buy the .COM for X amount of dollars.

Come on, seriously, if you are going to start a business and you are not already starting with 10 million bucks in the bank of someone elses money before you have a dime in revenue how smart is it to actually spend hundreds of thousands on a domain name?

I know there are plenty of "dot anything other than .COM haters" out there that are disagreeing, probably never will read this blog again, but oh well. It is the truth. There is a reason you see many companies that have started up not get their .COM domain that they end up spending 100K on until after the fact. That reason is that they would of never even got off the ground if they would of spent that money on the name rather than focusing on their business first.

Do not get me wrong, most people miss the point with the conversation above, the point is not that the name is not valuable, but it is not so valuable that the business should never start just because you do not have the name. It cracks me up when people act like that, and I see it virtually anytime I head to the message boards or make a post about alternative extensions.

I know you are thinking what the heck, why would you say this when you want to sell domain names at a profit. Once again, you miss the point, the point is the name is valuable, they should buy the name at some point. In many cases these whiz bang new companies end up on TechCrunch in a story that XYZ company buys ABC name after getting their B round of funding. How many times have you read stories like that? It has been more than a few times. But if the company had 250K of seed funding does it make sense to spend 100K on a name? NOPE NOT AT ALL.

So, if you are a domain investor and you have a great idea for a business but since you are so close to the domain industry you cannot see what could be but instead are only focused on having to have the .COM before starting you need to step out of the industry for a second and think like so many other people who HAVE started successful businesses without their keyword .COM and get moving.

I will say it one more time, focus on what could be not what is!

Benefits Of Having A Business Partner

As more and more domain investors are looking towards developing their top properties into real businesses I thought I would share my experience with working with a business partner when launching Localtek.

From the very beginning of the Localtek launch it was a team effort. My current business partner and I had been discussing various projects for a year or so but never quite found the "one". At Christmas of last year I started talking about the success I had been having with domain investments and, hard to believe, but yes PPC traffic and also the fact I had been direct selling ads on one of my sites without even making calls, they just came to me asking to buy advertising.

Based on this, very long story short, we ended up coming up with what is now the Missouri.me and Localtek concept. As with most businesses the initial idea is not where you end up but hopefully you build from that initial idea and not subtract from it. In this case it grew but at the core it is the same idea and business, just better than before.

Now, about the benefits of why I started a business with a partner, lets outline them:

No one, and I mean NO ONE, knows everything - Lets face it, even the most confident people in the world do not know everything. It is always valuable to have other people around that have experience you do not have. The reason a good team works is because everyone brings something to the table, various pieces of knowledge being a key piece of that. I talk to people or see people daily that have no intention of ever learning from other people, and that in the end, will be their downfall.

Brainstorming - When launching a business there can be alot of time spent brainstorming ideas around certain pieces of the business. Whether it be marketing, product pricing, growth plans, etc. It is useful to have someone else to check your ideas and build off of them.

Push or Pull - It is always good to have a balance between the partners. In our case I tend to be the fire, ready, aim person and my partner is the pull me back guy. It works perfectly, that balance is always needed. Virtually every successful business launch I have witnessed has had the same combination. You cannot have both people pushing without some checks and balances put in place. But you also cannot have two people both pulling back all the time. Both together is the way I have always found it to work best.

Detailed vs Not-Detailed - Along with the push/pull concept is the detail oriented vs. non-detail oriented balance. Once again, in most companies I have seen launch successfully there is a balance here as well. Just last week I witnessed it while in a meeting with a very successful company local to myself. One person was focused on T's & C's in the contract while the other was focused on what the next phase would be without worrying about the details on the first phase. You need both sides of this.

A Different Viewpoint - This one is very important for us, my experience is business development and sales along with technology. My partners is small business operations and small business marketing. You put that together and in our case you have the perfect balance of what is needed to launch a business doing what we do. Both pieces are important. This comes back to no one person knows it all. If you are starting a business keep in mind it takes multiple areas of experience. This is why many developers have a hard time taking a great idea to market. Being able to make a great looking and functional site is only the first step, being able to take it to market and close a deal is a different story.

I could probably list another 5 but the point I really want to end with is that when building a business in many cases it is very important to have a partner. When selecting a partner in many cases we tend to gravitate towards people that are exactly like ourselves. That is the first mistake you will make. It is important to bring a wide range of experiences together to build a successful team. Although my business partner and myself are alike in many ways we have a different knowledge base that we pull from and a good balance when it comes to the push/pull balance. Make sure you select a partner that balances the partner ship and not tips it over from being out of balance (in other words do not pick yourself).