We live in a hyperpaced fast world and surrounded by so many distractions that no wonder many of us feel under increasing levels of stress. So how can you reduce your levels of stress and return to that subline state of enjoying life?

The age of the smartphone compounded the numbers of distractions coming through to us as Instagram, Facebook, emails, texts, skype etc. poured in and demanded our attention…..not to mention the alerts from the various newsfeeds and games we may be playing. Our smart devices are wonderful servants but really bad masters.

I was recently having a meeting with a person who was constantly looking at their phone (I really do mean constantly). Every beep, blip or brrrrring seemed to instantly demand their attention so much that I wondered why I was there.

In one of their “moments” of screen time I pulled my own phone out and texted them a message. It said, “Let me know when you’re available for the meeting.” Sure enough, their phone beeped with my message and as was their habit they looked at it.

They were really embarrassed by my text but after putting their phone away we had an interesting discussion about how the phone has increased their levels of stress. I suggested they could make the decision to control their phone rather than the other way around.

As many of you know, I’m one of the founders of ParkLogic and for over a decade we’ve been working with clients to extract the maximum possible value from their domain traffic. In blogs and at conferences I’ve gone to great lengths to explain WHAT we do and HOW we do it….but up until now I’ve never tackled the WHY….

When I reflect about my personal journey at ParkLogic I realised that over the years we’ve developed a number of core beliefs that up until now we’ve never shared. They've actually become the reason why we behave the way we do and why we love the domain industry so much.

It should be said from the outset that this is not an exhaustive list and they are not in any particular order but hopefully it will provide some insight into how we operate.

Transparency
We believe in being transparent with clients. This means we won’t lie to you if you have a question and if we stuff up then we’ll make amends. Our focus on being open means all our statistics are what the domains actually earn, and our accounting clearly show the commission we take from managing the domain traffic. We don’t hide our commission behind smoke and mirrors.

I must say that we've received quite a bit of flack for being so transparent but we believe that it's through transparency that the industry can grow and increase overall earnings.

Good People
The domain industry is full of wonderful people….so why waste your time dealing with jerks? We believe in working with good people, serving great clients and establishing strong relationships with suppliers. We believe that doing life with people is important and that if we don't work with you now you'll have the confidence to work with us in the future. For us, everything is not just about business.

For a long time I’ve been putting off conducting open heart surgery….but this past week I decided that it was about time I pulled out the scalpel and made an incision. Thankfully, not on a human but on a platform I developed.

Like many things in life I've been procrastinating about doing this big slab of work for several years. I’d kept running into problems because the work wasn’t done but there always seemed to be some convoluted work around that allowed me to just make things work.

Finally, in a fit of frustration I took the plunge and began restructuring the foundations of an application that literally process tens of millions of requests each day. It was like looking at a great big ball of string and the more I pulled the more the string seemed to resist.

Knots would form and quickly become mini-projects in themselves that needed to be resolved before the bigger issues could be addressed. Numerous times I completely broke the entire system and found myself tracking down some esoteric piece of code written three years ago. Grrrrr!

Back in 2014 I was sharing the platform with a couple of the new gTLD registry representatives at a TRAFFIC conference (one of the last). Both of them were telling everyone at the conference that they needed to buy what they were selling before it was too late. I had a decision....should I gag myself or not?

I listened as they both told the audience that the new gTLDs were the most awesome thing to ever occur on the Internet. To get into the gold rush all the conference attendees needed to do was secure their stake in the future of domaining!

After all the huff and puff I decided it was time for someone to bring some sanity to the debate and remove the self-imposed gag of politeness. So I waded in and attempted to pour a bucket of hard cold reality over the audience. A summary of what I said was, “There is no business model for investors in the new gTLDs.”

I then ticked off the business models. Do they have traffic? Nope. Can I buy one for $10 and sell it for $2,000? In a market of massive supply….unlikely. Can I buy a premium domain for $10,000 and sell it for $100,000? Nope. Can I build them out? I may as well build out the many .com domains I have.

Have some investors made money selling the new gTLDs? Yes. Just like some people win the lottery….but as a rule there is no sustainable business model for investors.

I then stated that I believed that as investors we were on at least a seven-year journey while the market decided which extension would succeed and which would fail. It would also provide some time to see which of the three major investment business models would become viable.

As I spoke a hush descended over the audience. I then said that some in them would ignore my advice and mortgage their houses to buy some of the new gTLDs. As their cash ran out I would likely pick up some of the domains for registration cost, post seven-years.

This past week was a complete mess for me. Monday and Tuesday were fine but Wednesday morning I woke up with a bad case of the flu. My brain was about as useful as a squished tomato and my body felt like a truck had driven over every square inch of it.

In this sense of stupor, I developed a fresh love affair with the couch and television remote. It’s amazing how many useless shows you can catch-up on that you didn’t even know existed prior to your state of incapacitation.

It was during this time I began to ponder the important aspects of life such as; Why does every part of Netflix seem to have exactly the same shows listed? Why is it that the categorisation system for iTunes seems to think that “Top Gun” is a romantic comedy? Who thought that Disney’s “A Wrinkle in Time” was actually worth ninety minutes of my life?

The one saving grace was many of the shows overcame the drums beating in my head and sent me to sleep. So day one was largely consumed with mindless television, sleeping and answering a couple of emails…..by the way, I cannot be held responsible for whatever I wrote on Wednesday so if you received an email from me then just reply with a big question mark.