So you’re having a shower (where all truly great ideas come from) and it suddenly hits you like a blinding light from heaven…..the most incredibly brilliant business idea to build out a domain you’ve ever had! There’s just one problem, what’s next?

So many great ideas remain just that, a great idea and nothing more. Just today I was approached by a domainer to purchase a domain name and as a part of their pitch they told me that it would be fantastic as a particularly type of business. Based upon this “idea” they believed the price of the domain was justifiably inflated.

My immediate thought was to ponder, if it was such a great idea why didn’t they build the domain into a business themselves? Let’s face it, they were trying to price the domain based upon all the work that I would do to create a profitable business. That just doesn’t work for me….

A domain has value but don’t fall into the mistake of pricing in, not just the value of your domain but also the value of a mythical business that the buyer would have to create on it. Many domain owners make this mistake and wonder why they don’t sell any of their inventory.

Let’s put the pricing discussion aside for now as it’s the subject of another blog series. So how do you move from an idea to a profitable business?

For the past 34 years (time does fly!) I’ve been identifying opportunities, developing, selling and building businesses….most of them online or back in the days of bulletin board systems. A solid grounding in my MBA (Master of Business Administration) tempered with experience has helped me to quickly analyse opportunities to ascertain whether they are real or not.

I get pitched ideas all the time but I hate to say it most ideas are a complete distraction from what I could be doing. Every now and then something comes along which is worth further investigation but it’s rare to find the diamond in the rough.

I’ll be completely open and honest so I do apologise if I’m a little blunt. Most successful entrepreneurs DO NOT have a shortage of opportunities. They are in a deal stream that allows them to pick and choose which one to put their effort and possibly finances into. When you pitch your idea to get a successful business person involved then you need to be aware that it has to be really compelling.

Likewise, be careful whom you pitch to. Some people are sharks and will devour you with preference shares and equity ratchets, while others are fair and reasonable. The question you need to ask is what does the potential investor bring to the party…..and it had better not just be money.

As an example, let me share with you how my company, ParkLogic was founded. I will cut a long story short in an effort to focus on the pertinent points I'm raising.

I’d just sold a large domain portfolio which allowed me to enjoy six months touring the USA with my family, get my pilot’s license and do some other really cool stuff. I wasn’t in a hurry to leap into a business for business sake but I was very interested in learning how to improve myself personally. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I wanted to spend some time working on “self-actualisation”…..the top tip of the triangle.

This sounds introspective but it was an important personal goal that focused my attention on why I would found my next business. I did a personal “check up” and concluded that I had a lot of strengths but like most people I also had a lot of weaknesses. Rather than going out solo I decided that it would be in my best interest to find a partner that complimented my skill set. This would allow me to learn how to improve my weaknesses and ideally improve myself.

As I said, I wasn’t in a hurry so I thought about a lot of people I knew and settled on one individual who has been my current business partner and co-founder of ParkLogic for the past ten years. He has an incredible amount of experience and our skills almost perfectly complement one another. Also, high on my list of potential partners was the fact that he is highly ethical.

So how did I get him onboard? I pitched the opportunities in the domain industry and essentially gave him half the business. From my perspective, ParkLogic was worth zero at the beginning and since I wanted to get a partner involved whom I could learn from I decided to make the offer compelling.

So what’s it been like over the years? Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s been fantastic and the one percent has been either one of us learning a great deal from one another. I’ve learned an incredible amount and my co-founder has as well. ParkLogic has grown dramatically and has gone from strength to strength where we’re now optimising domain traffic for people all over the world.

So many people get hung up on equity and how much they are giving away but they really haven’t sorted out why they are getting into business in the first place. They try and drive crazy deals or pitch to anyone that happens to have some money. In my opinion, this is a highly questionable strategy.

Remember, if you really want a partner, don’t rush, and get the right one. Go after them and make your pitch really compelling! Right now, your equity is essentially worthless but with the right partner it could be worth a LOT more. Think about yourself and what you want BEFORE you launch your business.

In the next article, I’m going to use myself as a case study and propose how you may get me involved in your new or existing venture. What do I look for and what do I bring to the table? Hopefully you will be able to use these thoughts to attract someone to your business.

If I was to describe this year in one word it would have to be “innovation”. For a long time, the domain industry has been doing the “same old same old” with a tweak here and a tweak there but I believe this year is going to see some massive changes.

For the last fifteen years, the domain industry has been caught in a malaise where landing pages look the same, domain market places are basically the identical to what they were and development has migrated up the content management systems version numbers. All a bit of a yawn.

While I was at NamesCon I perceived a growing sense of frustration and tension building in the air from people who wanted more for their domains. It was almost palpable. When there is a growing demand from the market then I’m a firm believer that innovative companies and individuals will seek to fulfil it.

I took a few days’ vacation immediately after NamesCon and one of the things I love to do is read. I picked up Elon Musk’s biography (Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity and Paypal fame) and was stunned by the similarities between the markets he has entered and the domain industry.

For example, with Tesla the incumbent automotive industry was a lumbering giant that was incredibly slow to adopt anything innovative. Musk steps and from nothing builds the world’s first high performance all electric production car. With next to nothing he’s built Tesla into a powerhouse of innovation that is leaving the other car companies in the dust.

The same could be said for SpaceX. Through innovation he has transformed the space industry and has the audacious goal to colonise Mars…..which brings me to my next point for the domain industry.

It’s not enough to be innovative or even meet pent up demand with innovative solutions. What is keeping me awake at night (other than jetlag) is why we are doing what we are doing? Is it just to make money or is there some vaster, bigger more all-encompassing goal? What is it that we actually do and how does this translate into an inspirational vision?

At an individual level, many of us have been so caught up with analysing statistics, trying to get the next sale or build out a website that we’ve forgotten why we are doing what we are doing? From an industry perspective, the concept of an inspirational vision seems even more far-fetched.

So why will this year be different? I’ve come to the conclusion that it has to be…..because if it’s not then many of us will die of boredom. We entered the industry as entrepreneurs and have become managers….even if we are very successful at what we do we have this gnawing internal desire to still shoot for the stars!

In the companies I’m involved in I’m looking at these big questions and then aligning innovative ideas and people behind them. My job is then to remove as many of the blockages as possible from their path so that dreams can become reality. It's going to be a really tough task but one that I hope will start to bring positive change to the industry.

Have a great weekend!

I’m writing this while I sit in a coffee shop at McCarran Airport in Vegas with my family. After the last few days at NamesCon the coffee I’m sipping feels so good and in my near stupor I find myself pondering why it doesn’t come in syringes.

Like many of you, I found NamesCon a trial of endurance with four days of back to back 30 minute meetings followed by a brief respite with my pillow each night. And this is why it was such a great event.

I’ve never conducted so much business, secured so many agreements and made so many new contacts. NamesCon was where 1400 plus Internet entrepreneurs gathered together from all over the world to do business and not just have a talk fest.

It was great having my family with me on this trip and I want to thank everyone for making them feel so welcome. They loved NamesCon because they didn’t feel like outsiders thanks to your smiles and warm conversation. Sarah and Elise, also had a chance to see their Dad in action in meetings and at a couple of presentations…..which was pretty cool!

I personally believe that you only need 30 people at a conference because that’s about the limit to the numbers of people you can have meetings with. The challenge for the conference organisers is to make it the right 30 people. NamesCon was a bit of a problem.

There weren’t 30 people but easily over 100 that I thought that it would be great to connect with. The result….massive overload of opportunities. In military parlance, it was a target rich environment. This is exactly why NamesCon will continue to grow and expand under the new owners.

I would like to thank all those people that took time out of their own busy schedules to meet with me. For those of you that I didn’t get a chance to catch-up with I really do apologise…..leave a message here so we can connect on skype.

For all of my friends in the industry that I’ve made over the last 16 years….I’m really sorry that we didn’t get time to catch-up. I feel like many of us kept on passing each other in the long hallway (boy was it long!) as we sped to our next appointment.

So what’s next? For me, it’s an afternoon of sleep and a couple of days at Disneyland with my family….my flights just been called so I’d better go!

Take care and safe travels.

As per normal, I’ve arrived at the Qantas Club in Melbourne, Australia, grabbed a coffee and now I find myself sitting down to write my regular “I’m On My Way” to a conference blog. The big difference this time is nothing’s normal, I’m not alone…..Roselyn and our two daughters are with me.

For those of you that do a lot of business travel you’ll understand that you have developed certain habits that create a bubble of calm around you as you make your way through an airport. From the moment we stepped out of the car I knew that my bubble had been well and truly shattered.

For a start, I tend to speed through the airport, weaving my way between the elderly gentlemen on the left while slipping around the family with screaming kids on the right. My family, enraptured with the joys of taking in the airport walked at the same speed of everyone else…..let me assure you, this was a relatively new experience for me.

I’ve managed to convince my family to only travel with carry-on luggage (thank goodness) but you’d be amazed how much a young lady can pack into a case. One of the bags was “substantially” over the weight limit and it took a little bit of extra smiling and joking with the Qantas staff to let us take it on as check-on……so all was good. But for heavens sake.....did she pack lead in that bag????

For those of you that are wondering why I insist on carry-on only….the answer is really simple. When you are doing any sort of city hopping business travel if you lose your bags just once then they’ll never catch-up with you again.

Or in the case of my business partner who was traveling to London he asked the attendant if they could please send his bag through to Los Angeles. The attendant indicated they couldn’t do that and he replied, “You managed to do it last time.”

So after briefing my family about how to ensure we all end up in the high speed line through security we got stuck with a Jetstar plane grew jumping the line, several families who believed that a stroller entitled them to first place (got to get myself one of those) and a number of airport staff that thought it was funny to make everyone wait while they went through the body scanner. One of them even kept forgetting to take stuff out of his pockets and pretended he’d never done it before.

After taking the leisurely stroll through the concourse (I was gritting my teeth) I couldn’t help but listen to the three ladies in tow ooohing and ahhing about the different sites along the way. It then dawned on me…..I’ve done way too much traveling and lost most of the joy and excitement of international flying. I’ve become a grumpy business traveller that complains about what other people think is wondrous.

So I decided to turn a new leaf. Now that we’re in the Qantas Club I’m going to have fun…..and as can be seen by the selfie above it’s looking good already. So watch-out NamesCon the Gilmour family are on their way and we plan to have a great time!

See you all soon!

Michael

Vegas will come alive with NamesCon in just over a week! People will be flying from all over the world to get further educated about domains, conduct business and make new friends. I will be arriving on Friday 20^th and I’m really looking forward to the swathe of meetings and sessions that I already have lined up.

The first of my sessions is for registrars and registries and I will be sharing about some new technology that we’ve developed that will enable these two types of organisations earn additional revenue. It's going to a practical session that will unpack a number of great opportunities.

Date: Monday 23rd, 11am
Room: WP Engine Room

If you represent either a registrar or registry then it would be great to see you there as I’m sure it will well worth your time. If you have a clash in your schedule then please reach out to me either here or via the NamesCon app so we can meet one-on-one.

The second session I’m participating on is a panel that will be discussing “Monetisation”. There’s a number of other highly experienced individuals on the panel and I know that we will be all digging into how to get the most from your domain traffic.

Date: Wednesday 25th,12pm
Room: Uniregistry Keynote Hall

I should mention that I will also be accompanied by Laci Nagy from ParkLogic and I know that he’s really looking forward to catching up with clients and partners. Joe Politzer, who works with ParkLogic out of San Diego won’t be able to make it to NamesCon due to the recent birth of his daughter….congrats Joe!

I've been using the NamesCon app to reach out to a number of people and I must admit that it's a fantastic tool for coordinating meetings etc. If you haven't downloaded the app then please do so....it's really good! Click here to download the app.

My wife and two daughters will also be joining me at NamesCon. Sarah (my eldest daughter) will be attending many of the meetings and sessions with me as she is wanting to broaden her experience of the domain industry before her studies this year in social marketing. Please make her feel welcome as she soaks everything up in her effort to learn more about our industry.

So while I’m earning the money through the many business deals Roselyn and Elise will be out spending it up at the discount factory outlets……so if you ever want to do a deal with me then now will be the time. Somehow I’ve got to earn enough to pay for all their shopping! :-)

I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone at NamesCon and making a lot of new friends along the way.

See you there!