Today my wife has a big smile on her face because we're having our old kitchen ripped out and a new kitchen installed. Needless to say, the house is a bit of a disaster but the contractors that are doing the whole process know exactly what to do and in what order.

Having a plans is often viewed as unnecessary or something you put in the bottom of the drawer, but nothing could be further from the truth. I know that I feel a lot more comfortable knowing that the stone bench top is being put in after our new cupboards are in place.

If you can’t articulate what you’re trying to achieve in your own business in a structured plan, then it’s likely you won’t become a success. Many people have great ideas but very few have the ability to write them down and even fewer people can execute them.

About ten years ago, I was traveling on one of my around the world trips and dropped into Fort Lauderdale to catch-up with some friends. While I was there, I met with a couple of people that were looking to get some investment dollars into what I thought would be a potentially great business.

I asked them for their business plan and was met by a blank stare. I then asked for a forward projecting cashflow and the response was the same. In a bit of frustration I then asked to see their past financials and likewise these weren’t available…..oh dear.

So many people let life live them rather than living life. What do I mean by this? The vast majority of people go through the motions each day in order to put food on the table, pay the bills etc. Domain owners are very different individuals as they’ve decided to take a risk and invest in what many see as a highly risky asset.

The problem is that so many domain investors stop there. They buy the domains and then wait for the magic to happen and believe they'll rake in huge amounts of cash. When this doesn’t happen they crawl back to the nay-sayers and say they should never have invested in a crazy asset like domains.

Before you humble yourself to people who invariably don’t have the gumption to take any risks consider this, buying an asset isn’t the same as working on your business. Buying the asset is the first stage in a journey and that journey will always starts with you. How much you develop yourself will have a direct impact on the success of your business venture.

I'm not trying to brag but I’m constantly attending conferences and speaking with other domainers so that I can learn from their successes and mistakes. It's a real cost to do these things but the payoffs can be astronmical. Reading blogs (thank you for reading this one) and participating in forums is another way you can hone your skills which is less costly.

For example, one of the reasons why I attended the first Domainfest.asia conference in Macau last year was that I wanted to learn more about the Chinese market. Likewise, I attended Domainers Meeting in Dubai. Yes, they were both small conferences but both of them sit at the cross-roads of enormous future markets. I know that learning about these markets now is going to help me in my domaining business in the future. Sure enough, I'm now doing a growing amount of business with the people I've met at these events.

On my recent trip around the world I had the opportunity to speak with a prominent domain investor who told me that domain parking was completely dead and that he was hardly making any revenue from it. I was really surprised by this comment and asked what he’d been doing these last 5 years with his domains.

He told me he’d left them all at one parking company. At which point I said, “How can you expect a different outcome by doing the same thing?” He’s now about to work with ParkLogic. Just for the record, we had a best month ever last month in monetising domain traffic…..so traffic monetisation is far from dead.

Here’s what we can learn from these incidents. Whatever you do, invest in yourself and then make a decision to act. Investing in yourself and then doing nothing is insanity while not investing in yourself and randomly acting is sheer lunacy. You need to do both if you want your business to move forward.

The next thing you should do is develop a plan. If you are buying and selling domains then have a plan on how you’re going to do this. Don’t just buy domains and believe you’ll get a heap of enquiries. That’s a hobby. A business has a plan that you then execute for a defined outcome. Along the journey you need to remain flexible enough to adapt the plan as more information comes in.

In future articles I’m going to unpack how I sell domains and some of the innovations that we are developing at my company, ParkLogic. In the meantime, register for a domain conference and then grab a pen and paper so that you can write down what you believe are your next steps to grow your business.

Have a great weekend!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.