Bob Parsons is CEO and Founder of GoDaddy.com. He’s famous for his over-the-top advertising, which include commercials featuring a porn star or race driver Danika Patrick in a bikini. To me he’s the Howard Stern of entrepreneurs, sophomoric but highly successful.

His business success and therefore, acumen, is what gets overlooked. Like Stern, this mega-millionaire knows what his target audience wants and he gives it to them. While his actions seem cavalier, my guess is there are few casual events in Bob’s business life.

In his September he shared his 16 Tips for business success, which you can view here: Bob Parsons' videoblog. Once you get past the girlies in their tank-tops, I think his advice is both unconventional and excellent. If you want to avoid the girls, here are Bob’s tips in text format:

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we're in our comfort zone.  I hear people say, "But I'm concerned about security."  My response to that is simple: "Security is for cadavers."
2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted.  Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work.  It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it.  If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn't have an opportunity.
3. When you're ready to quit, you're closer than you think. There's an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true.  It goes like this: "The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed."
4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of "undefined consequences."  My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, "Well, Robert, if it doesn't work, they can't eat you."
5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, "As you think, so shall you be."
6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don't look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment.  You can get through anything one day at a time.
7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing.  Never stop improving.  Never stop doing something new.  The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die.  Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way.  Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen.  Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: "A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow."
9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true.  Anything that is measured and watched, improves.
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don't know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven't examined for a while.  I guarantee you problems will be there.
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you're doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.
12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you're doing as anyone else, provided that what you're doing is legal.
13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn't fair.  You make your own breaks.  You'll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).
14. Solve your own problems. You'll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you'll develop a competitive edge.  Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: "You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others."  There's also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently.  It goes like this: "A wise man keeps his own counsel."
15. Don't take yourself too seriously. Lighten up.  Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck.
None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.
16. There's always a reason to smile. Find it.  After all, you're really lucky just to be alive.  Life is short.  More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: "We're not here for a long time, we're here for a good time!"

Steve

Too often we don't really understand the obstacles we face.

The video below is loosely based on a real event. Once you get past the humor, it makes a serious point: Our faith in our own abilities, our confidence, can be the source of our own demise.

Almost every week some senior level person is telling me they don't need or want anything to do with social media or search engine optimization of their website. "My customers know who we are and don't use the web much..." Oh, oh, red flag!

No one wants to be wrong so I don't challenge their assumptions. I know the more I try to convince them they're wrong the more entrenched they'll become; experience has taught me this. So I ask them questions.

• Have you ever bought anything online?
• Did you ever buy a book from Amazon?
• Do you or your wife bank online or check your investments online?
• Has anyone you know ever looked at mortgage or insurance rates via the web?
• I use Proflowers to send flowers to my wife on Mother's day, Birthdays and other dates. I can pre-schedule the whole year in just a few minutes. Have you heard of Proflowers or 1-800-flowers?
• When something happens in the world where's the first place you go for more information?
• Are you or the people you know on LinkedIn?
• Why do you not trust your own real-world experiences?
• Why do you think your customers are so different than you? 

I may not ask that many questions or be that blunt. The reason is I seldom have to, my clients are smart so they get the point quickly. One client told me later that my asking those questions completely changed his mind. Up to that point he really didn't think his company needed more of a web presence or be involved in social media.

Here are my questions for you:

• Are you open to new information?
• Do you know how much time you spend online?
• Do you think your customers are very different than you?
• Can your company be found easily through the search engines?
• Have you joined the social media conversation? Or better yet, if you belong to any industry organization, even the Chamber of Commerce, then why won't you joined the online conversation?

Enjoy the video!

Steve
800-707-9150

I guess I should warn you, I’m going to pound this subject hard. The reason is the overwhelming evidence is shouting Act! yet the activity level suggests few are listening. Change is coming too slowly.

If you own or manage a business have you figured out how the web, yeah, the one that’s almost 15 years old, will change your business or industry in the next few years? Okay, so you have a website. That's not enough. That's just a first-step. We're still at the beginning of building a connected commerce-enabled world, not the end.

What I’m asking is do you really understand how the online world is going to change your business over time (going forward) and what are you doing about it? Will you lead the innovation or will you run into it like a brick wall. Will you accelerate the adopion of new technologies and platforms like Jimmie Johnson coming out of a turn or will resist change like a grease stain on Jimmie's garage floor?

Based on facts, on history, it seems very few people figure out technology in time to prevent massive shifts, new winners and losers, in industry after industry. "Change your business" is a task, not a theme for a meeting or annual report.

Companies and people are generally very slow to change. Even overwhelming evidence is often ignored. Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.

• iTunes has sold over 10 millions songs online, how many record store owners saw that coming?
• Netflix is approaching $2B in sales and the stock has climbed 182% in the last 52-weeks. Blockbuster profits declined 17% and their stock price is down 51.4% during the same period. Mom-and-pop video stores are about extinct.
• The print industry is down an estimated 30%-40% from the highs of just a few years ago, and the smart ones left standing are scrambling to get into the website building business. The rest need to get used to revenue levels that make supporting expensive printing equipment difficult at best.
• Movie producers are linking up with the cable providers to deliver newly released movies (30 days after opening in the theaters) into our living and media rooms. Do you think most theater owners have a plan to combat this new channel, this new competitor? Some probably do, maybe, but most will watch the sun set on them and never take bold action.
• Mainstream marketing firms with plush offices and high fixed cost teams of people ready to help clients with PR, web-design, advertising, branding, logo design, messaging, product launches, annual reports and channel programs are laying off people by the truckload. Small, low-overhead outfits promoting and selling their services online are thriving.
• While we’re on the subject of “mainstream,” how about the major news networks. If you still watch the evening news on CBS, NBS and ABC, you’re watching the same format everyone watched in the 50’s and 60’s. That’s remarkable! Is it any wonder that  they are now competing with Fox News, which I consider a serious news outlet, TMZ,  Comedy Central and The HuffingtonPost.com? The HuffingtonPost now has 4,000 regular contributors (literary crowd-sourcing), 11 million visitors a month and a value estimated at $100M. They were a startup in 2005.
• The United States Postal Service is trying to eliminate an entire delivery day (16.6% of their schedule) to bring costs inline with revenues while email, texting, bill paying, banking and online promotions continue to enjoy double-digit growth.
• The big brokerage firms were getting their hats handed to them by online discount firms long before the current financial crisis hit. Rather than reposition their businesses they chose to destroy their brands by selling inferior products to trusting clients. Their strategy was no more sophisticated than a thief's: "Grab what you can before the police show up..."
• And personally I don’t see how our high-cost universities can survive into the future. The web has enough interactive capabilities and bandwidth to deliver a ton of education to our screens (all of them) at a fraction of the cost we tolerate today.

I could go on...but the point is you need to take ht e"change your business" lead.

In industry after industry a new entrant or an enlightened company figures out how to leverage the web, change the competitive landscape, and grab huge chunks of market share. The previous industry leaders stand around watching, tweaking their businesses at the edges, and waiting for yesterday’s model to reemerge victoriously. That ain’t happenin'!

Yesterday is gone forever. If you’re not figuring out how to leverage the web in a big way to change your business and the competitive landscape in your industry then know this, someone else is.

Steve
800-707-9150