Morning Folks,
There is low tide and high tide in both life and in business. They all have their place. They all have their advantages. They all have their disadvantages. When you see those tides clearly and know they exist and adapt to each, there is no such thing as bad times. There are just different times.
Good and bad things happen during any and all of those times. Of course if you don't look at it that way, it becomes hard to play the game and you will likely drown regardless of the tide. It is the understanding of these tides that separate the groups that thrive from the ones that struggle. I invest a lot of time in my life trying to show my readers the way to thrive. The only way to thrive is understand and be master of the 8 inches between your ears. Every win or loss or failure or success comes from within that 8 inch space.
The past 4-5 years have been a lowering of the tide. Still many made their fortunes regardless. If you look back I write extensively about it as the tide began to recede and I planned for these tough times. Part of my plan was how do I parachute over 5 years and still be financially strong while others became financially weak. Then at the depth of the weakness to be able to grab that low hanging fruit? How do I do that at a time when domains were at record selling levels? That keyword 'Patience' just keeps popping up because the tides are about patience. The seasons are about patience. Life is about patience. I am not a patient person. Not by any stretch. But somewhere along the way I was able to define patience. In different situations the time you alot to patience is different. Most bad things happen because somebody ran out of patience a bit too soon in that 8 inch space.
These are challenging but also very exciting times. Let me be clear as I have said for years. There is more opportunity at this very second than all of history glued together. But if you don't know the difference between opportunity and a shadow, then you lose. If you can not master your mind, you lose.
Then it all circles back to decisions. That is the defining point of life. Making good decisions. No matter how big or how small, any decision can lead to good or bad places. Where do those decisions happen? In that 8 inch playing field.
So when I look at life and the future through my eyes, I always see beyond the current tide. Beyond the current conditions. Beyond the cycles that are happening. They are just factors to deal with. When there is a storm your job is to hunker down and be patient.
I have never stopped buying domain names. But they have to fit my definition to tie my dollars up. I can just as easily go out spend and enjoy that money. When I go through my lists of domains I have bought on the secondary market most domains I buy are $100, $500, $1000 and up to $5000. That is MY sweet spot. That is the game that the formula I use fits the best. And it does not matter if it was 17 years ago or today. I still look for the same keys.
Think about it. In most cases you are buying something that nobody else on the planet wants at that moment in time. So the upside MUST be there. How do you find the upside? By looking at it through the eyes of others. Through the eys of different tides. Through the eyes of different decades. Through the eyes of progress and how things might unfold. I place a bet on an assumption based on what I have learned and what I am aware of. I look for the finish line first. I start at the finish line and work backwards to the beginning. Always have. Always will. Find the answer first and then figure out how to get there without bending reality or kidding yourself.
2012 has been a great year in that there has been a lot of movement and folks online are getting more sophisticated and business is starting to understand that it is SALES that will either keep them in business or put them out of business. The website is no longer the hobby. It is the lifeline of nearly every living and breathing business and entity and person.
When I negotiate it is not about what they see. It is what I see. But when the two merge, great things happen. These mergers of the mind are now with much less headwinds. I know about those headwinds fighting for 17 years in something still few believe in or truly understand. But that can not sway me because I start at the finish line and the key is patience. To know that a certain journey will take a certain amount of time. See when you start at the beginning you really can't judge where the finish is nor how long it will take to get there. But when you start your journey at the finish line and trace the trail back to today, you can be pretty damn close to predicting how long that journey will take including the wrong turns along the way.
I was sad to read the post by Eric Borgos at Impulse the other day. He has been around a very long time and has/had a great portfolio of very valuable names. Somewhere long the way he made decisions that just did not pay off. The time and expense and loss of 4000 mini-sites among others. Like I say, sometimes doing nothing is just much better. Sadly, this is an example of what I have talked about all these years. Sadly folks are resorting to selling domains from need and not a point of strength. That's why I look at the weekly domain sales reports through different sets of eyes.
Great domains will not go down in value for anyone reading this in their lifetime. Circumstance will FORCE sales that are less than their value and a weak market, low tide, will allow that to happen. But only if you participate in that game at this low tide cycle.
See in the next 12-18 months I am seeing an explosion of business. Now let me also say that the tide will get lower before it begins to rise but the rising tide is now well within sight and those that make it there are all going to be very well rewarded.
It's been over 2 weeks since TRAFFIC ended and I have yet to get back on my feet. I spent a few hours in the hospital on Monday and still days away from fully recovering, but I am no longer sick.
Our health is everything. But I am also so happy that I constructed a life when I was incapacitated from a bad back back in 1988. It was then and there that I knew I had to construct a life and income stream capable of producing income whether I was healthy or not. Old or young. Working or not. Until then, if I did not travel, I made no money. I was a akin to a waitress. When you don't show up and wait on tables, you don't earn, you don't eat, you can't survive.
So I look at the last 2 weeks and while I have not taken care of all of my business, I was able to piece meal about 95% of it a few minutes here and there. Probably my 2 most productive weeks of the year. So many seeds planted over those years that they sprout 24/7 on their time line not mine. Low tide, high tide. Sick or well. The path to the finish line passes right by my front door because I started at the finish line and planned for that to happen even when that finish line was a dream on the shores of the unknown wilderness. More news to follow.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
Scott Alliy
Still feeling minor cold symptoms myself. Be well soon!
BTW totally agree on the ready or not the future is coming thing and that as you say there is a finish line. The one who sees it and understands exactly what it looks like will be the one who holds the gold at the perfect time when gold is in highest demand from the greatest number of people.
If not an Internet business then what the hell do people think entrepreneurs who get out of school and need to make and support a life are going to do in a global technology driven world?
I am slowly building the largest portfolio of GTLD services brand domain names in preparation for what I feel (didn’t always feel until now) will be the next domain industry wave.
Here’s to patience and future prosperity for those who act wisely and decisively.
Scott Alliy
And heres a prediction for the record books …
Digital magazines will become all the rage!
All the new businesses that will be built on a new GTLD .whatever will not be found on already overcrowded first page search results. So what I see happening is like the early days of manufacturing print Trade rags was the place where businesses offered news of their products and services. Some will argue that Twitter and Facebook are that place but I disagree totally. In fact I do not have a Facebook account and have a Twitter account (I think) to protect our core business brand but have never once used it. So anyone trying to reach me as a consumer on FB or Twitter is SOL.
I do read digital industry trade pubs though.Time will tell if I am right.
Puckerhuddle
I am a late comer to the domain name business but I can see nothing but upside potential.
What is going on is reminiscent of when my parents came to Canada after WW 2. There was a great wave of immigration and so many like my parents went to work on farms. In just a few short years many of these families had saved enough for a down payment for a farm. There was a backlash from locals who were mortified that these new immigrants were buying up all the farms. My parents and many others were the brunt of prejudice and labeled as dp’s (displaced persons) and other slanders. What so many of the local community could not see, was the value that my parents saw in owning some land, being able to farm and conduct their business in a safe country free of strife and war. For them this was a total no brainer and in my fathers case a man who had been forcibly removed from his home, shipped to another country to be used as forced labour, liberated by Allied forces, walked back to his home and family who thought he was surely dead, volunteered for military service and served half way around the world, the criticism were easily ignored.
The best days are ahead of us in this business and personally I am amazed that I have been able to accumulate the names that I have, at such a cheap price. I always have maintained that the best time to start a business is when things are at their worst, if you can get by in the bad times, the good times will be like found money.
Robin
AHEAD OF TIME
Imagine taking all the best parts from Rick’s blog over the years
and making it into book.
Richard
Poetry! Start from the finish and work back to the beginning. Genius! Love this line to bits: ‘I started at the finish line and planned for that to happen even when that finish line was a dream on the shores of the unknown wilderness’
BullS
Puckerhuddle– I was called many racist nasty names ch*&K and all sort names and I remembered them.
Guess what, now I am so much $$$$$$$ better off than them, I smirked at them calling the W*&^% trash.
*** the best revenge is always living well !!!!***
I inflict emotional pain to them as they last longer and sweeter to my ears than physical pain.
jin
amen
Corn
I read the Impulse guy’s post that you linked. His post is what is wrong with 99 percent of domainers and people in general. A good business is one in which you sell a product or service that you would buy yourself at that price. All he writes about is what is in it for him. He is like most domainers, never for 10 seconds thinking about what he is actually offering to society. He is concerned about his payouts. Big FUCKING deal. Nobody cares. There are people who are born or don’t have access to drinkable water. Get a life, people.
Most domainers have no idea how the world really works. Here they are, many of them born in the United States, at the most prosperous time in human history, and yet they whine about being victims in the domain game.
I told these cretins for years that if they let scumbags run wild on the domain forums then the whole thing would crash. Nobody listened, and now the forums are Ghost Towns, as 90 percent of domainers, at least, have been involved in shady activity, many of which is illegal, but almost all of which is immoral.
Wake up and either figure it out, or get a real job and SHUT THE FUCK UP.
domain guy
excellant post! full of insight…clearly shows your wisdom in
an informative writing style.only 8 commets shows how above the heads your writing is to the masses!!!
Jorge Ramirez
Great post Rick. I am also Starting at the Finish line.
I think there will be good times ahead for domains sales, online shopping and for business. I said back a few comments ago where I was not liking that there was no place to create domain content and for prices of what ever one wanted and focus. So following your long tern focus and wisdom I created my own extention of a simple blog called domains.shopimar.com/ where I will write content about my few domains and those I am learning about and will purchase in future just to be able to write and sell at my own prices and content. You and everyone is welcome to write about your domains and prices too and more related to domains or just write and point to your sites and domains. I know there many be others or similar places but I am just focused on what I want to control and know others can share and feel the same way and my own long term domain and online passive income to focus on.
chadi ghaith
This post is code for a winner mentality that is often overlooked by the noise and static of behavioral chaos and panic. I see people all the time falling due to mental turbulence rather than due to external gravity; yet they always amazingly have tons of piled up rhetoric to philosophize and poetize their failure (the mathematics of self-deciet).
There is a saying i grew up to here on our side of the earth ‘Courage is nothing but one extra hour of patience’ Its not a muscle thing, its a cognitive thing…
And a ‘wise man does first what a foolish does last’ which means that the in the times of strong currents lingering motionlessly is better than moving aimlessly and in the end, you will be forced to comply with the logic of the wise only after u’ve burnt!!
Touching base with the Domain reality; I’ve promised myself to do all i can just to comply with a simple maxim:”Never be caught too tired in the race to see the finishline’ because as Socrates said 2400+ yrs ago ‘its not important that u win a race, its rather important that u arrive at the finish line gracefully’ (not all sweaty and funny looking).
I appreciate ur wisdom and experience Rick cz i find it applicable to all fields of biz and life in general not just the domain field.
Cheers !