Compounding Wisdom
Making Your Dreams Real
Dreams die because of these three things or lack thereof.
Dreams die because of these three things or lack thereof.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy dream.
Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)
Do you recall the first 6 Secrets of Success?
A Desire or a goal that you envision to be real. A dream you deeply desire.
Faith in the attainment of that desire beyond all doubt.
Your subconscious mind does not know imaginary from reality, nor right from wrong (the realm of your conscience), so you can use Autosuggestion to embed the faith in your desire into your subconscious deeply.
Specialized knowledge allows you to master what aligns with your purpose—the cornerstone of your impact.
Imagination allows you to build your desire in the workshop of your mind, creating a blueprint with all the details.
Organized Planning organizes this living blueprint, bringing each step closer to reality.
These following three secrets keep your dreams alive when plans fall into the valley of despair.
7. Decision
The Mastery of Procrastination
The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.
Maimonides (1138-1204)
What is the opposite of procrastination?
Decision making. Making decisions empowers you to take swift, unwavering action.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, after being fired from his own company in 1985, he decided to reduce 220 products into just four product lines that would become the cornerstone of Apple. A 2x2 matrix of Personal/Enterprise in Desktop/Mobile. He said "No" to the many mediocre and focused on just a handful of "Yeses" for his team of 8,000. The first was the new iMac, then the iPod, then the iPhone and iPad, paired with software. It catapulted Apple into the #1 company in the world. Steve has been gone since 2011, but Apple remains a standard of excellence for its simplicity and beautiful products. Apple is his most significant innovation, and from that comes innovative products.
Application: I had 300,000 great domains but decided to sell 95% and keep the top 5%. Now, I am focused on the Top 100 of 11,000 domains—domains like How.com, Mother.com, VC.com, Git.com, God.com, Vancouver.com, and Bots.com. I am partnering with top entrepreneurs in this world of AI.
Wisdom: Cut through doubt with wise decisions that simplify and remove complexity and clutter. Trust your vision to say no to distractions, knowing that each decision shapes your final masterpiece.
8. Persistence
Sustained Effort Despite Setbacks
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.
Walter Elliot (1888-1958)
Persistence is the continued relentless pursuit of your desire and vision, even when obstacles appear insurmountable. It's the force that keeps the dream alive.
When Elon Musk was on the verge of collapse with both Tesla and SpaceX, trying to launch Electric vehicles in a world of gas autos and reusable rockets when he didn't quite know how, his Persistence to figure out the constraints and innovations his companies required allowed him to break through, especially when everything was on the line.
Application: My mentor Bob Proctor told me that he read the chapter on Persistence in the book "Think and Grow Rich" every day for 30 days each year for 30 years. That means he read it 900 times. Wow. His reminder that Persistence was crucial to his great goals answered his question: "What do you really want?" He had one key desire a year that extended into decades.
Wisdom: Remain steadfast and persevere in the face of setbacks and obstacles. There is always a way, sometimes many ways. Let Persistence become your superpower, as each setback becomes the FUEL for the next one.
9. The Mastermind
The Coordination of Knowledge and Effort
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
You may have heard of the term Mastermind. The mastermind principle involves surrounding yourself with people who challenge and uplift you to a high frequency (energy) level, creating a synergy that elevates everyone in the Mastermind.
I found this Mastermind principle hard to grasp but realized its power. It is how everything in the world succeeds, including families, communities, companies, and institutions. However, it starts to fail once there is no "mastermind."
Application: Disney created a mastermind in his studio, gathering artists, engineers, and visionaries who dreamed and brought ideas to life. His Mastermind fostered creativity, where the combined talents of his team far exceeded those of the most talented individuals. You can start with just two or three people, the 'Trinity' of visionary (the architect), operator (the executor) , and controller (finance and planning).
Wisdom: Seek a mastermind that complements your strengths and inspires your imagination. Build a mastermind of passionate individuals to create an unstoppable force for innovation and execution.
My Life Question:
How do you make the best decisions?
When I think of decisions, I think of another D word: Discernment. How do you discern the best decisions when you don't have all the information or the context?
When the stakes are high, this discernment is even more critical.
I often ask for time to "sleep on it" or to "pray about it" so I can have the wisdom to discern rightly.
Having a timeline for decisions is also essential. Another D word: Deadline.
I often think of Decision Trees for the worst-case scenario, the likely one, and the best scenario. I plan for the best but also mitigate for the worst.
My Life Lesson:
Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Persistence is what I call Relentless Pursuit. I believe this is a quality that separates the great from the rest. It also means focus—someone who is persistent over a long period, like the tortoise. I have engraved the Tortoise principle as my own path. I am a tortoise who plods along to my destination.
It's essential to know my destination. I have to be clear about this, even though I may not see the path or way to my destination. We travel around in circles, taking wrong paths and exits, but eventually, we can arrive at our destination if we persist. This is Odysseus's journey to his destination, which is ultimately home.
Where is your home? Your true destination, where your heart feels at home?
Next week:
The Power of Your Subconscious Mind To Connect Your Dream to Reality.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
How to Set Your Dream into Motion
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Do you recall the first 3 Secrets of Success?
1. A Desire or a goal that you envision to be real. A dream you deeply desire.
2. Faith in the attainment of that desire beyond all doubt.
3. Your subconscious mind does not know imaginary from reality, nor right from wrong (the realm of your conscience), so you can use Autosuggestion to embed the faith in your desire into your subconscious deeply.
These are the three cornerstones of success, but the next three set it into motion, bringing heaven to earth and the imaginary to reality.
4. Specialized Knowledge
Personal Experiences and Insights
The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch (46-119 CE)
General knowledge is superficial, but specialized knowledge is rare and valuable, and it catalyzes success insights. Seekexperts or pioneers in your field and continually refine your specialized knowledge.
I wove together the insight that the Internet was going to be the biggest revolution in history with the physical real estate analogy for domain names. Now, layered with mobile and blockchain, I believe this revolution will only accelerate with AI.
Application: I invested in specialized knowledge about domain names, investing in hundreds of thousands of them and still hold 11,000 premium domains. I sold 80% of my Google stock in 2018 and bought NVIDIA at $60, believing GPUs in blockchain, followed by AI would make NVIDIA a very valuable company. They are #1 right now.
Wisdom: Don't seek to know everything. Instead, master what aligns with your purpose.
5. Imagination
The Workshop of the Mind
If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off, and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)
Imagination is where ideas are born. It's the workshop of the mind, where the intangible is forged and refined until it's ready to be realized. It is the blueprints of design.
Application: I am inspired by the idea that Hitchcock visualized almost every scene of his movies before he made them, even the shadows on the faces of the actors. This thinking doesn't just apply to movies, but also to businesses and your life. The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. You, yourself must still imagine and plan.
Wisdom: Let your imagination roam freely without constraints, unrestricted by today's limitations. Build a workshop in your mind and visit it daily. Craft, tinker, experiment and redesign the world in your mind before making it real.
6. Organized Planning
The Crystallization of Desire into Action
Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again.
Walt Disney (1901-1966)
A dream without a plan is only a fantasy, never realized. Organized planning takes desire and crafts it into actionable sets… Today.
Application: For the past twenty years, I have visited Disneyland every year to inspire my family to dream and bring out the child in our hearts. Walt Disney meticulously planned every theme and detail of Disneyland before it ever came to life. Each attraction, path, and performance was mapped out in advance. He organized his vision into a plan that captured every magical element he imagined. I am trying to do this (with my team) for CampHowdy.com.
I call this an executable plan, and I typically have three phases, mirroring the caterpillar, cocoon, and butterfly phases. Hence the quote from Emerson on an acorn seeding a thousand forests. I think in days, but I also think and plan for decades.
Wisdom: Organize your vision into a living blueprint, where each step makes your vision closer to reality. Plan not just for the outcome but also for the experience, ensuring every detail aligns with your highest purpose. Think, think, think deeply and envision it all like a movie in your mind.
You are the director.
If you can visualize it, if you can dream it, there’s some way to do it.
Walt Disney (1901-1966)
My Life Question:
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Zig Ziglar (1926-2012)
What is Your Organized Plan?
For your role, your business, your health, your family, your faith, or your life?
My blueprints are at most a page and typically half a page. They are simplified to a flywheel cycle with 3-5 main points (I call them dominos).
For my physical health, at 100 years old, I will do 10 pull-ups, ride 100 km on my bike, and do the splits (it's going to be a hard one 🙂).
My Life Advice:
In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)
While I believe that God created the heavens and earth, I also believe that I must think, imagine, gain wisdom, plan, and prepare with all my heart, mind, and body for something to come from just a thought or idea.
The imaginary world is not bound by constraints, but the physical world is. Finding an elegant solution between your ideas and your reality is magical.
You are given riddles of life where the answers lay in the problems and questions you encounter. Solve them and free your soul and others. These are your life missions if you choose to accept them rather than run away from them.
Next week:
Making Your Dreams Reality
Dreams die because of these three things or lack thereof.
Success is the progressive realization of a worthy dream.
Earl Nightingale (1921-1989)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
The First 3 Success Principles
Let’s 80/20 Success
Let’s 80/20 Success
The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960)
How many piano keys make up all the melodies we hear? Just 12. Seven white keys and five black keys.
And how many principles determine Success? Just 13. According to the teachings of Andrew Carnegie and the great successful people of his era, like Henry Ford, who democratized automobiles, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and many others. Carnegie challenged Napoleon Hill to find the principles of Success and introduced him to all the successful people he knew.
Hill defined the principles of Success to just 13 in his book, 'Think and Grow Rich'.
Think is the keyword here. Think deeply and connect many deep thoughts together. Hill created much more wealth through his book than Carnegie did through his business empire, and he was one of the wealthiest people of his time ($310 billion in today's dollars and the fourth richest of all time).
Do you know and employ these 13 principles of Success?
Can you name them?
I'd like to delve into them each week, starting with the first three keystone principles of Success.
1. Desire
Dare to live the life you have dreamed for yourself. Go forward and make your dreams come true.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Success begins with a strong desire for a definite goal. It's not just wishing but a deep, burning desire that propels one to take laser-like focused action toward achieving something significant or meaningful. It's a force so strong that it pushes you to continue striving, even when challenges arise.
When I decided to become a medical doctor at age 14, it was my number one desire. When I was 24 in 1994, I desired to be part of the fabric of the Internet. I envisioned owning four key domains: God.com, Heaven.com, Religion.com, and Jesus.com. There is just one left. When the time is right, it will be granted to me.
These were two of my strongest desires in life. They pervaded my heart and mind incessantly. I knew nothing would stop me in my quest to fulfill this deep-seated desire.
What is your desire?
Perhaps it's a mission, a thing or, more importantly, a person.
2. Faith
Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
You learned about 80/20. Only a few things have a high impact. One thing gives you half your results.
"What is that one thing that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?"
Faith is the unwavering belief in the attainability of a goal or desire. Faith is the act of seeing the invisible and trusting in oneself or a greater power in the seemingly impossible. It is the belief that, despite lacking evidence, something greater is guiding you toward your purpose. Faith has the transformative power to make the invisible visible.
Even though I did not get into medical school immediately after I finished my Honours Biochemistry degree, I was not only more determined but still fully believed that I would eventually get in. I also believed it was providential, as it was my 'one wish' to a greater power that I had not yet known when I was hospitalized at age 14. I thanked God when I was accepted into UBC and the University of Calgary's medical schools.
And for the four domain names, I believed it would take 20 years or more to get all four:
God.com took 4 years
Religion.com took 5 years
Heaven.com took 7 years
I believe Jesus.com is coming within the next decade.
I also have a desire to help cure cancer and educate people on what is causing a lot of the world's epidemic of chronic illness. I believe I know some of the major root causes.
What do you believe in?
Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
3. Autosuggestion
Be not the slave of your own past- plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
"Keep the Faith." The world around you has a way of making you doubt your desires and their attainment. As we age, we become 'unlike' the child who believed everything was possible and asked, "Why not?" and "Why?" We start to limit our beliefs as we stumble and fall, fearing to fail and look bad before others.
The person who regards his heart more than the opinions of others will have the courage to live his dreams.
Autosuggestion is the practice of repeating affirmations or mental images to affirm and visualize your goals by internalizing them and profoundly embedding them in your subconscious mind to keep your faith strong.
Autosuggestion is a bridge that gets you close to your desire, but you must still take that leap of faith where faith is 100%, not 1% less. Pure faith.
Society and our conscious and logical mind tend to negate anything it cannot 'see.' It asks for proof, logic, and reason. The visionary and intuitive mind sees things before they manifest. Visionaries, we call such people.
What do you envision? Over and over again until you see it in your mind's eye, strong and sure? With not even 1% doubt?
I asked myself why I pray so much. O you of little faith.
"The horse is prepared for the day of battle,
But victory comes from the Lord." (King Solomon)
I have prepared my mind, heart, and body, but prayer is the hope that a greater power beyond myself, my Lord and Creator, will bless and bring about my desires.
I define prayer as the request in full faith to God that the hope I desire be blessed and accomplished by His mighty hand through me.
This hope is not seen physically through my eyes or logically by my mind but through my heart. This is the gift and secret power I have learned.
My Life Question:
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
What do you really desire?
What is your one true desire?
Remove all the shadows of this deep-seated desire. Mine away all the dirt that buries this true desire and let it shine. Have the courage to dig deep into your heart.
Or, a better question is, for whom do you live? Are you willing to sacrifice everything for that one person?
Life Advice
All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Know the principles that govern Success. They are like laws following cause and effect, input leading to output.
Most people are defined by one thing. Most people are complete by one person.
Seek your one thing and your one person. If you are blessed, you may have two things and two people. And if really blessed, then more things and more people. This is the love of your life. What do you love to do, and who do you love to do it for?
When you were born you were crying and everyone else was smiling. Live your life so at the end, you’re the one who is smiling and everyone else is crying.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Next week:
The Next 3 Principles of Success
The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
The One Thing That Really Matters
The “F” word that has F, U, C but no K
The “F” word that has F, U, C but no K
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand.
The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
I like to multitask so I can get a lot done. I have a lot on my 'To Do' list. But I realized that I don't do things as well or as fast by trying to multitask.
I learned a powerful concept that all successful people do very well. It's the F word, but it's five letters. It has a 'U' and 'C' but no 'K'.
What is that F word?
FOCUS.
Yes, focus, focus, focus. Like "Location, location" for real estate.
Focus is the key to exponential growth and returns.
1. Focus on Your Strengths
Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
John Wooden (1910–2010)
Sometimes, we focus on our weaknesses to improve ourselves. It's valid. We all start in a position of 'unknowing,' 'weakness,' or 'inability' until we practice enough to become great at something. But most of us are gifted with something that comes naturally, that we love, or that we have done enough times to do well. Lean into these.
I have the gifts of creativity and problem-solving. I love surprises and magical moments, which may be why I love Disney so much and go there every year.
What are your key strengths? List the Top 3 now.
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Bruce Lee (1940-1973)
2. Focus on High-Impact Opportunities
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
You learned about 80/20. Only a few things have a high impact. One thing gives you half your results.
"What is that one thing that will make everything else easier or unnecessary?"
This is the focusing question from the book, 'The One Thing'. Ask yourself this question each day.
The other focus should be on what is constraining the goal. This constraint, sometimes called the bottleneck, slows or even anchors the goal from happening. You must use your resources or abilities to remove this constraint. A series of constraints must be identified, and the biggest one must be focused on. This is from Dr. Eli Goldratt's book, The Goal, a Top 50 Best-Selling book of all time.
So, there are only two things to identify:
The goal (the one thing that will give you up to half your results)
The constraint (that blocks you from flow or your goal)
And remove all other 'distractions'.
Perfection is not when there is no more to add, but no more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944)
3. Focus on the Long-Term
Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.
Stephen Covey (1932-2012)
Align short-term goals and decisions with long-term goals. Line these up like dominos to increase compounding effects over time. This is the most powerful system you can think of and develop.
We call this leverage by leveraging every goal into moving bigger goals.
We have a land, Camp Howdy, that is only accessible legally by boat. We needed to attract people here, so we bought Dining Domes. People came. Then we added lights we could program on these domes so that we could do light shows after dinner. This attracted more people. Next, we set the lights to music and expanded the light show to include the buildings. See 123Festivals.com. We sold out October's GloFest. Now we are doing Christmas Tea Lights. Next, I want to leverage this for corporate retreats.
List your 5-year and 10-year goals and then each yearly goal from now to then to accomplish them. What constraints prevent these annual goals? Remove them. Prioritize them.
My Life Question:
If you only had one wish, what would that one wish be?
I ask this to everyone I interview.
If there is only one goal you want to accomplish in your life, what is it?
We call this your mission in life. We see this as our vision.
You know Christopher Columbus, for one thing.
You know Abraham Lincoln, for one thing.
You know Charles Darwin, for one thing.
You know, Martin Luther King Jr, for one thing.
Some people have the rare gift of being known for two things or three.
What are you known for or will be known for?
Life Advice
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne (1928-2013)
Life is fractal, just like 80/20 is fractal.
The key in life is to find that one singular thing that is your Magnum Opus, your "great work," and build up toward that crescendo in your life to complete what you are destined to do, your mission if you choose to accomplish it.
Beethoven's Magnum Opus was his symphony #9 when he was deaf.
John Milton's was his Paradise Lost, even when he became blind.
What is your Magnum Opus?
Next week:
The 13 Principles of Success. That’s all you need to know.
Let’s start with the 80/20 of these Principles of Success (the first 3)
“The secret of success is to do the common thing uncommonly well.”
John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874-1960)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
The One Thing that Skyrockets Your Success
The secret of all the most successful people in history
The secret of all the most successful people in history
The 80/20 principle states that 80% of outcomes come from 20% of efforts. Focus on the few things that truly matter, and success will follow.
Richard Koch (1950-present)
This principle changed my life. A lot.
This important 80/20 Principle, or Pareto's Principle, was taught to me, but I didn't really understand it until decades later. Do you?
The results speak for themselves. If you applied 80/20, you would be in the top 1% of whatever field you applied the 80/20 Principle towards. You would be in the Top 1% quite easily and naturally. Yet most people rarely apply the 80/20 Principle, even if reminded time and time again.
1. Most things are not equal.
Just 7 companies (Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, NVIDIA, Google, Tesla) account for 50% of the market (NASDAQ). If you had invested early in any of these companies, you too would be extremely wealthy. That is one easy way to get wealthy. I invested early in domains, Google and tech stocks and crypto. And NVIDIA in 2018.
80/20 math says that 20% of the inputs give you 80% of the results. This results in 4x or 400%. This is remarkable in a world where financial returns of 25% are 'great.' This is why Buffet buys stocks of 'companies' and not the stock index of the Top 500 companies.
In 2018, I sold 80% of my Google stock (which had 10x'd) and bought NVIDIA at $60. It has increased 25x in 6 years. Now, I am pondering what my next 10x stock will be.
There are 2,781 billionaires worth $14 trillion. The top 10 billionaires account for $1.6 trillion or 11.3%. The top 100 account for ~33%. The top 500 (20%) account for 70%. Close to 80/20. What do they do uniquely? 80/20 focus.
In terms of longevity, 2.5% of Americans (3% of females, 1% of males) will reach the age of 100. Of those who do achieve this century milestone, 0.02% will live another ten years. Less than 1 in 100,000 centenarians will make it to 115. Almost no one makes it to 120.
Longevity only matters if you are healthy. Otherwise, life will just get harder for longer. Health principles also follow 80/20.
Don't treat your 'to-do list' 'and 'not-to-do list' equally. Life operates on a logarithmic scale.
Don’t confuse activity with achievement.
John Wooden (1910-2010)
2. A very few things have the most impact.
Success is a few disciplines practiced every day.
Jim Rohn (1930–2009)
Very few things have tremendous value and impact. Finding and focusing on these vital few will leapfrog you ahead.
Warren Buffet played his financial game by limiting his financial decisions to 10 big bets, and Quentin Tarantino played his movie game by limiting himself to just ten movies.
80/20 means 20% input gives 80% output = 400%. If good is 25% returns, then 400% is 16x greater than good at 25%. Therefore, 80/20 results in greatness. Focus on 80/20 to be great. It's that simple but hard to do consistently. Focus on 80/20 consistently each day.
What ten bets will you place in your lifetime? I like to think of one big bet every decade.
I applied this to one of my businesses, BlackFriday.com. We reduced 1500 affiliate retail companies to 300 (20%), giving us 90% of the revenues. Sixty companies of these gave 70% of the revenues. Twelve companies gave 50% of the revenues. We eventually reduced it to just 60 companies, reducing our work of managing 1440 companies. We created new revenues by offering sponsorship placements to the top 12 companies. We did 90% less work but made 4x more money.
3. The 80/20 Principle is fractal.
Big doors swing on little hinges.
W. Clement Stone (1902–2002)
I learned from 80/20 Sales and Marketing, written by a good friend, Perry Marshall, that 80/20 is fractal. This means that inside every 80/20, there is another 80/20.
So out of 100 things, there is only one thing that matters a lot:
1st 80/20 Fractal:
20 things give you 80% results.
2nd 80/20 Fractal:
Twenty percent of those twenty things (four things) will provide you with 80 percent of the 80 percent results (64%).
I.e. four things give you 64% of the results.
3rd 80/20 Fractal:
Of the four things that give you 64%, 20% of those four things (1 thing) will provide you with 80% of the 64% results (50%). I.e., one thing will give you 50% or half the results.
Bingo. Secret.
Confused or crystal clear? Read it again.
So, find that one thing and focus on it. Or the four things that give you 64%. Or the 20 things that give you 80%. The key is to focus on the few things or (better yet) the ONE thing that gives you 50%.
Forget or ignore all the rest.
You are not programmed or taught to think or behave in this way.
You will remain ordinary without 80/20.
You can become extraordinary and fantastic with 80/20.
My Life Question:
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tzu (601-531 BCE)
What do you want to be great at?
What is the one thing that would give you half your results?
Focus on that daily.
Make your list of possible ten that can be 80/20. Figure out the vital few.
Revise this list daily in the morning as you learn and experiment.
Find at least one 80/20 a month.
Imagine what your year will look like. Wow.
My Life Lesson Then (from my younger self):
Find your purpose in life. You do have one. It’s deep in your soul, buried under the layers of the scars of your heart. Unravel it and give it all your heart and soul.
Life is fractal, just like 80/20 is fractal.
When you find your 80/20 purpose, visualize it and find the one thing I call the domino you need to knock down for even bigger dominoes in life. You can apply this to your career/business, health, and relationships.
Write your goal and then draw five dominoes that would knock your goal down. You can knock down the first domino today, this week or this month—maybe this quarter.
Life Advice Now (from my present self):
Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
Buddha (563-483 BCE)
Relationships are 80/20 but don't do 80/20 transactions in your relationship. Relationships aren't transactional or about efficiency. Love fully and unconditionally. Forgive and forget. Love and cherish. These things can not be fully measured but are felt to be truly valuable.
Some people think their lives are about wealth, while others believe they are about health. As you get older, you realize your life is about deep, meaningful relationships and purpose. We call this love and legacy.
My Magnum Opus I envision is:
Health and Wellness Retreat with the world's healthiest restaurant and fitness centre with people I love and people in need of wellness
A Gospel Media Network with God.com, Heaven.com, Religion.com, and Jesus.com is leveraging technology and media to touch hearts and souls for eternity.
Next week:
The One Thing That Matters
The “F” word that has F, U, C but no K
“Do that which you fear to do, and the fear will die.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Do you wish to retire early?
You can. Everyone can.
You can. Everyone can.
The concept of freedom is never truly realized until one settles into the idea of a fulfilled retirement.
Byron Pulsifer
I retired at 39 but realized I had the definition of retirement wrong.
Life is full of activity and work, but life also dictates that we need to relax, rest, and enjoy the dreams planted deep in our hearts. In the ten stages of life on this earth, each blink, each beat of our heart, the sunset, and the seasons remind us that life is a cycle and that we must rest in our set stillness.
We all dream of retiring to paradise and living happily ever after. Thus, we toil, we sweat, we labour so that we may one day enjoy the fruits of our labour of love. We call this retirement—finally being able to do that which we always wanted to do in life.
But what does it really mean to retire?
When Should You Retire?
Retirement is a blank sheet of paper. It is a chance to redesign your life into something new and different.
Patrick Foley
I lay in the dark, eyes closed, praying, asking God for wisdom. I had never taken a business course or a computer class, yet I wanted to start an Internet business. In University, I had forsaken the liberal arts, music, literature, and philosophy to ensure I got high marks in the sciences, math, and all the pre-medicine courses in University. The arts were too subjective, while the sciences were exact.
"God, give me the wisdom to do business, to connect with those needed, for I do not know anything about business. Then, any success can only be attributed to the gifts, connections and wisdom you have given me. Raise me for I am nothing."
With this prayer, I started a side business during my last year of medical residency in 1999. By the end of my residency, I made more in one month ($80k) than I had made all year as a resident ($50k). This was built during the evenings, the days I wasn't on call every third day and on the weekends. It took a toll on my wife (thank you honey).
By 2008, I had made hundreds of millions of dollars.
When people asked me, "What was the secret to your success?" I forgot how God had blessed me incredibly and replied, "The wisdom in books and my team." I started to believe it was me, my knowledge, my ability. I had seen the steps and vision so clearly. But then suddenly, this vision blurred, foggy, and quickly darkened. I could no longer see the path. I felt blind. I thought of Samson, whose power was lost when his hair was cut. I no longer had the power of vision and prophecy in business.
In 2009, I decided it was perhaps time to retire and pursue my dreams. My first definition of retirement was the freedom to do anything one wants without financial restrictions.
At first it was great. I didn't need to wake up to go to the office, or have any meetings. I felt free. As the months passed, I played the piano, I went to the Christian bookstore, I watched movies. Then I started to get bored. I was only 39, with my fifth child, a newborn, Gabriel. His middle name was Wire because I one day dreamed of creating a social commerce business on wire.com.
I had officially 'retired' but I felt a lack of purpose, drive and joy. I loved creating businesses and tweaking and making them work. I was like a tinkerer and inventor who was no longer tinkering and inventing.
Is this how I was going to spend the rest of my life?
The challenge of retirement is how to spend time without spending money.
My New Definition of Retirement
Retirement is when time no longer equals money. Time becomes much more valuable than money.
I was wondering what was going on in the world of business. I saw Groupon, a business that aggregated great deals online based on volume discounts for restaurants and other lifestyle activities if enough people purchased them. This is social commerce. I believed this would be an integral part of society.
I wanted to experiment and build a social commerce business like Groupon but with a charitable component, giving 10% of the proceeds to a local charity. Thus, Goodnews.com was born. After a couple of years, we built a team of developers, sales, and customer service to 60 people and expanded across Canada. But each new city had to be grown from 0. It didn't scale well and was heavy in sales and marketing, requiring lots of cash. I was used to technology businesses and soon realized I did not enjoy heavy sales organizations. I decided to exit this and start a different business.
Over the years, I have tinkered with and created many businesses. Many did not do well, but some did extremely well. Once they did well, I would divest and move on to the next one. People wondered why I still worked when I had so much wealth.
I pondered this question. For how long would I do business and create businesses? Should I invest like Warren Buffet instead? I spent a year waking up at 6:30 am PST to learn how stocks worked and see if I enjoyed it. I traded leveraged commodities like oil, natural gas and gold. I learned a lot as I studied and applied what I learned. After a year, I knew I did not like day trading stocks. It was stressful and had very high and low emotional volatility. But I learned a lot.
I am wealthy enough that I don't have to work day in and day out. I can continue to invest and make strategic long-term bets. But is this what gives me purpose, mastery, and joy?
Now, when people ask me when I will retire, I say I already have. My kids ask me this a lot. But Dad, you are still working just as hard as ever! No, I am retired. It's just that my definition of retirement is different from yours.
What is your definition of retirement?
I define retirement as doing what you love to do when you want to, not out of duty or obligation, but from your heart. When time becomes much more valuable than money and you use your time to do that which you love.
I removed the financial condition from my definition. Just as we are active and then rest, why do we always have this notion of "all or none"? It can be done in fractals of time. It fulfills your "To Be" and "To Dream" lists. Feel joy, purpose, and mastery; fill your days and nights full with the dreams of your heart and the people you love, and give this overflowing joy, purpose, and mastery to others as best as you can, not only for your immediate loved ones but also for those who may not even yet be born.
And if you are paid for what you love to do, that's a super bonus, as it creates more optionality for you to thrive and be more generous.
Are you doing what you love to do, when you want to, filling your heart with joy, purpose and mastery? Why not start now? Retire now… Live your dreams in your heart and find a way to make the economics work.
Ikigai - Your Reason for Being
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Ikigai, the intersection of
What you love to do
What you are good at
What gives value to others
What others are willing to pay your for
The first two are inputs, and the last two are outputs. Focus on the first two, and practice and integrate your love and talents to give the outputs over time.
I love the Bible, health, entrepreneurs, and biking. These are my loves.
My talents are associated with these, including tech, distilling and applying the principles of life and I dream of building a wellness retreat, make a Broadway musical, writing books on wealth and health and self growth, and making some movies.
I've ridden 40% of the Tour de France course and have a community of biking friends, including pro riders and Tour de France champions. I do my zen 100 km ride up hills and mountains once a week. I collect old Bibles (1611 King James Version), dream of opening healthy restaurants to disrupt the fast foods of burgers, donuts, and pizza, and write books and poetry. I want to build an AI business.
This is my retirement. I also want to live in Hawaii during the rainy, cold months of November to February in a few years and go on a sabbatical where I spend a year just doing what is at the top of my heart. I have earmarked 2026 and 2031 for these sabbaticals. I am fully blessed and grateful for each day of my life, and I ask my teams to express gratitude before every meeting. I wonder why I haven't instituted this daily in my family gatherings.
May you retire today.
Youth is wasted on the young.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
My Life Questions:
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)
1. When will you retire?
Start living the rest of your life with joy, purpose and mastery.
If you have retired, I would love to know your life philosophy. I enjoy it when you send me your thoughts. I read each one, and they are my fruits for these newsletters. I welcome you to send me a thought or two as I send you my heart each week.
My Life Lessons Then (from my younger self):
The only journey is the one within.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
1. I thought retirement was the last stage of life.
Retirement is not at the end but in the pauses of your life since the day you are born. It is the rest after the activity.
One day, when our bodies return to the ground and our souls go before God, we will fully rest in God's heart eternally.
2. I thought retirement was unlocked with financial freedom.
We spend most of our life hoping to attain financial freedom.
One of my businesses is losing a lot of money each month. We must reconstruct the business model as the industry has too much capacity. It's hard to make ends meet, as well as cash flows, debts, and unexpected expenses. We wonder when we will ever retire. And if you are healthy and live a long life, how will you survive 20 or 30 years after retirement? Retirement savings. Yes, we must plan for finances until the end of our life, but while we are living.
Since I was young, my philosophy has been to make one more zero than I spend and not limit my spending. So, my mind has always been on offense and how to create a sustainable financial source and multiple just in case. God has blessed me with this wisdom. I strike out a lot, but I hit more home runs and base hits than I strike out.
3. I thought life was just for me.
Once I developed my self to be reliable, consistent, discipined and confident, know who I am and who I wish to be, I started to think of others and future generations, as my legacy. It is in this stage I am in. Some people call it philanthropy. I call it ethos, my being. Human being.
Life Advice Now (from my present 53 year old self):
Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
Aesop (620-564 BC)
1. Live with great dreams.
Writing these life lessons is so powerful as it reminds me of the heart I had when I was younger, those lost and buried dreams. They are resurrecting and coming out of the coffin to rejuvenate my heart. Thank you, everyone, for this blessed opportunity.
2. Live each day with gratefulness.
Gratitude is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and others.
Say your gratitude each morning and evening. If you peer deep into your heart and mine your gratitude, I guarantee you will be a changed person by the end of the year.
3. I support those who dare to dream. I cannot convice you to dream. But if you dream, I support and can help nurture that dream in the incubator of your heart.
Dream always. Never forget to dream.
4. Create your Top 5: “To Be” list and “To Dream” List.
Make it a checklist.
Prioritize it.
Schedule 10 minutes in your calendar each day, either planning or doing it.
Next week:
7 Principles of Life
Do you live or die daily?
Live each day as if your life had just begun.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
God.com Vision
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
I had just finished my medical residency in June 2000, when the dot com imploded and started to become the dot com bust. AOL had just acquired Time Warner, one of the largest traditional media companies. AOL did that with phone dial-up internet services!
I paused and prayed as I pondered my next big step, whether to practice medicine or go all-in on the Internet. I was excited about the possibilities of domain names and acquiring virtual real estate.
Vision of a Better Future
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
I believed the Internet would be a revolution, like the Industrial Revolution, powered by the steam engine. It would be more transformative than the automobile, airplane, radio, or TV revolutions.
As I pondered and prayed, I had a vision. If I were to enter this Internet revolution, I would want to own some of the best virtual real estate properties. Four domain names appeared in my vision:
God.com
Heaven.com
Religion.com
Jesus.com
I saw them in that order. I researched to see who owned these domains and emailed the owners. I never got a reply from anyone except Religion.com. He was asking $150,000. What? That's crazy. This is not a business name, I thought. Good luck. Later, the God.com owner said he would never sell and just wanted to safeguard the domain. The same for Heaven.com. I never got a reply from Jesus.com.
As I saw things, acquiring these four domain names would require millions of dollars, and it seemed virtually impossible to acquire all four of them as I had envisioned.
How to make the Impossible Possible
There is nothing impossible to him who will try.
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC)
It was a chicken-and-egg problem. I had to make enough money to acquire these four domains if any of the owners were even willing to sell them at some point. I decided to keep in contact with each of them and email them monthly.
In the meantime, I decided to acquire a supporting cast of religion domains; why not pay for them by creating a business around commercial internet domains? Yes, that sounded like a great idea.
I saw how a handful of domainers had impressive domain portfolios, like my now good friends Scott Day (the watermelon farmer who acquired watermelons.com and then just started registering and buying great domains like recipes.com, webdesign.com, and webhosts.com), Frank Schilling, who just sold his domain business for $160 million, and Yun Ye, who sold his 100,000 domain name portfolio for $164 million in 2005.
To accomplish the heart of my visions, I required not only money but also great providence, God's helping hand. I determined that I would also have to have a pure heart and focus on missionary work while figuring out the business of domain names.
I wrote these thoughts down on a page of paper to visualize them. This would be the method I'd use to develop all of my future go-to business plans for subsequent ventures. If it could fit on half to one-page of paper, it would be simple to focus on and execute.
It's usually one big thing with a few supporting things that make a business work.
Think of Instagram. Initially, it started as a location social network, but photos were the main feature users used, so they simplified the app to just photos with filters and social sharing—perfectly timed to ride the wave of mobile photos.
Think of Slack. It started as an internal communication tool for the team developing a big game. The game failed, and they pivoted to Slack, which they later sold to Salesforce for billions.
Heart and Character
The true test of a man's character is what he does when no one is watching.
John Wooden (1910-2010)
I also envisioned that I would not be ready as a person to start this massive stewardship of God.com if I were to ever be granted it. It was put in my heart that the time would come when all four were granted, if ever.
Four years passed. I asked my friend Richard Lau to help me and offered him a 10% brokerage commission. As my friend was talking to the owner of God.com, the domain was hijacked (ie. stolen). Richard worked with the FBI to help recover the domain. He told the owner that I would be a great steward of the domain name. He agreed to sell it for just under half a million. By then, my commercial domain name portfolio, in the hundreds of thousands of domains, could easily afford it.
God.com. Check. Thank you God.
I then asked Richard to help me with religion.com. The previous owner donated it to the Presbyterian church, which put out a press release saying they would never sell the domain. My heart dropped when I read this. Yet, five years later, they agreed to sell it, with the condition that it had to be the same price they had offered the previous owner the donation receipt for the domain. $150,000 five years later. Wow.
Religion.com. Check. Laus Deo.
In 2007, I had been offering unsuccessfully increasing amounts for Heaven.com. The owner was still adamant about not selling. One day I received an email that he was ready to sell. I asked how much, expecting a reply of millions—$ 350,000. I had just sent him an offer to buy for $500,000 a week earlier so I told him if I could get Director approval, we could do it in one day for $350,000. He agreed. The fastest deal I had ever been a part of. Surreal.
Heaven.com. Check. Soli Deo Gloria.
I had secured other supporting casts like messiah.com, trinity.com, proverbs.com, devil.com, satan.com and wanted to have the mate of heaven.com--hell.com. The owner of hell.com had a steep asking price: $7 million. A no-go for me. One day, a decade later, he said he was ready to sell. I asked how much. He asked me what my offer was. I said no more than what heaven.com cost. $350,000. He said yes and looking back I should have ensured hell.com cost less than heaven, even if a dollar less.
24 years later, there has still yet to be progress on Jesus.com. Patience truly is a virtue.
Upon reflection, I realize that after these 24 years, my heart and character still lack the responsibility to steward such majestic domain names.
It may sound odd, but I knew that to realize this vision would require at least 20 years of my life. I also envisioned making three epic movies based on the Bible that fascinate me. I had pegged 2020 to start venturing into movie-making, but I've learned to trust God and not to place deadlines on my dreams.
Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day.
Heraclitus (535-475 BC)
My Life Questions:
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
For what and why me?
What on earth are you here to do? And why is it you who needs to do this?
As I pondered these two questions over the decades, they became: For who and why me? I realized it isn't for what but for who.
My 'what' is not for me but for my loved ones, for my fellow man, for Jesus who died for me, and for God who sent him.
My Life Lessons Then (from my younger self):
Dream big and dare to fail.
Norman Vaughan (1905-2005)
1. Make the dream in your heart real. Never lose faith. Never give up. I still dream my dreams.
2. Don’t be afraid to be crazy. I announced my vision to many people close to me. They thought I was crazy. Seven years later, when I was on the cover of my favourite business magazine, one of my friends, wondering how I could predict what I would do so many years later, asked if I was from heaven. That was funny to me since we had gone to high school together. I'm just a guy with a vision that I believe in. And though decades have passed, I still believe in it.
3. Keep the faith. No one really knows how much we can do until faith is absolute.
Life Advice Now (from my present 53 year old self):
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
1. Continuously knock on doors and solicit help from above and around you. Prayerfully and in full faith, pursue what you are destined to do.
2. Do not take lightly this vision and stewardship set in your heart. It has been planted in your heart for a reason.
3. Finish what you start. You are a quick starter and persistent, but ensure you complete the vision. Each day is one less day. Ask, and you shall receive, but only with faith. Seek and you shall find. Then knock incessantly until the door is opened to you. You stopped knocking. Keep knocking.
Next week:
What Do You Really Want? Really.
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage — pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically — to say ‘no’ to other things.
Stephen Covey (1932-2012)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Starting a Side Hustle in 5 Steps
Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Step 1: Start. It’s the Hardest Step
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe (1943–1993)
In today’s day and age, if you want to gain wealth and have optionality, you must create. In order to create, you must dream, imagine, and think of what brings you joy. In the beginning, there will be nothing but thoughts, ideas, and dreams.
To go from nothing to something is alchemy.
There will always be a beginning, and there will always be an end.
All great dynasties, empires, companies, organizations, products, and people adhere to this life cycle.
But you must still begin.
You must have the courage to start. You must take the first great (and hardest) step. Take a leap of faith.
In my final year of medical residency, I took a leap of faith in the new year 1999. I registered my business name, Hostglobal.com, incorporated the company in Nevada and launched my website within three months.
I got my first client, who paid $300 per month. then, I got another one at $3,000 per month and then a third at $20,000 per month. All of a sudden, I was making more in one month than I was in a year as a medical resident.
Step 2: Own a Niche
Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.
Walt Disney (1901–1966)
Back then, I had many ideas (I still do)—some great and many bad—but I had to choose one. I had to make one idea work.
I wanted to build a Yellow Pages online, but that idea was too big and too broad.
I didn't have the time, resources, or skill set to go big, so I niched down to one category: Web Hosting (because I believed every business would eventually have a website and therefore need a web host).
Hostglobal.com was born when I registered the domain, created the website, and populated it with web hosting companies. I built a system to get reviews and ratings on each web host and then had these web hosting companies sponsor Hostglobal each month, pulling in $25,000 USD per month.
I started with a web hosting directory.
Amazon started with books.
Netflix started with mail-order DVDs.
Apple started with a personal computer.
Meta (Facebook) started as a networking site for Harvard students.
What's your niche?
Step 3: Have a Singular Clear Vision
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944), The Little Prince
What is your vision?
What do you see as your end destination?
What is the success metric that measures your progress to your vision?
When you have clarity and can clearly see your idea's destination, it is much easier to navigate all the obstacles and resistance you will encounter as you embark on your side hustle journey.
After all, life is a journey full of obstacles that either strengthen or weaken one's resolve and spirit.
Envision your destination and articulate your vision. Simplify it to its core so you can express it in one paragraph, then one sentence and possibly in a few words.
All great companies, movies, shows, buildings, and relationships start with a person with a dream, then an idea, followed by thoughts on how to express that idea. Then, formulating and creating and building word by word, brick by brick, scene by scene, and editing it over and over again until it felt just right—until it worked just right.
Bringing an idea to life takes enormous energy in the form of thought and effort. But there are many ideas in your heart waiting to be born. Don't let them reside in the womb of your heart too long, for time passes impatiently.
Here are some of the world's most famous ideas; imagine if they had never been brought to life.
FedEx: Connecting the World Responsibly and Reliably (Overnight delivery)
Google: Organize and Make Accessible Information (Search)
Tesla: Accelerate the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy (Electric Vehicles)
Amazon: To Be Earth's Most Customer-Centric (Everything store)
Ford: Build the Best Vehicles Possible (Cars)
Southwest Airlines: Affordable Travel with Exceptional Service (Cheap travel)
IKEA: Create a Better Everyday Life (Cheap Furniture)
Costco: Deliver the Best Value Always (Cheap goods)
Netflix: Entertainment On Demand, Everywhere (Entertainment)
Disney: Make People Happy Through Magic (Happiness)
Step 4: Have an Executable Plan
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
George S. Patton (1885-1945)
What is your plan?
Can you execute it?
In what timeframe?
What are your constraints?
How will you overcome them?
What are your top 3 risks?
Design your plan in three to five steps, and start on the first step to make your idea real.
Your plans will change as you learn, encounter obstacles, meet new people, and get feedback. Adjust your plans. This process is called the path to product/market fit. You try to fit your product/service with your dream customers like a jigsaw puzzle.
This past year, I wanted our church lands to launch a tea lights festival. I had no actual position, only influence. We decided to go for it in October and launch in November. We had no product and very little money but many volunteers. I put together a website, 123festivals.com. I used artist renditions to show people what the experience would be like until we could make it real. I promised an amazing dining and guest experience, asking people to pay upfront, including a 20% tip.
Five days before launch day, the Parks Board told us that our customers could not use their section of the road to access our property. What?!
Fortunately, our property is on a waterfront, so we were able to charter boats to transport our guests to our festival by water. However, this created significant logistical and financial nightmares.
It was one of the most challenging things I've dealt with in business due to the extreme time constraints, obstacles from the Parks Board, and lack of expert resources. Ultimately, we chartered 1,800 guests over seven weekends.
Here are images from the first rough mockup by me.
Initially, our dome dining started at $79. However, by the last weekend, we had such high demand that we were able to increase it to $170 per guest.
We felt God's guiding hand as Vancouver's social media channels filled with free promotions for our Christmas Tealights event, and our guests shared their experiences on Reels and TikTok (that story is for another newsletter).
Here is the finished website (in the span of two months)
My executable plans typically fit on half a page of handwritten notes. They have 3-5 steps, 3-5 risks I should consider mitigating (e.g., boats instead of cars for the festival), and how I can execute the first 3 steps, listing my assumptions.
Keep it simple and execute the 80/20 tasks.
Step 5: VPD. Vision. Plan. Determination.
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison (1847–1931)
Now that you have your vision and plan, the last step is determination. Persistence and perseverance are essential.
Can you imagine failing 10,000 times like Edison to invent a city of lights with light bulbs?
Can you imagine getting rejected by 222 Venture Capitalists like Howard Schultz did for his Starbucks idea?
Can you imagine practicing like Kobe Bryant to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time, waking up at 3 am to have extra practice at 4 am to get in one extra practice than every other player?
The chapter on Persistence, a key principle of the 13 principles in the book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, is worth reading monthly. One of my mentors, Bob Proctor, read it daily for a month every year for 30 years. He practiced Persistence by reminding himself of the principle of Persistence.
Be determined. Persist. Persevere.
My Life Questions:
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne (1930–2016)
What have you always wanted to do but have not yet started?
Set aside an hour each day (morning is best) and write your thoughts, dreams, and plans with a timeline.
Just do it :)
My Life Lessons Then (from my younger self):
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
Life is going from hustle to hustle. Sometimes, it starts as a side hustle, but it often grows into a full-time hustle.
You might as well love and enjoy your hustles so you can hustle well.
You are much bolder and more fearless when you are younger because you have nothing to lose, only to gain.
Start young and focus on learning rather than earning.
Seek good mentors and memorable experiences.
See who does it the best and make it your own.
We are all inspired by something or someone. Find what and who thinks and operates at a level of excellence and extraordinaryness, and then practice becoming excellent and extraordinary.
Life Advice Now (from my present 53 year old self):
Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937)
Imagine you only have ten big life decisions that you can make in your lifetime.
What would those ten choices be regarding how you spend your precious time on earth?
My list:
I knew that I wanted to help people with their health ✔
I knew that I wanted to ride the Internet wave ✔
I knew that I wanted a loving family ✔
I knew that I wanted to praise God ✔
I knew that I wanted to ride the crypto wave ✔
I know that I want to build an amazing wellness retreat
I know that I want to write books
I know that I want to make movies
I know that I want to make a Broadway musical
I know that I want to live a healthy, strong, fit life to at least 108 years old
Study and know the basic principles of life, for they apply to all areas of life, including business.
Many people don't realize that one of the best business books is the Bible, which contains life principles that can be applied to business. Some of the wealthiest people in history were blessed with this wisdom, like Abraham, Joseph, King David, King Solomon, and Daniel. I especially enjoy the books of Proverbs and Luke for business.
I'd like to focus on the 80/20 principle, the compound effect, and network effects in future newsletters.
Dream big. Whether you dream small or big, it takes similar thought and effort. Default to big, but take small action steps to start making your dream real.
You started as one cell and multiplied to billions over nine months. Everything starts from zero to one. That first step is the beginning of something bigger. Travel that path of your heart.
Next week:
Your Vision. Your Purpose.
Bach. Handel. Beethoven.
I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men
Raise $300 million to roll up the industry
Raise $300 million to roll up the industry
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson (1966-)
Anyone have $300 million?
Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
On the plane ride back from the Domain conference, I had this idea. Why not add to the flywheel of business by buying the best domain portfolios? Not only would they be very valuable assets in and of themselves, but they could be monetized and garner even more revenues at scale. This would be like buying up more waterfront real estate.
I could pitch the top domainers, who had become great friends, Frank Schilling, Scott Day, Garry Chernoff and others. Webdesign.com, recipes.com, prayer.com, performance.com (the one I thought I had for $100 when I first started).
But where would I get the money? Again, I didn’t have the cash on hand to do this.
Then I had an idea. I could invite all the top investment bankers from Wall Street and see if I could either raise or borrow $300 million.
The Players of Wall Street
The stock market is filled with individuals who know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.
Philip Fisher (1907-2004)
I asked my network to introduce me to anyone who could help me. Bob Seeman, one of my innovative business friends, connected me to some along with my lawyer, Steve Lukas, who would connect me with Scott Earthy, who came from this world of finance.
I was planning to move into our newly acquired Yaletown building, but the renovations would take too long so instead we upgraded our offices to an 11,000 square foot sub penthouse office in our existing building, with 270 degrees of city, water and mountain view. Much too large for our team of 16 but we would grow our team to 60 as we built the infrastructure to scale our business.
Pretty soon, we were hosting all the big Wall Street banks. I really wanted Goldman Sachs, but they were the only ones I could not connect with.
I would even be invited by big private equity (PE) companies like Cerberus and Blackstone. Cerberus offered the $300 million right away on our first meeting but at a higher interest rate. They were the PE that had acquired Chrysler.
And just like that, I was on my way to do the deals I had already lined up with my domainer friends.
The cover story coincided with the meetings and validated the story of our business and I was viewed as an entrepreneur who could deliver the goods.
I presented to S & P and Moody’s to get investor ratings and that was the ticket into this world of Wall Street. In the elevator before the pitch I saw a guy staring at me. When I looked up, it was John Travolta! Hi John. Hi. He seemed normal, but also mystical at the same time. Wow, a whole new world.
The Subprime Crash of Real Estate
The four most expensive words in the English language are, ‘This time it’s different.’
Sir John Templeton (1912-2008)
Out of the 7 investment banks, I was impressed by Bear Stearns and Bank of America. I liked their team. Maybe it was my first amazing meal at Nobu that BOA treated me that won not only my stomach but my heart.
There I was sitting in the Manhattan tower that housed Bank of America, overlooking beautiful Central Park. The head of leveraged finance was popping in and out of the meeting. But what I noticed was his very stressed and concerned demeanour. He seemed very distracted with bad news. At the break, I asked him, “What’s wrong?”
He simply replied, “Subprime.”
What is that?
Subprime loans are real estate loans to home buyers with low credit scores that were then bundled together to reduce the risk of default of any one borrower.
Hmmm, not sure I quite understand. What’s the potential fallout?
Hundreds of billions of dollars. Likely more.
Sounds big!
Yes, it’s very concerning.
Will this affect what I am doing?
Possibly.
Fear of Impending Doom
He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I went away from this deep in thought. If this fallout happened, what would happen if the economy crashed?
As I looked into this more, it looked like potential impending financial doom, the collapse of the banking system.
I started to tell my home builder to build faster so I could sell my current house at the top of the market before the financial crash occurred. They said I must be wrong because real estate was only growing and couldn’t suddenly crash like I was saying.
But my intuition said I was right.
I was telling many people about this coming crash, but it fell on deaf ears.
Bear Stearns, one of my joint arrangers, would go bankrupt and sell for under $300 million, less than the amount I was raising. I decided not to go ahead with the $300 million acquisitions. I apologized to my friends, saying my intuition said to not go ahead. They are still my friends, so true friends. Instead I got a credit line of $60 million and acquired a much smaller portfolio for $20 million and promptly paid it off.
Then in September 2008, while I was attending Harvard, living in the dorms, the financial crisis took full effect. The Director of Goldman Sachs would speak to us and say how subprime nearly collapsed every financial institution.
Lehman Brothers would fall and sell to Bank of America. The CEO of Bank of America and most of the team there would be swapped out. So many would lose their homes, home prices would fall across America and ripple to other markets around the world.
My Life Questions:
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
1. What is your life plan?
Dreams are important but a plan to make it real is just as important. The plan will change. But you must have a plan to start. Map out your life to 100 years and work backwards by decades. What do you hope to accomplish by 100, by 80, by 50, by 40, by 30, by 20? Line up the dominoes in your mind (and on paper).
Physically I wish to be able to do 10 pullups daily, do the splits (ouch) and ride 100 km on my bike at 100 years old (century ride at my century mark). I am working backwards. I am 53 and worked my way up to 20 pull ups, can do 100 km easily on my bike up mountains. My big challenge is the splits so every morning I am trying to move my hands to my feet from a pushup position.
My Life Lessons Then (from my 29 year old self):
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
1. Is growth by acquisition the best way or optimizing what you already have?
Walmart has 8.6% market share in the US. Do they need to acquire and expand globally? Southwest Airlines expands in the US 99% of the time. In-n-Out Burger is slowly expanding out of California. Brand density. Market density. Expand in your niche market and once you have things ironed out, expand into adjacent markets.
2. Listen to your intuition and ask questions.
Intuition is your gut sense of something right or something wrong. You feel it right there. Your gut. Listen to your intuition. You are a prophet. You just haven’t learned how to use this super power fully yet.
3. Don’t be dazzled by numbers. Be focused on purpose.
The allure of big numbers blinds one from one’s path and purpose. Don’t lose sight of what really matters to you.
Life Advice Now (from my present 53 year old self):
Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
Yoda
1. Keep listening to your intuition, gain insight, deep on introspection.
The “in” deep inside of you are delving to know yourself much deeper and in more dimensions. Focus on “in*”.
2. When a secret is revealed, ponder on how you can leverage it.
I didn’t know how to leverage the secret knowledge of subprime. The Big Short revealed how Michael Burry shorted the market and made $4 billion. I realized afterwards it would be beneficial to know how the markets worked and did commodity (oil, gold and natural gas) leverage trading daily for a year. The education was interesting and somewhat invaluable. I 100x my money in stocks as a result. Bought NVIDIA in 2018 at $60 a share after 12x my Google buy in 2006. It slingshot to $1,180 a share (20x) [now $118 after a 10:1 split]. I will explain my thoughts on my decision to buy NVIDIA at that time in another newsletter.
3. Don’t let fear dictate, have courage and faith in yourself and your dreams.
I’ve noticed that the periods in my life when crises hit, it’s natural to have fear. But to act and make decisions in fear has mostly not garnished any good results. Some like bowing out of my big $300 million deal. But for the most part, fear resulted in bad decisions mostly. Don’t ignore the fear. Be prudent, yet act with courage and faith.
Next week:
The Entrepreneur of the Year
Awards leads to Glory and Hubris
Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Confucius (551-479 BC)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
The Man Who Owns the Internet
How the Master of Web Domains built his $300 million Empire
How the Master of Web Domains built his $300 million Empire
Fame is a bee. It has a song—
It has a sting— Ah, too, it has a wing.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Just a Cover Story
How do you stand out amongst so many?
Kevin Ham (1970-)
I was in Hawaii on a spring family vacation. One of my favourite places. My childhood memory ingrained in me that Hawaii was paradise. We have a family ritual to spend loving time there. Eventually I wish to be a ‘snowbird’ and live in Hawaii for 3 months of the year.
I was about to write to Paul Sloan, the reporter of Business 2.0, that I don’t want to be part of the article he wished to write.
Just then, a new message came in from Paul. He told me he was excited and had just booked his flight to Vancouver.
I paused my email and then decided to delete it and replied to Paul that I would love to host him.
In the ensuing meeting, he asked me so many great questions. I asked him not to write about certain topics like our Cameroon venture, that he was so curious about. I thought it was a great experience and looked forward to a nice article in Business 2.0, my favourite magazine back then. It had inspired me a lot in my early days, hearing how entrepreneurs overcame adversity and came up with novel solutions to obstacles they faced..
Weeks later, Paul called me and asked me to sit down as he had some big news. The chief editor wanted to make our story the cover story. I said, “No, I don’t want to be famous. I just want to have credibility in an inside article.”
Paul said he had more news and to brace myself.
Just Half My Face
The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.
St. Jerome (347-420)
He said that my face would be on the cover.
Me: What? No!
Paul: I had the team only do half your face and in black and white, out of respect of your desire to not be fully seen.
Me: Really? Oh no!
I asked Paul Sloan if he had written anything bad about me. His response: “Nobody knows you so we introduced the most interesting aspects of you and what you’ve done. Now that people know you, this is where they either lift you up or tear you down.”
I resigned myself to the fact that I would be recognized. I was both happy but also disappointed. Reflective and mind racing. What would this mean for me? For my family? For my future? A turn of events unexpected yet not unanticipated.
Did you ever have the feeling that you would one day matter? That you were destined to do more than what you were doing? That feeling deep in your heart, however buried it might be?
We call that a DREAM. Seemingly like fantasy, just a cloud seen briefly, that fades into the heavens when not acted up, when not believed, when not realized.
Dream and believe. Believe in your dreams. Believe in yourself. Believe in that higher power that brings it all together.
Read the full article here
Fame. I want to live forever in Books.
TV Interviews. Dragon’s Den. Autographs. Oh no.
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known,
then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Fred Allen (1894-1956)
Once the magazine came out, the barrage of emails, letters, requests came fast and furious. My response. Ignore them all. My friend even bought many copies of the magazine and asked me to sign them. What? That seemed so odd but in retrospect, makes a lot of sense. Starstruck were the people around me.
TV interviews, major newspapers worldwide including our local newspapers, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, major magazines were all requesting interviews. No replies from me. They printed front page stories based on the cover story anyways.
I received copies of newspapers around the globe that had me on the front page.
But the best part is almost a decade later when I heard the impact my story had on young students and entrepreneurs in India and China. They were inspired to become entrepreneurs. I met them at a domain conference and they had a staff of 50 people.
He said my story had filled most of the front page of India Times and part of the second page. Wow.
The Fear of Success is greater than the Fear of Failure
Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
But why did I neglect all this media attention when most people and companies tried sometimes desperately to attain this moment?
Later on, someone told me about the fear of success is just as real as the fear of failure.
Fear of Success is really a fear of change at the extreme when success changes the people around you. Who are your real friends? Who loves you for who you are versus what you have or the status you have obtained? Who are you really vs who the world thinks you are. It gives rise to the feeling of the Imposter Syndrome. Embrace you. You know who you are. Everyone else will have a varied view of you.
Define yourself, don’t let others define you.
Success brings you over the threshold into a different world where people see the superficial aspects of you and neglect the deeper character that brought you there.
You fear this and so you go into a shell and hide, like I did. Classic fear of success.
Don’t Forget Me When You’re Famous
Fame means millions of people have the wrong idea of who you are.
Erica Jong (1942-)
Frank Schilling, my domain competitor and friend, asked me for one thing. Don’t forget me when you become a celebrity in the business world. I said, “Of course not, I won’t change.” He was much more street smart than me. I’m pretty naive. I’m just me.
The struggle to please others vs living my dreams was constantly on my mind in the past. Now that I’ve reach the pinnacle of success, I wondered what my next steps were.
I thought, one more thing for my father and my mother, who had just passed away in 2006. It would be something my father would love. I would apply to be Entrepreneur of the Year. I would also go to Harvard at the suggestion of my good friend and mentor, Dr. Christopher Hartnett, who had attained billionaire status with Voiceover IP during the dotcom boom.
My Life Questions:
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
1. What is the success that you wish to attain?
Ponder and write out what success is to you and put it on your phone screensaver where you can always see it.
2. How will you overcome fear of failure and fear of success?
Fear is wetting your pants and overcoming fear, courage and faith, is doing what you believe in with wet pants.
Once you have tasted success, then fear of failure becomes larger because you don’t want to fail despite your success. Without success, you can continue to fail, but with success now you have a ‘reputation’ to hold. Keep on failing for success arises from the learnings of many failures.
3. How will your world change with success?
Your world will change, whether success is a job, a business, losing weight, overcoming obstacles. Like a Clark Kent who turns into superman. Different worlds that have different egos and expectations. Learn to live in the new world and hold onto what’s important in your former world.
My Life Lessons Then (from my 29 year old self):
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream;
not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France (1844-1924)
1. Really think about what you really want.
Your thoughts are powerful. Your dreams are very powerful. When you start to speak and act according to your thoughts and dreams, they start to become real in your world. You will attract those who are inspired by your thoughts and dreams. It leads you down a road that opens new paths. Make sure you want to walk down this road.
2. Success is a big peak of accomplishment that shines.
Your results speak louder than any aphorisms or inspiring words. People look for signs and not just prophecies. Focus on results, the manifestation of your thoughts, your ideas, your dreams.
3. Believe in yourself
This is one of the most powerful things you can do in your life: Believe in yourself. If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? A mentor. Mentors and leaders believe in you more than you believe in yourself until you believe in yourself more than they believe in you.
I wished I had a mentor like this. Well, it was my parents, my family and my team and my faith in God.
Life Advice Now (from my present 53 year old self):
Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)
1. Do not run away once you attain success.
God set you on a journey to attain the highest peak of success but you squandered it by not opening the gift and the blessing. The gift remains unopened. How much good you could have done, but you weren’t prepared to sacrifice and give up some of your old ways to help and benefit so many others.
But it’s okay. The gift remains for you to open even now, if you so choose. Embrace your gifts and blessings and give them away to bless others.
2. Remain humble.
Don’t let the fame, the praise get to your head. Balance ego, the mind, with your heart, full of generosity and love. Keep counselors in your life who will tell you when you stray off the good path. Have people who say No and not only Yes.
3. Be grateful in good times and bad
The law is that once you get to the summit, you need to come down. Be grateful on the descent, the fall from grace. Life consists of peaks and valleys. The valleys build strength and resilience for higher peaks. Don’t remain in the valleys too long though. Climb your way out through hope, faith and love.
Next week:
Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men.
Raise $300 million and roll up the industry.
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
Mike Tyson (1966-)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Insignificant. Unknown. Rejected. Despite a Lot of Money
You are not someone unless there is undeniable proof
You are not someone unless there is undeniable proof
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
— Ralph Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
You are insignificant
“ You are never too small to make a difference.”
— Greta Thunberg (2003-)
I was interviewing a software engineer in the early days of my company, 2006. We were in a big boardroom. He seemed impressed. He asked me, “How many people are there in the company?”
8.
8? His jaw dropped and he started writing the number 8 on the table. 8 or 80?
8.
I could tell he was frazzled. The interview ended rather quickly after that. He had lost interest.
You are not worth my time
“ Not all those who wander are lost.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)
I was attending the Harvard Advanced Management Program in the fall of 2008, just when the financial crisis hit.
I was the youngest student in the program at age 37. I was surrounded by Fortune 500 executives or soon to be executives.
I was speaking to a top executive at Goldman Sachs Hong Kong. He asked me how many people I had in my company. 60.
He looked at me and then just walked away.
I told this to my mentor, Dr. Christopher Hartnett, also a Director of my company. The next day, the Goldman executive came up to me at lunch and apologized to me, saying he respects me and to ask him for anything at all. I wondered what had happened. My Director had told him about my accomplishments in business.
You are rejected
“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.”
— Sylvester Stallone (1946-)
We wanted to move to a building with a view of the Pacific ocean, the sunrise and the sunset. We had our eye on Harbour Centre. We applied for a small 2600 square foot office. We got rejected. We asked why. The landlord wasn’t confident in our ability to pay. We were doing tens of millions of dollars. We sent them our financials. They begrudgingly agreed. We would later rent out almost an entire floor. Plenty of Fish, the free dating site and Markus Frind would take our 2600 sq ft office as we moved out. They sold for $600m USD to IAC.
Establish undeniable proof
"Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself."
After the 8 incident, I had this thought that I should get our company in some media article so that our company would have credibility.
I considered contacting our local papers, The Vancouver Sun and The Province. They were a stone’s throw away. My heart said no. Wait. God will direct. Hmmm, ok, I shall wait.
I was set to go to a Domain conference in Las Vegas in March 2007.
On welcoming night, I had a gentleman come up to me and ask, “Are you the man behind Cameroon?” That question took me by surprise. I had tried to keep my association with that secret. I replied, “I had help.”
He, Paul Sloan, was a reporter with one of my favourite business magazines, Business 2.0.
I had dinner with him and learned he was half Jewish and half German with a Lutheran background. I was curious with his ‘religious upbringing’. I asked him questions like why God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s? He asked me a lot of questions about how I built my business.
He told me he wanted to write an article about me along with several other domainers. Maybe this is what my heart had told me, to wait. God would provide. It felt right.
My Life Questions:
“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
— Bruce Lee (1940-1973)
1. What is your secret identity that no one in the world truly knows?
You have a superpower that the world has not seen. What is it? What are your 3 core values?
2. How do you overcome rejection, insignificance?
Rejection doesn’t mean you are insignificant. It signals that you are not with the right people, the right values, the right tribe, the right time. Change perspective, environment, tribe. Find where you ‘belong’.
3. How will you matter?
You will matter, even if to yourself, one other person or a group or a community or even a future generation. Many an artist like William Blake died unknown in poverty and is now proclaimed as one of Britain’s great poets.
My Life Lessons Then: (from my 29 year old self)
“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)
1. Establish your results as your ‘resume’.
Results speak loudly. Having no known credibility makes everything harder. You don’t need to brag, but boldly and confidently proclaim your value in the service of others.
2. Focus on the results of your Vision.
Your vision is your north star. Never lose sight of it. If you don’t have a vision, pray for one, seek one. This is the “WHAT” of your life. The mountain peak you climb to in a decade or decades.
3. Believe in something greater than yourself.
When you fall, the fall is endless if there is no bedrock of faith to anchor you and be your foundation. For me, this is God and Jesus. The next layer is loved ones. Who will you ‘pray’ to if there is no one more powerful to you than yourself?
Life Advice Now: (from my present 53 year old self)
“The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.”
— John Ruskin (1819-1900)
1. Humbly acknowledge praise to whom praise is due.
I could not have planned nor orchestrated many things in my life. I thank Chris Hartnett for his guidance and helping me at Harvard and in life. I thank God for His countless blessings in my life and those around me. I thank my team, my wife and my kids for always being there for me when I fell hard.
2. Leverage what is given to you.
Don’t run away and descend once you get to the top of the mountain. Stay there a while and enjoy the view. It took a lot of work and luck to get there. Savour the moment and reflect, write about it. You let the fear of success, the imposter syndrome get to you too quickly.
3. Be humbly confident in yourself
The gifts of life are handed freely. Unwrap them, open your heart and give them freely away. This is your true gift. One day they must be returned.
Next week: Cover Story. The Man Who Owns the Internet
Kevin Ham is the most powerful dotcom mogul you’ve never heard of
Here’s how the Master of Web Domains built his $300 million empire
“Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident, and riches take wings. Only one thing endures, and that is character.”
— Horace Greeley (1811-1872)
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
No Money? No Problem.
Three $10 million deals with no plan
Three $10 million deals with no plan
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
— Helen Keller (1880-1968)
Just clear vision with faith and purpose.
I had spent the last 15 years with the singular goal of becoming a doctor. I achieved it but now felt disillusioned. I was newly married and had a beautiful newborn daughter on the way. Needless to say, I was at a big crossroads.
I pondered whether this was what I wanted to do for the next 40 years of my life. I still wanted to help people but this was clearly not the way to do it.
“Even without money, a vision with faith and purpose are powerful enough to make the seemingly impossible possible.”
— Kevin
With the business back on track, there were a few dreams I saw in my heart.
Build my dream home
Buy a church property
Buy a commercial office building for work
Each of these would require at least a $10 million investment, over $36 million total. The problem? I only had $200,000 in the bank.
My dream home
“A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
I thought about what I wanted in a dream home. I imagined in my mind’s eye:
a view of the mountains
the Pacific Ocean
close to the city, yet a secluded, tranquil neighbourhood
clean air next to parks and beaches, and
a large lot
So I looked on Google Earth and looked for areas that would match this. I found a few locations. I looked at houses for sale in these neighbourhoods. One house, when I stepped into it, I just had a vision and an intuition that this would be my home. It was already ‘done’.
The realtor said the basement was a mess and flooded, and likely had mold. I didn’t even go look at the rest of the house. I told my realtor, my brother-in-law, Gord, to put in a firm offer for $3.6 million just for the lot, I knew it was a bargain compared to the other neighborhoods. I would then spend the next five years building my dream house on this big lot. I would struggle to pay for the building of my dream home, as it took much longer to build (5 years) at double my budget.
Our church
“The Church is a place where broken hearts are healed, broken relationships are mended, and broken people find wholeness.”
Our church congregation is only about 150 people. Small. So we rented churches and we often had to move from one location to another. One day, the youth group gathered together and had a dream of buying a church property. Something we would own. Our elders told us we needed to think big, buy a place that was by the ocean, surrounded by trees with a creek flowing through the property into the ocean.
That sounded very expensive, much larger than our $300,000 budget back in early 2000. Over the next few years, we went to view many potential lots. They were very expensive. We had our eye on this one 78 acre property, owned by the YMCA. We had had a spring Bible conference there and we loved it. The problem was that it wasn't for sale.
A couple of years later in 2004, I was reading the neighbourhood newspaper and it mentioned that the YMCA might be selling this particular property in order to build a larger facility downtown. I quickly told an elder and he told me bluntly, “We can’t afford it.” I asked one of my mentors, Bryant, if we could pursue this.
We went on to raise $10 million and negotiated with the YMCA to pay it over the next three years. An impossible dream made possible by faith. We had very little money, but we raised the money with a dream that this property would help people with their health physically, mentally, and spiritually.
My dream office
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.”
— Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
I noticed that downtown Vancouver felt a lot like Manhattan downtown. It needed to be accessed by bridges. The secret in real estate: location, location, location!
I knew that downtown could only go up in density as I was looking around different neighbourhoods. I really liked this heritage area called Yaletown. I saw a building on sale and asked my realtor to view the property. As soon as I stepped into the building, I once again had a vision of exactly what would happen: a bank in one corner, a restaurant taking half the building, and my company occupying a quarter of the building.
I asked my realtor, Gord, to make an offer. I didn’t tell him I didn’t have the money. I asked him if we could have a small down payment of $100,000 and close in 12 months. I know that these were crazy requests, but we got the purchase price down from $12.2 million to $11.2 million, closing in 10 months.
I thought that I could get a mortgage for 95% of the building, but did not know that commercial mortgages typically required 50% down payment.
Where was I gonna come up with $5.4 million in 10 months?
A Hail Mary
“Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.”
— Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983)
With each of these three dream projects, I didn’t have the funds for any one of them, never mind all three of them.
With no obvious means to close them, I prayed for wisdom. I prayed for a means to acquire each of these properties. I thought about the stories in the Bible, the faith the great characters in the Bible had in order to accomplish something great. I had this kind of faith. All three of these dreams would be realized in a short period of time. We tend to call these events miracles.
I realized very quickly that once I had a goal, I quickly divided up that financial goal into mortgages, fundraising or making that money by a certain time. Wisdom and insight were provided to me for a few years of the respective plans to get loans, fundraising and accelerating my business. My business grew exponentially. It was on pace to make over $100 million a year with great profit margins, with only 16 people.
With just a vision with faith and purpose, these were accomplished. Thank you God.
Life Questions
“Pray as though everything depended on God.
Work as though everything depended on you.”— Saint Augustine (354-430)
1. What are the dreams in your heart?
Write your top 1 to 3 dreams down now. Yes, write them down. Something magical happens when you write them down. Now tell your dreams to your most trusted friend or to God.
Review these dreams each day, each week, each month, each year.
They are in the cocoon of your heart.
2. Imagine your dreams in your mind’s eye. Visualize them.
Make a 5 step (dominoes) plan with a timeline
Start on step number one.
Just start it and stumble your way to step two, etc.
3. Have you ever prayed? Do you only pray when things are impossible?
Pray for wisdom. Pray with faith. Trust the path. Enjoy the journey. Both the ups and the downs.
My Life Lessons Then: (from my 35 year old self)
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.”
— C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
1. Faith that is invisible is greater than money which is tangible.
Often the most valuable things are unseen, not tangible.
2. Praying for wisdom and insight.
Solomon’s request for wisdom may be one of the greatest prayers.
Wisdom is the mother of all things. It’s seven children are love, faith, hope, serenity, joy, understanding, patience.
3. Sometimes ignorance is the reason for many innovations.
Not knowing how the world works allows the impossible to be possible, for fear to be hidden behind the veils of ignorance.
Life Advice Now: (from my present 53 year old self)
“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning.”
— William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)
1. I am reminded to walk by Faith and not by sight.
Thank you for reminding me, my younger self.
2. I am very grateful for the blessings as well as the hardships
There arises in my heart a prayer for the blessings but more so, a prayer for the hardships that sharpened my faith, my strength as hardship shaped me.
3. May you always be bold as a lion and curious like a child
Strength and honour to all who strive and ride into the face of the dreams in their heart. Scary but thrilling.
Next week: Unknown. Rejected. Despite a Lot of Money
You are not someone unless there is verifiable media proof.
See you next Thursday!
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Turning Danger into Opportunity
"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."
— Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)
Crisis in Chinese is composed of two words together: Danger and Opportunity.
Powerful.
Danger is Coming
"The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty."
— Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Our domain business was starting to compound and gain momentum.
We were on pace to do over a million dollars a year, and each month, new insights arrived that made the flywheel spin faster and get bigger.
We had made it!
Yahoo, who would later buy Goto (the pay-per-click search engine), was using a company called ASI (Applied Semantics) to target domain names with relevant keywords. For example, Laptop.com had laptop keywords and relevant advertisers for laptops. This allowed better monetization of the domain names.
Guess who decided to buy ASI for $102 million in 2003? A little upcoming company called Google. They were the new search engine on the block, and Yahoo had used them as their search engine, branding them into significance. This was a great strategic move by Google and the beginning of Yahoo's decline. ASI would become "Adsense" and its powerful monetization engine, where it still makes over 90% of its revenues.
This left Yahoo with no contextually relevant ads on the domain names and our revenues plummeted by more than 50%!
Imagine waking up one day to disaster. C'est la vie.
The crisis is Turning Danger into Opportunity
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity."
– Sun Tzu (544 BC - 496 BC)
Yahoo was scrambling for a solution and asked the larger domainers if we wanted to build our own keyword engine. They wanted to avoid dealing with smaller domain portfolios and wondered whether a handful of us, the larger domainers, could consolidate them.
I would have thought a giant technology company would invest in this 'keyword' engine. Their CEO, Terry Semel, was a traditional Hollywood guy and also passed up the opportunity to buy Google for $5 billion before it went public. Later, they did invest in Alibaba, their $1 billion stake selling for $40 billion. The Yahoo Directors had to oust their Yahoo founder, Jerry Yang, in order to sell it.
So, we were presented with an opportunity to help smaller domainers monetize their domains. This allowed us to learn from the entrepreneurial insights of many agile domainers.
Domainers came from all walks of life and were scrappy, agile, bootstrappers with solid work ethics and ingenuity. I learned a lot from both the small and the legendary domainers. This entrepreneurial real-life boot camp may have been better than attending business school and getting an MBA.
Homage to all my fellow domainers and entrepreneurs. Strength and Honour.
The traffic in our domain network became a Top 100 Global Network, as measured by the industry standard Comscore. I was astounded. Now we were really big.
My Life Dream
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined."
– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
When I was 13, one of my good friends told me that my cousin Don was actually my brother. What? Why are you saying that? I asked my mom, and she sat me down and told me that Dad had a previous family before she had me, and I had two sisters and an older brother. They were stuck in Korea and my mom helped my brother come to Canada. But my mom couldn't love him like a true son, so Don was sent to grow up in group homes, apart from me. I had no idea.
I prayed that I would be able to have a business in the future that would allow me to work with Don. I asked him to join me in this Internet entrepreneurial journey. He had just sold his dry cleaners and was interested.
So, Don managed support on our domain parking business, Hitfarm. I also had a prayer to bring my sisters over to Canada. One sister found her way to the US on her own and my other sister now lives in Vancouver. So blessed.
I couldn't imagine the life they had gone through without parents. I thank God for all the people in my life who have helped me find my way and build a business from scratch. I am so grateful to God, my family, and to each person I have met along this amazing life journey.
Thank you. Much love to each of you. May God bless you with everything in your heart and let you shine like the sun.
Current Crisis
"In the midst of every crisis, lies great opportunity."
– Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
It's much easier to talk about crises that have already been averted or passed.
It's hard to see the opportunity in the crisis when it occurs.
But one must seek the opportunity.
My crisis is that one of my businesses, Chit Chats, a logistics company helping entrepreneurs ship their products, is going through a cash crunch as the industry is getting disrupted and rapidly changing. The business is submerged under fixed costs.
We are revamping our hubs from cost centres into profit centres and looking for key partnerships to survive and thrive. Stay tuned. I hope to write later how we turned this crisis into an opportunity.
Life Questions
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers."
– Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
What crisis turned into an opportunity for you?
What is the opportunity knocking on your door?
Life Advice Then
From my 33-year-old self:
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."
– Vernon Law (1930-)
Take a deep breath and sign.
Panic is a flight response. Instead of flight, you must first fight. To do that, you need a calm mind. Breathe and focus on controlling your breath, eventually calming your body. Then, you can calm your mind—serenity.
Zoom out and give it time.
What is the worst-case scenario? What are the new opportunities? Discuss to consider all perspectives. Write to gain clarity. Yes, write it down. You'd be surprised how much clarity comes from writing.
An opportunity for unity and efficiency
Brainstorm with people on the barbells of
Plug the most significant holes (the most enormous hole is your biggest constraint)
What is the new opportunity?
Life Advice Now
From my 53-year-old self:
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
– Buddha (563 BC - 483 BC)
Be grateful for what you have right now
Do you have your health? Do you have your freedom? Do you have loved ones? Do you have food? Do you have shelter?
Pray and ask for help.
In desperate times, almost everyone feels a need to ask for help. "Hail Mary" is used as a miracle prayer or play in the last seconds of a game, business or life event. I pray to God and Jesus but you may pray to a greater power, the universe, or just ask someone, even strangers.
I heard the owner of 1-800-Flowers met the owner of CNN (Ted Turner) serendipitously at a time he needed. CNN ran ads for him, and then, with the Iraq war occurring, he had so much free advertising that it turned his business around. I wonder if he prayed.
It, too, shall pass
This is the message of the Bible, that all adversity and tribulations pass. Patience is the message of Job, who had severe tribulations, losing his family, wealth and then his health. He was restored manifold in the end. There is a lesson and opportunity in all life events, big and small.
God bless you with love, joy and peace.
Next week: No Money? No Problem.
Three $10 million deals with no plan and little money. Just clear vision and purpose.
See you next Thursday!
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How You Can Turn Your Junk into Treasure
Your Junk Maybe Someone’s Treasure
Your Junk Maybe Someone’s Treasure
"What seems worthless to some may be priceless to others."
— Kevin Ham (1970-)
Come and See and Understand
"Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
— Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1893-1986) Nobel Prize Laureate
It was the end of the year. Dec 2000. I was so excited for the coming new year. As I gathered with friends and family, I couldn't help but tell them about this new discovery about domain names, hoping to inspire them to invest in domain names.
People thought I was speaking nonsense because the Internet was going through its death throes. All the bad news made my claims sound irrational. "Is Kevin going crazy? What happened to medicine?"
I could tell by the look in their eyes that they were all skeptical. I became more reserved around family and friends. This pattern would repeat with future counterintuitive discoveries.
Ah, human nature.
But one of my best friends, Colin Yu, was interested. He invited me to a preseason Vancouver Grizzlies basketball game, my first NBA game, and asked me many questions about my thoughts on these domain names.
He was very interested in investing in domain names. He was one of my best men at my wedding. As he was super practical, so I was surprised.
I'll Take Your Junk and Turn it to Gold
"The art of turning lead into gold is not just alchemy, but also mindset."
— Kevin Ham (1970-)
But he had a twist on my vision of domain names. He wasn't interested in keeping domain names. He was interested in buying and selling, like Mike Mann of Buydomains.
Buy for $10 and sell for $1,000 (10x) or $10,000 (100x).
He asked if I could give him the list of all the domain names I didn't want to register, and he would register the "trash domain names."
I wasn't going to register them anyway, so why not? He was based in Hong Kong, working at HSBC. It would be his side hustle but eventually became his full-time hustle. We would later partner to create an even bigger business than our respective hustles, and Colin would retire in 2009, just eight years after that fateful basketball game.
Accelerating Time to Scale
"Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend."
— Theophrastus (371-287 BC), Disciple of Aristotle
At the end of 2000, I sold a few domains to register more domain names. I sold TicToc.com for $7,500, equal to 750 more domains. Then, when I found the Goto Pay-Per-Click (PPC) monetization engine, I realized I didn't need to sell domain names to register more domains.
So, I knew Colin's model would work well and encouraged him to go for it. I helped him build a website and watched him work his magic.
Then I had an idea. We could amalgamate our traffic to get a better revenue share with Goto (our PPC advertising engine).
We only got domain revenue stats monthly by spreadsheet, which was archaic. We needed real-time stats daily, and it would be even better if we knew what each domain name made in PPC revenue and how much each click made. It seemed like an impossible request. We asked anyway, but they refused, saying we needed more traffic volume.
So I asked our Goto if I got the biggest domainer, Yun Ye, onto Goto, could we get a better agreement? They were interested.
It was a long shot, but I emailed Yun, and to my surprise, he answered. Little did I know that he visited Vancouver often. I told him that he could 5x his revenue if he just swapped to Goto. He told me that Goto kicked him off earlier in 2000. That's why he was on Findwhat.
My assumption was wrong; I thought that because he was the biggest domainer, he was also the best. It turned out that Goto had terminated his agreement because they were dealing with internal issues, but Yun didn't trust them anymore. So I asked him, what if I could get him a contract that couldn't be terminated and got daily stats on each domain name and all the keyword data he could ever imagine? He was interested. So I brokered the deal with everything we wanted and that Goto wanted.
Our rev share went from 30% to 48%, along with daily domain stats, with keyword bids that would allow us to optimize the relevancy and monetization of each domain name.
Yun would go on to 5x his revenue to $20 million a year and profit $19 million. He and his wife were unstoppable. One year later, he sold his portfolio to Marchex for $164 million, an 8.6x multiple of his profit. He would retire in 2006. Mr. No name. He was a master of domains. Not many knew him, but a handful of us attempted to be as good as he was.
Yun, in his gratitude to me, said he saved one domain from his portfolio of 100,000 domain names to give to me:
It was MyBible.com
Yun knew I was Christian. I was very grateful and promised him that I would develop it one day.
In 2000, I was given a vision to own four domain names, which seemed impossible at the time: God.com, Religion.com, Heaven.com, and Jesus.com. I had the vision that once I obtained all four domains, I would be graced with a vision for all of them.
God has blessed me with three of them over the past 24 years. It took 4.5 years to obtain God.com, five years for Religion.com, and seven years for Heaven.com. Jesus.com remains elusive. Perhaps my heart is not ready. I have much to work on my inner spirit. However, God has blessed me with a suite of other domains, such as Christians.com, Hell.com, Baptism.com, Goodnews.com, Rapture.com, Armageddon.com, Messiah.com and 2000 other 'religion' domains.
If you could help me connect with the owners of Jesus.com, I would be so grateful.
I realized right away that acquiring these four domain names would require millions of dollars, and so my goal was set. I was figuring out the plan to do this, and I would get glimpses of it.
My Compounding Flywheel
"The compounding effect is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it."
— Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Everyone should conceive a Flywheel for each part of their life--
your health, wealth, relationships, faith, and happiness.
Here was my simple but powerful Compounding Flywheel for Domains
Get more domain names
Get more traffic per domain
Make more $ per domain
Make more $ per click
Repeat in a flywheel
Help others make more $ on their domains
This was my simple blueprint for the business, tt's based on the principle of leveraging strategic partnerships.
Leverage other people's unused:
Capacity
Capabilities
Resources
Know how
Assets
Life Questions
What Opportunities pass you by because you aren't open to them?
How can you leverage what you have at scale?
How can you accelerate time by leveraging other people's unused capacity, capabilities and resources?
Life Advice Then
From my 29-year-old self:
"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."
— Babe Ruth (1895-1948) Home run king
How much innovation comes from seeing abundance even in what is perceived as wasteful or useless
Opportunity is everywhere. Be useful. Provide value.
Everything is “figureoutable” if you persist in asking great questions.
How do we scale 10x?
How do you do it in 10x less time?
These force you to think differently.
What seems nice on the outside may be toil on the inside.
What would have been of us if we had never been helped to see the light of a better solution, a better way? Most of the time, we live in this unrealized state because it is hard to imagine 10x or 100x. Just imagine, dream, test, and do.
Life Advice Now
From my 53-year-old self:
"The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Wisely incubate your newborn ideas. Don't let others suffocate your dreams.
"A prophet is not welcome in his hometown" is an apt proverb when it comes to newborn ideas that light up your heart.
Focus more on compounding the flywheel in all aspects of your life.
Like the human body and its organs that work complementary with feedback and synergy, compound all parts of your life, especially the time and quality of time you have in this life.
Never forget your first vision.
Disney reminds us that it all started with a mouse. Never forget why you started in the first place. Finish well. Be strong. Have faith. What was impossible was done. Why can't the impossible be done again and again? Oh, you of little faith?
Next week: The crisis is Danger and Opportunity, Together.
Turning Danger into Opportunity.
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
How do I Make Money?
Secrets that got me my first million dollars
Secrets that got me my first million dollars
"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."
— Richard Branson (1950-)
Living the Dream, but How Do I Make Money?
"The best way to make money is to put your nose down and get to work. You make money by making better decisions, and you make better decisions by learning and practicing. The more you know, the more you'll earn.."
— Warren Buffet (1930-)
I had just discovered how to be the best at acquiring domain names. I was quietly acquiring virtual real estate with great potential, amidst the Internet's implosion and the failure of dot-com ventures everywhere. The media said it was the 'death of the Internet ', and experts said no one would trust it or buy online anymore.
This was all music to my ears, as I imagined more people listening to the 'experts', giving up on their dreams of online fortunes and the domains connected to them.
It was a blessed opportunity I couldn't believe. It was a great reset. The Internet would crash 90% in the next year.
By Dec 2000, I had 300 domain names but $0 revenue from them. I wondered how these other domainers kept registering so many new domains and kept the flywheel turning with registrations on their existing portfolio needing to be renewed.
I would run out of money if I didn't learn how to make money from these assets.
Who is the Best I Can Learn From?
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
There were a handful of domainers who stood out. One was Yun Ye, who went under the moniker "No Name or UltSearch." His specialty was registering great two-keyword domains. He registered hundreds each day, like clockwork. Next was Frank Schilling. Then Garry Chernoff. Mike Mann of BuyDomains was a reseller, a different model than Yun, Frank, and Garry.
When I went to Yun and Frank's domain web pages, they just had a bunch of links. I didn't understand how they made money. They used Goto.com search, which said they would pay 2-5 cents per search. This small amount wouldn't do much.
I looked up where Frank lived. White Rock, BC, Canada, is just an hour's drive away, so I emailed him to invite him to lunch in Richmond at Milestones. I was anxious, as I was an introvert and didn't know what to expect. I had a bunch of questions. He showed up. If you know Frank, you can immediately sense that he will do great things. He is super street smart, innovative, and a good reader of people.
I told him I was a medical doctor but couldn't turn down this opportunity to be part of this Internet revolution. Domain names seemed like a fantastic opportunity, but I didn't know how to make money.
He looked me in the eyes and asked, "How many unique do you get?"
Me: Uniques? What do you mean?
Frank: How many unique people come to your domains each day?
Me: I'm not sure. Well, I have 300 domains, so I'd say 8,000 daily uniques.
Frank: No way. I have been doing this for over a year and get 10,000 daily uniques.
Me: Well, I haven't actually turned on any of my domain names yet. I will do that and let you know.
I asked him how much money he made on those 10,000 uniques. He was silent. I asked for a hint. I quickly did some math: 10,000 uniques * 2 cents per search = $200/day. More than $200/day?
He was tight-lipped.
We finished our drinks (mine, non-alcoholic). I thanked Frank profusely and told him that I enjoyed meeting him. We became friends, and he became my hesitant mentor. It was just like the hospitals, where a resident learns from their seniors.
“See one. Do one. Teach one” was our method for training doctors. I would take this model into business to see what the best did, then try to emulate them. Then, I would try to ask them questions when I needed help understanding or getting stuck. Once I learned, I would return the favour to others who would ask me and try by doing. It was how the apprentices became masters in due time during the Renaissance.
I went home and started to turn on the domains. I had 300, so I quickly automated it by programming it with a script. But I couldn't find an analytic program to measure uniques across so many domains. I asked Frank how to do that. He told me to log the IPs of each visit. Each unique IP equalled a unique visitor. I figured out how to program that in a few days and then had my stats.
3,000 uniques. I was disappointed. I was expecting more. Now, I had a baseline. My domains were live, and I was just measuring traffic to each one of them.
How Much Money Can I Make?
"If you don't find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die."
— Warren Buffett (1930-)
I invited Frank to a Chinese martial arts movie, Iron Monkey. We enjoyed that inspiring Shaolin kung fu, a metaphor for the discipline required to be guardians. We got to know each other. I made it a point not to ask any business questions but to bond with him. He later told me his wife Michelle asked him, "So what did he want?" he replied, "Oh, he just wanted to watch a movie with me."
I looked at Yun's and Frank's domains. Yun's portfolio was much larger, so I assumed he knew what he was doing and had a better monetization engine. He was with a 'pay-per-click search engine' called Findwhat, a platform that allows advertisers to bid on keywords and pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. Frank was with Goto. I signed up to Findwhat. I implemented their pay-per-click feed into each domain name. Voila.
I started making $300 per day. Wow, that would be close to $9k/month.
I achieved all this by getting Frank to be my mentor (and later great friend) and emulating Yun. Later, I learned Garry Chernoff had done this for Frank when he was starting. This is a secret to life: Help one another despite the up-and-comer being your competitor. It will all be a win-win in this abundant world.
Frank told me a hint: I could make a lot more. I pondered this. What did he mean? He then hinted that someone was making 10% on my domains. What? How could that be? I had asked FindWhat for a better revenue share, but they turned me down. I asked Dean, my account manager if someone was making money on my domains. David said, "Yes, David L, who referred you."
Me: I don't know any David L. Is this why I can't get an increase?
Dean: Yes.
I decided to sign up for Goto and spoke to Dan. He set me up quickly, and I swapped over my domains for a day as a test. I had thought it would do poorly and didn't want to sacrifice the revenue, but I wanted to test it.
Dan asked me, "Do you know how much you made that day?" $150? "No. $1500!" What? Really?
I was so shocked. I 5x’d my revenue overnight. I was so overjoyed.
Thank you, Frank. I love you! You've been such an amazing friend, through thick and thin, like a brother.
This changed everything. I was on a path to a million dollars. I was onto something big now. All that blood and sweat brought tears to my heart.
The Path to a Million Dollars a Year
"0 to a million is the hardest one. The next million is easier, and the next even easier.."
— Kevin Ham (1970- )
I asked myself the question when I finished my residency and did my significant career shift.
"How does one make a billion dollars?"
"How does one make a million dollars?"
I read Forbes and looked for a pattern. 470 billionaires.
They all seemed to excel at one thing amazingly well: investing in real estate, stocks, a great scalable business, or they were good at retaining and growing their inherited wealth.
I had a big insight. I could be a millionaire and possibly a billionaire if I excelled at one thing better than almost anyone else. Could I do that with domain names? Possibly.
If I wanted to make a million dollars in 10 years, I would only need to save $100,000 annually. Certainly doable, now that I had made two businesses generate 2x-3x that in a year.
What's my Compounding Flywheel?
$1 million a year broken down was:
$83,000/month
$2,777 per day
$116 per hour (just 10x the minimum wage)
I just had to double my current $1,500 per day. Wow! I'm halfway there. I 5x'd my revenue just by switching from FindWhat to Goto, and now I only have 2x to get to a million. This is totally doable.
Wow, the power of powerful partnerships. It seemed too easy.
It had taken me three months to register 300 domain names. I could see the pathway to double this, but now, equipped with metrics and a monetization engine, it could accelerate.
For the following 300 domains, I would target more traffic and relevancy for higher clicks and revenue per click.
This would be my flywheel and my focus. It became my driving obsession to be better than anyone in the domain world.
I would learn to compress and expand time to manage expectations and think outside the box.
Life Questions
"A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart."
— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
How do I make money doing what I love?
How do I accelerate with the right mentors?
How do I multiply with a few simple essential moves?
Life Advice Then
From my 29-year-old self:
"Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune."
— Jim Rohn (1930-2009)
Model and Befriend the Best in Your Field.
Find your mentor and master to apprentice you in ways you can't anticipate
Money is a result of providing value to your partners and others.
Someone needs you as much as you need them. Seek that vital partner.
You find success with just a few simple levers.
Life can change in an instant with one idea, one implementation, one partnership, one customer, and one metric.
Life Advice Now
From my 53-year-old self:
"It's fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure."
— Bill Gates (1955-)
Be Grateful for the relationships you make during your journey.
These relationships are the most precious you gain. More than all the money in the world.
Enjoy the journey, the ups and also the big downs.
There is a meaningful lesson in every part of your journey.
Reflect more and write your reflections privately or publicly.
Others are seeking your learnings, and you pay forward the blessings you have been given, whether life deals you good or bad hands.
Next week: How to Turn Someone's Junk into Gold.
And your junk may be someone's gold. The best Win-Win!
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Mining the Internet Gold Rush
Opening My Gifts: Domains from Heaven
Opening My Gifts: Domains from Heaven
"Your talent is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God."
— Leo Buscaglia (1924-1998)
Open Your Gifts
"To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift."
— Steve Prefontaine (1951-1975)
I knew deep in my heart that this opportunity with domain names was my calling. Even though I didn't know how to do it, the timing seemed perfect. With the dot-com boom ushering in crazy money into dot-coms, companies raising millions of dollars for hock-eyed ideas like Webvan, raising ~ $800 million, valued at $4.8 billion with just $395,000 in revenues and $50 million in losses. Was that all it took to build a multi-billion dollar business? It didn't make any sense to me… But domain names did. With the coming implosion of these unsustainable dot-com companies, I could see a reset in the Internet and a massive opportunity with expired domain names.
But I didn't have any proof, and I didn't know how the domain name system worked. I didn't know when lapsed domain name registrations would default or when these expired domain names would become available again, but I knew there must be a system.
I decided to figure it out. I would give myself three months, maybe six months. If I couldn't figure it out by then, I would start a health practice (not a medical practice) that espoused preventative health lifestyles.
I asked my friends, church elders, parents and, of course, my wife for guidance. Everyone strongly advised me to continue my childhood dream of becoming a doctor. The Internet was a fad. After all, it was in a big bust. Everyone was predicting that Amazon would fail big and not last the next year as the big companies fell one by one. Masayoshi Son of SoftBank surpassed Bill Gates as the wealthiest person in the world at $96 billion for just three days, and then his fortune fell to $6 billion in the next year.
Going All In
"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might."
— King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 9:10) (931 BC)
"Honey, I don't know how to do this, but I believe it is a big door of opportunity that will close if I don't do it now. All I ask is for your support. I just need one person to support me."
I knew I couldn't do it without my wife's support. We had a newborn daughter, Jessi, and we were moving back to Vancouver. This was an entirely unproven idea. I would have to put HostGlobal and DNSIndex on the back burner and potentially lose their income to pursue domain names. And that's what I did. I spent all my waking hours trying to figure out how these names dropped.
I knew domain names had to be registered for a year or two, and if the owner didn't renew the name before its expiry date, it would become available again for registration. I also knew that Verisign was the domain name registry that managed this.
I started downloading the dot-com zone files containing all the dot-com domain names registered as of that day and then 'diffed' them to see which domain names were deleted from the zone files the following day. Then, I ran the deleted domain names through 'whois,' a tool that allowed me to look up their registration data, including ownership and expiration date.
June passed. July passed. It was now August. I had looked at tens of millions of domain names but still couldn't figure it out. I joined all the domain name forums to get whatever hints I could. Then, on August 10, 2000, Some premium domain names on my list turned up! I ran the list through Whois to see who had registered them. There were a handful of names and companies. Noname (Yun Ye), Frank Schilling, Garry Chernoff, Scott Day… These were domain pros. It was a moment of great joy. Even though I had not registered a single domain yet, I finally cracked part of the code.
I found out that Verisign had not released any expired domain names from March until that day in August, which is likely why I was coming up empty-handed for all those months.
Through the domain name forums, I learned that the next drop would happen one day after my birthday, September 26, 2000. I also knew they would become available at 6:30 am EST, 3:30 am PST. This time, I would be ready. I was up with two computers, manually trying to register my list of 20 domains. Each one had a three to five-step registration process. I would only register five domain names on my list that day because the process was so slow. Goldmedals.com was the best one. It was likely that my five domains weren't on the domain pros' radars. I was like a domain scavenger eating the scraps left, deemed unworthy of immediate re-registration.
There Must Be a Better Way
"It's such a simple question that would make all things better. "Is there a better way? Can I be better today than I was yesterday? Can this generation be better than the previous?"
— Kevin Ham (1970- )
I had to figure out a better, faster way before the next drop. Could I program this and loop the registration process programmatically?
I researched whether this was possible. The Perl LWP Library could automatically sign in and go through forms. Wow! Incredible. I started studying how to program this and then found a registrar with a one-step registration process, OpenSRS (Tucows).
Next drop… I was able to register about 10% of a much bigger list. Now, I was competing with the domain pros.
How Can I Be Even Better?
What if I partnered with a registrar and offered to pay them more to register all the domains on my list? Go for volume. It was incredible how many domains Yun and Frank were registering each drop. Premium domains like performance.com were going to drop soon.
I spoke to Barry at Signature Domains. We did a phone deal. I sent him over my scripts and domain list and agreed to pay him $100 per premium domain and $10 for the rest of my top 100 domains.
He registered performance.com, potentially a million-dollar domain! I did it! I was so excited.
But when I spoke to him, he told me that he sold performance.com for $10,000. Someone had offered him that much. Guess who? Garry Chernoff. Hi Garry :) Smart move, good for you. Garry's a good friend.
I had never done business before, so I didn't have a contract. I thought one's word was good enough. But as heartbroken as I was, I thought, it's hard to deny a $10,000 offer versus my $100 deal. I harboured no ill will. I figured I had to adapt. I needed to structure a deal with someone who would not sell-out to the highest bidder.
I emailed more domain registrars. IA Registry, a web hosting company, a newly minted registrar, was interested. This time, I would meet them in person. I flew to North Carolina and drove down to South Carolina to meet with the team. David Wascher was the manager. We hit it off. I said I would register thousands of domain names. I also asked that they honour our agreement. I would allow my domain competitors on as they had different 'tastes' in domains, but I would like to approve only five. Yun mostly went after two-word domains but would later get beijing.com from IA. Good for Yun. He was from China, and it was a great 'catch'. That was a million-dollar domain.
I shook hands with David. He was good with his word, and I am grateful to him. We would go on to register domains like BlackFriday.com for $8. When I became successful, I tried to 'pay him back', but he would not take a penny.
Still no legal agreement. Just a handshake, a look in the eye, and honour in one's word--this became my underlying principle in business.
David, my heart goes out to you. I love you, wherever you are. I never fully returned the measure of grace and honour you gave me.
Life Questions
What are your gifts? List them.
When can you go "All in"? Set a date.
Is there an even better way? Think, plan and execute.
What is your #1 goal? Focus on it until you master it.
Life Advice Then
From my 29-year-old self:
"It is not the wealth or power that defines a man, but his character and the impact he leaves on the world."
— Alexander the Great (356 BC - 323 BC)
Trust your heart and connect the dots with your mind
If you are not a wholeheartedly YES, it's likely not for you. When your heart and your mind align, go all in.
When it's either your heart or your mind, let it ferment until they align.
No regrets.
Ask others, but ask yourself if this is what you truly want
Ask yourself, your older self in 50 years and even your younger self if this is what you truly want.
Pray and think and sleep on it. This is my go-to process.
Know when it is time to go all in.
Sometimes, you have to take the plunge to make it work.
Believe there is always a better way … every day
There always is.
Life Advice Now
From my 53-year-old self:
"If you want to take the island, burn the boats."
— Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC)
Timing is everything … most of the time.
It's not too early … not too late—just the right time. It's proclaimed to be the top factor for business success, and I think it applies to life, too.
Is it the right time? If so, go for it. If not, be patient until you feel and know it is.
One yes leads to 10 more things, which then spawns ten more.
Can you pursue two ventures well at the same time? Unlikely. Something will give.
Great decision to go all in. It worked out well.
Easy in hindsight, much more difficult in foresight.
Determine the end destination.
The end is difficult to visualize clearly, but this is your vision--have one.
The clearer you can see and describe it, the easier it will be to get there.
Sometimes, the destination will reveal itself over time, but it takes time each day to practice seeing the vision clearly. Once it is clear, you will know what direction to take.
Honour the ones who helped you.
Life is full of ups and downs. When they are down, help them up. Stay connected. Don't let good and honour go unnoticed.
Next week: How do I make money?
The secret to a million dollars.
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
How to Find Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight
Giving Birth to a Whole New World of Opportunities
Giving Birth to a Whole New World of Opportunities
Opportunities and success are not something you go after necessarily but something you attract by becoming an attractive person.
Jim Rohn
As sponsorship requests started to come in for HostGlobal, one person asked if he could put a link, 'Free Domain Registration,' at the top. I thought little of it since it was just a link and asked for $100 a month. Little did I know that these three little words would change my life for the next 25 years.
I had a call with him, and he was so pleased with the link's performance. He told me he was making $1500 with no work at all. I was curious. I clicked the link, and it went to a domain registration page. I estimated that he was making $3-$5 per domain registration in commission. That meant 300-500 domain registrations per month.
And just like that, I knew my next "Yellow Pages" category. Domain names!
I did some research and decided to build a network of websites instead of just one. So, I registered the domain name DNSIndex.com and signed up as an affiliate partner of a domain name registrar called Domain Bank. I created my new site and promoted it via HostGlobal.
The Domain Kings
In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)
HostGlobal was doing well, and I wanted to replicate that success with DNSIndex. So, I started an Expired Domain List and created a paid newsletter at $49/year. In it, I sent out a list of expired domains and a link for people to register them via DNSIndex.
Soon, a handful of people started registering everything on my Expired Domain List. Rick Schwartz, the Domain King; Slavik Viner, domain extraordinaire; Anthony Peppler, who would teach me a lot about domain names and the list of subscribers grew each week. The more names I added to the list, the more domain registrations I received. I would eventually make up to $10,000 USD a month. It was almost like printing money.
Then, I wondered why these domainers were registering so many domain names. I only owned a few names that I used for my businesses. What were they doing with them?
So, I got on the phone again, this time with Anthony Peppler. I wanted to know why he was registering so many domains. He wanted to know how I found my list of expired domains. I didn't think I was doing anything revolutionary. I would simply go to whois.net and query their database of any domain name that used to be registered but was now available.
He revealed that he knew that domain names expire at a particular time and that there was a process for re-registering them as soon as they became available, but he didn't know how. The great names got picked up immediately by people who knew the secret process. Now, I was curious.
He had met a younger kid, Ross, who knew the process but didn't have the money to pay the registration fees for the hundreds of domains expiring every day. Ross liked three-letter domains. He got around paying the registration fees upfront by sending in email registrations and then he'd try to flip the names before he had to pay for them. The problem was that he had to keep trying to re-register them because he didn't have enough money. Anthony offered to partner with him and pay the registration fees, $70 for two years for each of them.
I asked him to sell me one of their premium three-letter domains. ZEJ.com was my first three-letter domain. Thanks, Anthony!
Front Page News
Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
At that time, I was so excited about becoming the newly minted domain owner of what I thought was a premium domain, a coveted three-letter dot com.
Why was I so excited?
The pieces were starting to come together.
I had a flashback to 1997 when I first thought about launching my Yellow Pages online idea, I was trying to name it.Yellow.com? Taken. Yellowpages.com? Taken. Every name I came up with seemed to be taken.
I suddenly thought of the Rorschach inkblots as a metaphor for my idea, creative, seeing double entendres. Inkblot.com it was. Again, to my dismay, it, too, was taken! I kept thinking... Was there a creative take I could play on it? Incblot.com–a play on inc as in incorporations. Surely, that would be a unique version. Taken!
I was so disappointed. I felt hopeless, so I decided to register inc-blot.com, my very first domain name. Oh, how hard it was back in 1997 to find a good domain name.
Fast-forward to late 1999, and hundreds of domainers were paying me for access to my Expired Domain List. They were registering domain names from my list that didn't even have the most premium names on it–like the coveted three-letter domains. It felt like a modern-day gold rush.
Business.com had just sold for $7.5 million earlier in 1999. Marc Ostrovsky, the owner, had bought it for $150,000 in 1996–a 50x return in 3 years (in 2007, it would sell again for $350 million).
Armed with this new insight, I decided to get on the front page of our local newspaper, the London Free Press, and get press for my new website, DNSIndex.com. I called the newspaper and declared, "I'd like to be on the front page."
She politely asked me what my story was. I relayed that I was the Chief Medical Resident at St Joseph's Hospital, who also offered a very valuable service for the city of London that would help get them on the ground floor of the Internet movement. She said, "You want to speak to Business", and patched me through.
"I'd like to be on the front page of the business section", I repeated. He listened to my story and invited me to lunch the next day. The day after that, I was on the front page of the business section. The story's title was "What's in a Name?".
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
It was a few years into the dot-com boom, but the Internet and domain names were still relatively unknown to laypeople. My pitch was that domain names were digital real estate assets with no maintenance, very little 'property tax', and enormous potential. Anyone could buy or own virtual real estate assets, just like business.com. They could learn how at DNSIndex.com. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Just one valuable domain name would be enough to make someone financially free.
But even with this understanding, I still wondered how would someone acquire a premium domain like Business.com? I didn't have 7.5 million dollars. I needed to figure out that secret process.
On January 10, 2000, the AOL-Time Warner merger was announced for $182 Billion. AOL/American Online, an Internet company, had just acquired Time Warner, one of the big prestigious media companies (HBO, CNN, Time, Warner Bros). The AOL-Time Warner merger was announced just after we “survived” Y2K. It was what would later be seen as the height of the Internet bubble. March 2000 signalled the beginning of the dot-com crash.
I sensed these expiring domains were a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—possibly. Deep down I knew it, but there was no 'how-to' manual or data to prove my intuition. The bubble was bursting. HostGlobal and DNSIndex were bringing in $25,000-$30,000 USD per month (but for how much longer?) and I was just about to finish medical school and finally become a doctor.
What would you do?
Life Question
If I were to find a hidden opportunity that spoke to my heart but it didn't make sense and I didn't know how to do it—with so much uncertainty—what would I do?
Life Advice Then
From my 29-year-old self:
"We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Be curious and ask questions, especially for life secrets and business insights.
This has served me well. Secrets or insights almost always give someone an advantage in doing something well. It might be information, a process, an idea, a connection, or a hack.
Meaningful opportunities Lie Hidden in Plain Sight.
Imagine all the missed opportunities because I walk by them, don't hear them, don't see them, don't ask for them, don't seek them or don't knock on the door of opportunity continually.
Ask your intuition what feels right. Your heart is directing you to something.
Your heart knows. Your mind assesses logic based on survival and reason. It becomes a no-brainer decision if you can validate your intuition with data. Many people need logic, reason, or data to validate. I typically go first with intuition but try as much as I can to validate with logic to derisk the unintended consequences.
You attract the energy you are in.
This is the Law of Attraction. Attraction happens by the frequency or vibration level you are in. High energy attracts high energy, and low energy attracts low energy. It's a fundamental law. To be on the same wavelength.
First, attune yourself to the Law of Vibration. What is the highest frequency at which you can spend your time?
Life Advice Now
From my 53-year-old self:
"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."
— John D. Rockefeller
Find the right experts or coaches.
Someone is likely in the know. I spent months trying to figure out how expired domain names dropped. Everyone was tight-lipped. If the experts and master coaches are too hard, there are someone steps ahead of you, maybe a year, maybe two, or someone much older who wants to give back and help the rookie.
Follow the Links. Connect the Dots.
In this age of almost unlimited access to information, it's much easier to do this. Just type in your questions into AI, search engines, YouTube, newsletters, podcasts, or, more traditionally, the book written by the expert (usually outdated by a year or more).
Be bold.
Like the CEO of Nvidia, now the third largest company in the world with a $2.5 trillion market cap, he would have never started the company if he had known how hard it would be.
If you knew how difficult domain names would be, you likely would not have even started. This prevents the older self from starting, as you likely now know how hard it is to start things and succeed. A startup is typically a ten-year journey, maybe five now.
Work as Play
Enjoy every minute of it, even the hard things, for they make you stronger. View it as a sport. Those hardmoments build character. Be steadfast and strong, and most of all, enjoy being grateful, especially if you get to do something you love or find meaningful, which should be your highest priority.
Don't forget your loved ones.
Your success depends on it. Don't get lost in your work. Time passes on. Rather too quickly. You cannot get back this time. Children grow up quickly. You grow up quickly.
Next week: Mining the Internet Goldrush.
Opening my gifts: Domains from Heaven.
See you next Thursday!
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My Side Hustle: How I made $25,000 per month in less than 6 months
A Side Hustle to Start living My Dreams
A Side Hustle to Start living My Dreams
It is in changing that things find purpose.
Heraclitus 535-475 BC
My goal was to make $10,000 USD, which would be $15,800 CAD a month. I would do it by starting a Yellow Pages-style online directory. I could only devote an hour or two a day at most and four hours on the weekends. I quickly determined that since I could not invest very much time and hardly any money, I had to scope my Yellow Pages idea down to one category. Back then we had big, physical Yellow Pages (businesses by categories) and White Pages (people) address and phone books. They may be antiques by now.
So what category would I select? What would the Internet be unique for that I would also enjoy learning about myself? I knew I would need to build a website and find a web host. I was struggling to find a low-cost and easy-to-use web hosting company to host my directory. I believed that eventually, every business would need a website and a web host, like me. In my own search, I was missing reviews and ratings on web hosting companies. Eureka! This is what I would create.
What will I name my directory?
Tigers die and leave their skins; people die and leave their names.
Japanese Proverb
What you name, you breathe life into. You conceive your new venture, idea or product with a name. This name has some meaning, or better yet, a story.
I believed the Internet would be global. So I found an available domain, HostGlobal.com. I would later need a formal company but I would incorporate it after I made some money. Naming would later become one of my great gifts.
My Entrepreneurial Blueprint
You were born to win, but to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.
Zig Ziglar
Start date: Jan 1, 1999.
Name: HostGlobal.com (registered on Jan 10, 1999).
Financial target: $10,000 USD/month by Jun 30, 1999.
Idea: Create a Yahoo-like directory but for web-hosting companies
Plan:
Find software that allowed me to build a directory (1 week).
Add 20 Webhosting companies per day to my directory (daily).
Build and add a review and rating module to the software (4 weeks).
Offer the review module to users of the software in return for adding their web hosting company with a review and rating. This would:
Differentiate my web hosting review site from the handful of other ones (my secret edge).
Attract entrepreneurs and companies looking to find a web host for their Internet business.
Sell sponsorship packages to the web hosting companies (1-2 months). 300 companies at $30/mo = $9,000 USD/mo.
Incorporate in Nevada to have a U.S presence (2 months).
Adapt to users, web hosts and competition.
Ask, Tweak and Receive. 10x. 100x. 1000x
The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
— Robert Burns
I learned the programming language PERL as that was what the directory software was written in. I had never taken a computer course before so I printed out some lessons on PERL from the Internet and studied them in my allotted side job time. I created the review module within a month and kept improving it daily until it worked well.
I then offered the hundreds of web hosting companies on hostglobal.com an unbelievably low-cost sponsorship opportunity of $30/month. I waited for the orders to come in. I waited … and waited for days. I wondered what was wrong.
A couple of other good web hosting directories were charging $1500 to $3000 per month. I thought that underpricing them would be a no-brainer. Was it too cheap? Maybe the perceived value was too low.
So, I thought I would try $300/month for category sponsorship. In a month I had two sponsors. 10X! I had made my first real dollars. What a thrill. That first order!
Then I had a brilliant idea. I thought I would try $3000 for sitewide sponsorship. 100X! I got one. A big fish.
Then I thought I would offer one $30,000 title sponsorship spot. 1000X!
So, when Communitech, a Kansas City web hosting company, was interested, I asked them for $30,000 and they said No. Then I thought “OK, but what if I could get $20,000?” Wow! $20,000/month!? I countered with $20,000 plus a dedicated web server so I could then move into dedicated server listings. They agreed and just like that I surpassed my goal in under 6 months!
Life Advice Now
To my 29-year-old self:
If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.
— Abraham MAslow
I believe in you.
You believed in yourself even when you didn’t have the ability or experience to do it. You impress me. You had a big drive to figure this out and you executed. Despite all the self-doubt. That drive and determination is almost unstoppable.
Continue to learn
Evaluate whether that skill is something you want to continue for the rest of your life or only do for a season or a reason.
I wish that I continued to program and learn new languages to this day.
Talk to your competitors and make them frenemies.
You only looked at your competitors’ websites. You should have had meetings with them to see if there were any things you could collaborate on as there were only a few other big competitors.
Some of my dear friends now were my fiercest competitors. Scott Day, the watermelon farmer and Frank Schilling, the wonder boy. Yun Ye, who sold his business to Marchex for $164 million.
Talk much more to your customers.
You were only scratching the surface. You could have uncovered the deep needs of web hosting companies and their customers. Think how that space has evolved to Shopify, Squarespace and Wordpress.
Continue to keep plans simple
I have plans that are too complex, too dependent on too many people and outside factors. Focus on what you can do and control and then partner with people who can fulfill other parts of your plan.
Next week:
How to Find Hidden Opportunities in Plain Sight.
Giving birth to a whole new world of opportunities.
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Starting Something New: The Entrepreneurial Blueprint
A Side Hustle to Live My Dreams
A Side Hustle to Live My Dreams
It’s not too late to decide to change the trajectory of your life. You can course-correct your life as you go.
— Ham
I wrestled with what to do. Become a doctor? Start something new? I felt trapped, the momentum of my life decisions since age 14 driving me to a path that wasn't what I had envisioned.
I knew in my heart, that I wanted to transition and become an Internet entrepreneur.
Question 1: Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
Getting started is the hardest thing because it requires force. From status quo to step 1 change. It’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” It’s the force described by Newton: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted on by a net external force. That force is your entrepreneurial spirit to make a decision, that influences your mind, which then influences your body to act. It’s embodied in Nike’s motto, “Just do it.” Carpe diem, to seize the day.
Should I drop out of medical residency? I already had my medical degree. I should finish what I started as I only had a year left. Logical.
I was excited but also very nervous about starting something totally new. But was it new or just buried deep in my heart? What were these fears that suddenly appeared with the thought of starting something new?
A fear of failure. A fear of letting people down. A fear of criticism. A fear of change. A fear of the unknown. A fear of uncertainty. A fear of loss of identity. A fear of loneliness. They seem to engulf the excitement and passion of starting something new. Each fear posed as mountains in my new path.
Making a Decision
In 1993, I heard my Sunday school teacher, Bill Pottenger, an assistant professor at the University of Champaign, proclaim that a student there, Marc Andreesen, had just invented this thing called Mosaic, the first Internet browser. He explained how this was a big shift, a revolution in the making, that would merge all current and future forms of media onto the Internet.
I decided then that I wanted to be part of this upcoming Internet Revolution. I knew instantly that it was going to be bigger than the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution of the steam engine and factories, the Transportation Revolution of trains, automobiles and planes, and greater than the Media Revolution of radio, TV and cinema… combined.
I had an idea in 1997 to start a Yellow Pages online, but medical school, church and marriage kept me too busy. I knew I needed to really scope down this idea of the Yellow Pages online to start with just one category, much like how Jeff started Amazon with just books.
I could realistically devote:
Time: an hour a day and a few hours on the weekend
Money: $100 a month
Know How: very little
Resources: none internally
Faith: very little but lots of hope and passion
It was my final shift of the year, December 1998, at Pediatrics Emergency, I decided that I was going to start my Internet business in January 1999.
Once I made that decision, I knew it would be a ride of a lifetime.
And it has been a rollercoaster with lots of ups and downs. Just like life… With no coasting off into the sunset. We all know that this ride will eventually end. So make this ride full of what you enjoy and love and find meaning in.
Question 2: What do I need to do to make my side hustle into my life hustle?
Begin with the end in mind.
First things first.
These are two of the principles of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
My first domino to knock down was to make as much income as my current job as a medical resident, only $45,000 per year. My second, bigger domino: make my upcoming income as a family doctor, $150,000 per year. I had 1.5 years until I finished my medical residency, but I set a goal to accomplish this within 6 months and build an automated business where I didn’t have to be “in the business”.
My large end domino was financial freedom. I pegged this at $1 million per year. This would eventually grow to $1 million per month and then $10 million per month and I would ask myself 'When will it be enough?' Later I would determine this to be billions, as my dreams would require this much.
I’ve been successful whenever I saw the end in mind and started with first things first. When the end was foggy, it took much longer and often ended in failure.
Hitchcock first visualized all of his movies, then wrote them and then made them. When Jordan Peele was asked how he won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for ‘Get Out’ as a first-time Director, he said, “Every time I went to bed, I pictured the movie I wanted to watch and then I made it.” I have a movie (or three) I’ve visualized that I will make in 2030s. (I think in decades.) A movie is only two hours of visualizations. And you can edit it every night with no cost but to dream.
Every building is first seen in the mind, blueprinted by an architect and then built. This is what we call ‘Vision’.
Question 3: How can I blueprint my startup? My life?
The how-to path may not be clear, but the start and end points should and can be seen.
Think through to the end. Then think backward to the start… Today.
Write the blueprint for your new startup, your new career, your new feature, a new you.
Then materialize it by experiments and course correct.
This is the way of the Entrepreneurial Spirit. The key word here being spirit, an invisible force of nature like the wind, able to move trees and if big enough, move the world. This is the spirit of creation, which resides in each of us. The great entrepreneurs are the ones who have freed this spirit from the confines of their minds and bodies.
This entrepreneurial blueprint should be executable by you. An executable blueprint. Write out your blueprint, digitize it, and print it out. Then start executing it into being.
Your Entrepreneurial Blueprint
Step 1: Make a Decision to start something new
Name it! Like a new baby, a new company, a new product.
Once you give it a name, it’s conceived. Congratulations!
Step 2: Envision your end goal (domino)
Start a side business with the first goal to make as much as your current job.
Have a target financial goal and timeline to accomplish it.
Step 3: Envision your first goal (domino)
Decide a start date.
How much time to devote daily.
Like a regular job, but this is your side job.
This can be 30 minutes, 1 hour or 4 hours a day.
Step 4: Scope down your idea
So that you can accomplish it.
Step 5: Envision an EXECUTABLE Entrepreneurial Blueprint
Keep it simple. Make it visible and read it daily.
Write down your blueprint plan, your logic, and the way you will make money to get to your target revenue over each month to your target date.
Print this out and put it by your bathroom mirror or bed to remind yourself at the start and end of each day.
Step 6: Get buy-in
From your significant other(s).
Getting them onboard allows you ‘to do’ and the best way is to ask for their support.
From the customer(s) early on
Life Advice Now
To my 29-year-old self:
Write your thoughts and questions in a notebook
Write it with a pen. The traditional way of writing unlocks even deeper thoughts.
You can transcribe later to digital. Steve Jobs wanted to use the finger to write on tablets. Maybe he read about how the finger of God wrote the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.
Believe in yourself more
There is a lot of uncertainty when embarking on a new journey--excitement but a lot of questioning oneself about ability, skill, support, success, and failure.
Remember that anything you learned or became good at started from inability, ignorance and inadequacies. You had to practice and repeat. Whether it was learning a language, or learning to ride a bike. The same goes for anything new.
Get a coach
Find someone who has done something like this before and watch their videos, read their writings on how they approached it and the steps they took. Don’t look at their success but listen to their story when they started.
Buy their book if they have one and read their ‘origin story.’
Write out your Entrepreneurial Blueprint on one page
Write your GOAL. Your start date. Your target date.
Write your three biggest assumptions.
Your plan in steps (I call them dominoes).
And rewrite your plan as you experiment and learn new information.
Key: Find the Secret Insights for your Blueprint
This is the secret edge you will have.
The more you have the better.
Try to find 3 secret insights.
Think and perform rapid experiments
Conducted daily or weekly.
Think of each experiment as a domino to be set up quickly and then knocked down.
Conduct the experiments by thought in multiple iterations. Then design them to be implemented in the simplest way possible.
It’s ok to fail. Failure is learning and having the mindset to continually get back up, adjust and experiment again.
Edison conducted 10,000 experiments that failed to figure out the light bulb. 10,000!
Try to go for 10 experiments as simply and quickly as you can with no dependencies and resources.
Expand experiments to 100 and learn and improve each one. By the 101st experiment, you will know what you are doing.
Next week: My Side Hustle Becomes My Main Hustle
How I grew to $25,000/month within 6 months.
See you next Thursday!
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