Compounding Wisdom
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!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
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!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.
Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been No for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
When I was 14, out of nowhere I went from totally healthy to suddenly hospitalized. I was bedridden and unable to walk or move. I experienced constant, severe pain as inflammation affected all my joints. I decided that if I were to live through this experience, then I would become a doctor to help people like me.
Fast forward 15 years, I received my medical degree from UBC and was in my final year of medical residency at UWO. I was working 80 hours a week, seeing 40 patients a day and on call every third day. I had pursued medicine to help people. But, with only 12 minutes per patient, I didn't feel like I was actually helping anyone. Being a doctor reminded me of how my father was stuck working “inside” his laundromat and dry cleaner businesses. He worked 7 days a week from 7 am to 11 pm, serving as many customers as possible.
Question 1: Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
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.
Question 2: What do I really want to do with my life?
I knew that I wanted the following:
To help patients avoid getting sick in the first place rather than just recover from disease.
To spend more time on health education than on “diagnose and prescribe in under 12 minutes”.
To be free from the shackles of financial constraints.
Question 3: What do I not want in my life?
I knew that I did not want the following:
To spend my time putting band-aids on problems. I want to explore them deeply and get to their root.
To be on call, working nights. My mom was a nurse who did graveyard shifts. It was very hard for the family. Much respect to all the doctors and nurses who take these night shifts.
To be shackled “inside” a business, like my dad had been.
Today, ask yourself these 3 questions:
Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life?
What do I really want to do with my life?
What do I not want in my life?
Spend some time each day writing the questions and answers in a notebook. Yes, physically use pen and paper. Post this by your computer, bathroom mirror or some place you can see it daily.
And, if your actions do not align with your answers for too many days in a row, you know you need to change something.
What do I really want to do?
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” — Confucius (551-479 BC)
I wrestled with what to do. I felt trapped, the momentum of my life decisions since age 14 driving me to a path that wasn't what I had envisioned.
After much soul searching, I finally decided to make a big career change while completing my medical residency and getting my medical license.
I wanted to transition and become an Internet entrepreneur.
Life Lessons Then:
It’s not too late to make a decision to change the trajectory of your life.
Next week: Starting Something New: The Entrepreneurial Blueprint
My Simple Plan to make $10,000/month within months
See you next Thursday!
Subscribe to my Compounding Wisdom newsletter and start transforming your life.