CLUB's Founder, Colin Campbell, on Entrepreneurship Triumphs and Trials | Saw.com - Uncomfortable with Jeffrey Gabriel

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's show we have serial entrepreneur Colin
Campbell, co-founder of 2CowsDot Club and countless other
startups.
His businesses have amassed avalue of over a half a billion
dollars and most recently haspublished a book called Start
Scale, exit Repeat, which I readin preparing for this podcast.
I'm going to give you a quickreview.

(00:20):
Being the founder and CEO of a15-person company and the
successful creation of twoothers, I often find that many
of these kinds ofentrepreneurial books either
cater to very entry-levelentrepreneurs or to those really
who are much farther advancedthan I am in my own journey my
journey, for those listening andwondering, is still wearing

(00:41):
many of the hats in a business,from payroll to biz dev, to
legal, to marketing, totechnology, to being a domain
broker, to customer service.
I believe this book stands outby providing a more realistic
perspective than many others Ihave read which I can relate to.
Colin, I think, has craftedeach chapter to ensure a
seamless reading experience andif I want to go back to specific

(01:03):
chapters in the future based onmy situation, I can easily jump
back into it or, in reality,not read the ones that are
relevant to my business.
Yet he also puts stories inthere of success, but also a
failure from not only himselfbut other regular business
people, which, again, you canrelate to.
Some of his advice in there isfamiliar and serves as a

(01:25):
reaffirmation, while othersections introduce new ideas.
I certainly want to try.
All in all, I think it's agreat book.
You can buy it at Amazon forshort money right now and I
think it's certainly worth itNow, before we begin, whenever I
have a guest on this show, Iusually have a brief
conversation with them before itbegins.
We kind of go over the outlineof what we want to cover.

(01:46):
I talk about some of thequestions I might ask ahead of
time, but this time, with Colin,we really just started talking
about the domain industry, andthis conversation we had to
begin was about GTLDs.
I decided to start recordingright then because I felt you,
the listener, might like it andit's kind of like a hidden track
on a CD.

(02:06):
But yes, that is usually at theend.
If you'd like to hear moreabout the GTLD business, you can
, or you can skip ahead thefirst five minutes to the real
intro, or you can listen to thebonus material first.
In any event, thanks forlistening and, by the way, you
can check us out on Spotify,apple Podcast, youtube or

(02:26):
uncomfortablelink or sawcomslash podcast.
You can contact Colin onstartupclub or you can buy his
new book on Amazon.
Start, scale, exit, repeat.
All right, let's dance.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Now, one thing we have is relationship with all
the registrars around the world,and relationships are
absolutely critical in anybusiness.
This distribution is key, andif you can somehow lock in
distribution, then that makesyour business so much easier,
which is why we're thinkingabout applying for new domain
extensions in 2026, because wealready have the relationships.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Do you think the landscape has changed, like if
you were, if you won Dot Clubthis time around or you ended up
with Dot Club this time around.
Do you think that it would be?
There's very unchartedterritory then.
What do you think?
What do you foresee it going tobe now that there's more of a
pay to play model versus justrelationships that are going on
in the GTLD business?

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, I think that it's a different rule set.
I think it's a different game.
I think if you try to emulatewhat others did in that 2012
round, then you're not going tosucceed.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
I think there's a lot of blockbuster names out there.
I think this the strategy's gotto be a little bit more niche
and you have to identify marketsand segments and how you're
going to actually take those,take that product to that market
, and right now it's going to bea lot more expensive to go to

(04:11):
market.
A lot of registrars arecharging slotting fees and other
fees and if you don't have therelationships it's just going to
be very challenging.
I just don't think that.
I know a lot of people might bebanking on a strategy that Paul
Stahura, who did donuts sort oflike engineered, will say he

(04:31):
was the godfather of it all,which was this idea you can
apply for a domain extension andthen sell your ownership in
that extension.
There are some differentcomplexities with this, but also
we're dealing with assuming thefirst round took 80% to 90% of
the market.
You're fighting for crumbs,right?

(04:52):
So when you're fighting forcrumbs, you're not going to have
as much opportunity as you didon the first round.
Now there's a few nameslikecoin, ornft or some of these
other ones that might go for alot of money, but the
competition is going to befierce and what we did learn
from the prior round was thatwhen you go for a name like that

(05:13):
, there's a lot of competitionand if you get one holdout,
you're going to an ICANN auctionand there are some unique rules
that they're potentiallyproposing on this round, where,
if you come from a disadvantagedcountry, you would get better
credits for an auction, whichwould lead a lot of game playing
to occur in the market.

(05:34):
If they do go down that path,hopefully they'll keep it clean
and simple like they did lasttime, but we don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
What would happen if they come out with those rules
that they're going to do that?
What's stopping you fromcreating the business and basing
it in one of those countries toget the advantage?

Speaker 2 (05:49):
I mean, it's all about ownership, right, you have
to have the right ownershipfrom people who are from those
local areas.
Are there structures that couldget around that?
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
Yeah, well, it's the same as people calling for
trademarks and then saying thatgeneric terms of trademarks so
they simply get awarded thoseTLDs as well.
It's interesting to say thatyou're going to go back, you're
thinking about getting.
You have six already decided.
It might go up to probablyeight or 10 by the time the
auction comes down Possibly.
Do you think that it was theright way to do it last time,

(06:21):
when it was, let's say, you andI had a collision for the same
TLD, that we had an auction andthat the loser gets the money,
or were there multiple peoplewith the loser would get the
money, or is that, or do youthink the money should go?

Speaker 2 (06:36):
I think the problem with that model is it attracts
speculators.
And if somebody really wantsthe TLD, there's going to be a
lot of speculators burned onthis round, because whether you
go to auction or whether you doit in that model, you're going
to pay whatever rate for the TLD.

(06:57):
And if you want the TLD, youmight just push it to auction
through ICANN, because you don'tcare about who gets the money
on the back end.
And if they're just speculatorsout there trying to make a
piece of it, I think it's goingto be tough for them to really
make money.
The rules change Like any gameplay it once everybody learned

(07:22):
how to play it this way and nowthe rules have changed, so it's
going to be a different game.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, I think the perception of it is as well that
with a lot of people don'tunderstand how the business
works.
Is they think that, okay, I getthe TLD and now it's like I
call all the registrars andthey're just going to turn it on
like you're getting added tothe gun of Coca-Cola, and so you
have to get the distributionfigured out.
You have to choose a back endif you don't want to build it
yourself it doesn't really makesense to build one yourself at

(07:49):
this point Then you need tonegotiate terms with each of the
registrars and then you need togive them promotions and things
like that and saying, oh, it'sfree, then we'll just get the
renewals.
Well, there's a lot of otherpeople doing promotions as well,
and so there needs to be forthem.
A registrar is paying a lot ofmoney for a customer who wants
to register a domain, so givingit away for a penny isn't

(08:10):
necessarily the right thing todo either.
And then you also have I'mguessing Dot Club had tiers.
You had your premium inventory,things like that that kind of
come into play.
So, yeah, there's a lot to itand it's going to be interesting
.
Did you participate in theauctions when Frank sold his no,

(08:32):
I did not.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
We were focused on the sale to GoDaddy of Dot Club
and there were some restrictionsput in place at the time.
So that's okay.
But I have an exemption for newTLDs and we're going to be
moving forward with some ofthose in the next round.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
Got it Cool, all right.
Well, I'm going to get cookingnow.
So today we have Colin Campbell.
He is a serial entrepreneur.
He's the number one bestsellingauthor of Start, scale, exit.
Repeat, colin, you started, youstarted scale, then Exit, and
over a dozen companies worthover a billion dollars,

(09:10):
including Two Cows Hostopia, dotClub Domains, geeks4less and
Pawcom.
Colin also runs Startupclub, orStartup Club, on Clubhouse that
has over one million members.
Startupclub is a domain namewhere you can go and become a
member yourself or you can go toClubhouse and you can also be a
member there and join thatgroup.

(09:31):
I took a look at that today andI joined myself, so let's get
right into it.
You know you mentioned in yourbook that you started about 15
businesses in 30 years.
In our industry, two Cows isprobably the second or third
largest registrar in the world.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
I think it's second yep.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
The second largest, hostopia is definitely a sizable
hosting company in the hostingspace.
Dot Club which is really how Igot to know who you are is
through that domain extension.
So instead of carscom, it's,you know, startupclub pawcom,
which is your pet business, andyou also have many others from

(10:17):
your 19 rental real estateproperties and some others.
And, being someone who starteda few businesses myself and
invested in some others, thequestion is is how?
How are you able to take someof these businesses from zero
and really invest yourself inthese and really get them from?

(10:42):
And this is really the problemI'm having as a business owner
is getting from being, in mycase, the domain broker, the
visionary, the CEO, hr, businessdevelopment, sometimes customer
service, social media.
You know the lawyer, projectmanager, you know bookkeeper,

(11:05):
payroll person, you know all theabove and I mean I mean I'm not
going to get into all that withyou but like, how do you get to
that point where you take thatgreat idea and then you're the
one you know on the side of theship rowing and you do have some
folks you talk about people inyour book working for you, but
how do you get to that masswhere you end up really starting
to delegate and having thattime every day to look at where

(11:26):
this company is supposed to goand really focus on what is
supposed to happen.
How do you, how do you do thatalmost 15 times?

Speaker 2 (11:35):
It's almost like you're starting with the repeat
section of the book.
Yes, I like to say one step ata time.
And you know, every company,every entrepreneur, needs to
build a foundation.
They need to learn how to starta business and they need to
understand the story, the people, the money and the systems and

(11:55):
how they all connect and howthey can increase their chances
of success.
And then it comes to scale, andthe number one reason why most
companies in America andprobably around the world are
small businesses that fail toscale is that the entrepreneur
is in the way, and it'sinteresting listening to you and

(12:18):
you talking about well, I'mthis, I'm that, I'm this, I'm
that.
Well, magic comes.
You know you've hit it when,all of a sudden, one day, you're
either take off for a week orwhatever it is, and one of your
people goes out and doessomething that makes you a lot
of money.
It's all about hiring greatpeople around you that

(12:43):
compliment you but also can beleaders.
These leaders can generatevalue and money for you If
they're good at what they do.
If your business is somethinglike your business, you can
scale your business.
You just need the right leadersin place to be able to scale
that business and it's likemagic, it's almost like it

(13:04):
happens by itself.
Now, if you take it further andfurther now as we go through
the book, it's a journey, right?
Entrepreneurship is a trade.
It's a trade like any other andyou need to learn how to master
your that trade.
You're not just the head of adomain company or the head of or
even a domain investor.

(13:25):
You're an entrepreneur whoidentifies opportunities, starts
them, scales them, exits them,takes some money off the table,
by the way, and then repeat thatover and over again.
In the book.
I mean, we go through a lot ofdifferent techniques in the book
.
Absolutely, this book started in2012 when I was asked to speak
at MIT to a group of 60 businessentrepreneurs very successful

(13:48):
entrepreneurs called theEntrepreneurship Master's
Program at MIT and I came inthere, did a four hour lecture
and they asked me to come inbecause they said what is it
that you do over and over againto start, scale, exit, repeat.
What is it you just keep doingand just keeps happening over
and over again?
And I said, well, actually,there's a lot of things that I

(14:11):
learned from my experiences andI learned that at each stage
start, scale, exit, repeat thatthere are there's a different
story and it changes that storythroughout each stage.
There are different people.
They change throughout thatthose stages.
There are different levels ofmoney that you need to to raise

(14:35):
and different techniques forraising money at each stage, and
then, finally, there aresystems systems that you can put
in place to help you scale yourbusiness.
It took me a long time tofigure all of this stuff out and
by the way.
By the way, Jeffrey, the bookdoesn't just cover all my

(14:55):
successes, it covers all myfailures to.
I lay it all out there foreveryone to see, to see exactly
what happened when you didn'thave the right story, people,
money or systems in place.

Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, and you and you also mentioned that in the book
in your your quote is my ownentrepreneurial batting average
is 466, as I've had sevensuccessful exits from 15
businesses I've started over thelast 30 years, and one of the
bits of advice that you have inthe book that I actually is.
Another actually reallyinteresting quote is don't fall

(15:32):
in love with your business andgo down with it.
There's a subtle differencebetween loving your idea and
loving your business.
Instead of falling in love withyour business to the point that
you go down with a ship, it'simportant to focus on the reason
you started the business in thefirst place.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
So Can I give some context to that?

Speaker 1 (15:49):
So let's go back in time.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
a little bit here, let's go back to 1993 when my
brother and I were runningwhat's called a BBS.
You're too young to know whatthis is, but it was a bulletin
board service, all right, andpeople would connect together on
this bulletin board service andwe would go to a conference
every year called BBSCon.
Okay, that later became ISPConand then later hostingCon, but

(16:15):
it was called BBSCon, and I wasfascinated to see how many
people loved their BBS.
They loved that business.
But the greatest technologicalshift in our lifetime and, by
the way, maybe it's now thesecond greatest, because AI
might be trouncing the advent ofthe internet itself this huge

(16:39):
event was occurring and yet somany people held on to their BBS
and they just tried to continueto live the glory days of the
BBS.
Well, we didn't.
We were number two in Canada.
Number one, social BBS.
We used a platform called MajorBBS.
Few of your listeners may knowthis.

(17:00):
We use that platform.
We shut that business down.
We started internet direct.
We saw the opportunity of theinternet and how it could impact
the humanity and we believed itvery much.
So we shut a business down andthat was successful and
profitable, and we didn't havethe resources to do both.
The bank would not back us todo both here, which, by the way,

(17:22):
might've been good.
Three years later, I go back tothe conference.
All those people who had theirBBSs I would say 80 to 90% of
people who were successful atthem hadn't shifted to the
internet, hadn't shifted tohosting companies.
They remained stuck in theirtime.
So that is something to thinkabout.
Is what do you really loveabout your business?

(17:44):
You know, what we love, mybrother and I, is how technology
transforms the world, andthat's something we continue to
grab on to.
We've including AI.
I mean, ai is just absolutelyincredible.
Hopefully we'll get a fewminutes to talk about that and
how that could impact yourlisteners as well.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
So I mean, the context you just created there
kind of took me off a little bit.
So not just yourself, but yourbrother.
You're sitting there, and howdo you even bring up the
conversation?
Or did he bring it up to you tosay, hey, we're both doing good
and you also let a lot of theleft off.
A very big part of this storywas a year before you're saying
1993, you started the BBS.

(18:25):
But in 1992, you were sleepingon couches at your college
because you couldn't afford aplace to live at that point
Right.
So you built it there.
You've got money coming in,which was big difference than
365 days before.
Your life is going totally inthe right direction and where
you want it to go, and in themiddle there you were farming
and selling vegetables for a fewthousand bucks.

(18:46):
Then you get the business going.
You're off the couch, probablygot your own place by now, or
maybe living with your parents Idon't know that part and now
you're gonna say you know what,fuck it, let's shut it down and
roll the dice again and trysomething totally different.
And so you're gonna pivot basedon what Like did?

(19:07):
You said that to your brotherand he was okay with that?
Or were you guys just kind oftalking and saying yeah?

Speaker 2 (19:13):
We had the opportunity to launch an
internet module or a new gameand we had a third partner as
well and we all voted and I lostthe vote.
We actually launched the game.
I had seen some people incollege use the internet.
It was something that was just,it was pretty obscure, but I
thought the potential was thereand when we started to talk to

(19:34):
people and figure it out, webegan to realize this thing's
huge.
Like we would do a seminar onconnecting to the internet and
literally this was before therewas a web browser.
Okay, so we're talking aboutPing and all the old
technologies that were there,and it wasn't visually pleasing,

(19:57):
but I would email.
For instance, I would email theWhite House and I would get a
response back from the WhiteHouse instantly.
It was an auto responder andthe audience just went nuts for
this.
They were like, oh my gosh,that's crazy.
You know we laugh about it now,but it was funny actually and
but in any case we saw thepotential and realized so it

(20:17):
wasn't, we're gonna shut thisdown instantly and open this up.
So basically we had to getphone lines.
We had like 300 phone linesrunning the BBS and we're like,
okay, we can't afford to getmore phone lines, let's just
watch internet directly.
We'll assign 30 phone lines tointernet direction.
Of course it fills up instantly.
And then, okay, let's just addanother 100 phone lines and it
fills up instantly.

(20:38):
And then so we whittled it downover a period of about six
months.
And you know it was the rightdecision because we began to see
and understand and this is inthe book this concept of
paradigm shifts, change intechnology or change in a
regulation, the dot club, tld,the alternative to dot com, dot

(20:59):
net, dot org that came aboutthrough a regulatory change.
And in the book we talk a lotabout how to catch a wave.
One of the most exciting thingsfor me in this book is I had
the opportunity to interviewJeffrey Moore.
Jeffrey Moore wrote Crossingthe Chasm Inside the Tornado,

(21:20):
one of the top business booksfor technology adoption.
He actually reinvented thetechnology adoption curve and we
actually did a graphic in thebook that shows the technology
adoption.
So we talk a lot about how doyou take advantage of a tornado

(21:41):
and right now, with AI, you havea tornado.
You know, I don't know aboutyou.
I'm a bit of a domain investor.
I buy domain names, like Matt.
When AI started hitting lastNovember, I started buying
domain.
I bought every artist, aicomright there.
I bought some dot clubs, Ibought dot shops.
They're basically my three dotcom, dot shop, a dot club.

(22:03):
Okay, so they're my threefavorite ones, but I started
buying a lot of ai names.
I probably got about 100 ainames, because the opportunity
in ai and how it's gonnatransform the human race is
absolutely incredible.
It's insane.
And, by the way, even if youdon't launch an ai company, you

(22:27):
need to be thinking about how dowe accelerate our growth by
using ai?
What are the things that we cando to accelerate growth in our
company?
And I know I tell you in mysituation.
I've been using it forcontracts.
I've done three contracts now.
Took me 60 seconds to write.
I've used it for customerservice for pawcom.

(22:48):
We've used it even the bookitself.
We never used any ai.
When we submitted this book itwas 100%, by the way, 10 year
projects, six staff members.
We interviewed 200 people forthe book.
About 50 people were actuallyincluded in the book.
But come February, when theyasked us to write the inside

(23:13):
cover of the book, this was alldone by ai.
I took the introduction of thebook, put it into the ai and it
simply came and I said write theinside cover of a bestselling
book based on this introduction.
It came back and it was almostperfect.
And how do I know that?
Because when I talked to theForbes team in April, may, and

(23:37):
they used that for the Amazonlisting the same description.
I asked them well, why aren'tyou guys gonna change it Like
you're the experts, not me?
And they said no, it's perfect,Absolutely perfect.
I mean, I can't tell you howmany different ways you can use
ai, but if you're not jumpingdeep into that world, you're
gonna be left behind.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, I mean, I've been using it myself quite a bit
.
I use it sometimes to trydifferent ways of writing.
We send a lot of email everyday.
We've tried different ABtesting with our own writing,
with AI writing.
I do it to summarize certaindocuments and things I'd like to
read.
I didn't do it for your bookbut like, for example, one of
the things I did was a trialthat I wanted to read about and

(24:19):
it was about 90 pages and Iuploaded the PDF and I said
summarize this for me.
And it gave me, you know,pretty like four or five solid
paragraphs and in 10 minutes Iread it and that was enough for
someone who's not a lawyer, justto know what's going on.
You know, and that's importantto me, I also use it to look for
leads and I started usingversion four, paying the premium

(24:41):
for it and starting to train myown sales assistant.
But I think I can get more outof it and I haven't yet and I
need to do it more.
A friend of mine who's the CTOof computercom, which is another
chat EBT kind of a you knowanother version of it was
telling me that he can havethree different bots doing three

(25:04):
totally different things andthen those three bots take their
work and then send it to onelike kind of head bot, and then
that head bot puts the worktogether and then sends it all
to a QA and then the QA giveshim the final product and he has
them doing development work forhim.
And he said they're about asgood as an entry level developer

(25:25):
at this point.
So, and they're there all thetime, they're consistent and
they don't make sloppy mistakes.
And I asked him what he thinksis gonna happen with any kind of
kid in his 20s.
Will companies wanna takechances on a rookie developer?
And he said I don't see why Iwould.
So that's kind of a scary thing, you know, going forward, and

(25:47):
when I speak to other developersthey say I use chat EBT all the
time because if I can't figuresomething out or I want my work
checked, I give it to that andthen I can, you know, keep going
and some things can take me aweek to figure out, and other
times and chat EBT can figure itout in minutes, and that's you
know.
So the question is, it can bescary, but the cotton gin was

(26:08):
scary too, and the industrialrevolution was scary, and you
know so it's gonna beinteresting.
But getting back to, we'retalking about some of your
successes.
So with Internet Direct youwent there and then did that
lead to two cows, or how didthat work out?

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, so and we talk a lot about this in the book is
that when you're in the thick ofit, you see opportunities
everywhere.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Okay.
So when we were at InternetDirect there was a gentleman
named Scott Swidorski who was alibrarian and he cataloged a
number of software sharewaresoftware.
Before that you'd have to havea discette and you'd put it in
your computer or CD-ROM.
And he came to us because hewas down.

(26:53):
He had no internet providerwould give him access to their
internet because the site wasvery popular and it sounds
ironic.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
And so he came to us and said, hey, can you launch
this site?
And we said, sure, we'll launchit.
We launched it.
Well, it took us down, ofcourse, right, and customers
were not happy about that.
And then we said my brotherJean said, well, because
internet at the time was soexpensive I know it's a foreign
concept it was very, veryexpensive, right.

(27:24):
It's like you know your waterbill or something like that, and
the more water you use, themore it really costs a lot.
So we created something calledmirror sites and we had ISPs
over 1,000 of them globally setup a mirror site all around the
world, and it was simply done tosave money on the internet.
Well, we did something wedidn't even realize we actually,

(27:48):
by doing that, we created amarketing channel and it became
one of the top 100 websites onthe internet and eventually we
tried to become a test registrarfor the domains.
That didn't happen, and but westill wanted to get into it and
we launched the domain side ofthe business as well.

(28:09):
A company called DomainDirect,which you know led to Hover
right now Hover on Two Cows,same company and then that's it,
and it took off from there andwe sold that company in 1999.
And thankfully we did prettywell with that transaction

(28:30):
because we had some challengesin our other companies as well.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
In 1999, before the bubble burst, or is that exactly
right about that?

Speaker 2 (28:38):
time.
So internet direct and I'llthrow this one out there
Internet direct was the fastest,number one fastest growing
company in Canada.
We're on the front page ofProfit Magazine my brother and I
, and another partner as welland we had killed it growing
very fast.
We got to about an $80 millionvaluation and then we decided to

(29:01):
merge with a cable company thatwas applying for a wireless
license from the Canadiangovernment.
Well, the Canadian governmentgranted us that wireless license
, by the way, at no cost.
We owned 50% of it and our stockwent from.
At the time we first startedtalking, it was $80 million.

(29:23):
We hit an evaluation of about$1.3 billion and I had owned 13%
of this company at the time.
Now, one of the things we haddone when we merged is we agreed
to an 18 month lock up becausethey wanted us committed and
back in 1999, it was like wewere just exploding number one
fastest growing company inCanada.

(29:44):
We couldn't.
Nothing could go wrong.
Well, in March of 2000,something went wrong and that
was called the dot com crash.
That was the day that theyannounced the Microsoft breakup.
A judge announced that thisNASDAQ went from $5,000 to
$4,000.
Well, for those who rememberthat time, it actually went to

(30:04):
$1,200.
And we pulled a $50 millionoffering Fast forward.
18 months later, the companyfiled for bankruptcy protection
and the shares that traded at$19 a share traded at $0.06 a
share my God.
And that's what I sold my stockat $0.06 a share.
So there are a couple oflessons I learned from that.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
What was it like during that time?
Let?

Speaker 2 (30:30):
me tell you the two lessons though.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
OK, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
The first was bad things do happen, which is why
this became the genesis of thisbook Start, scale, exit, take
some money off the table, repeat.
And the second is liquidity orcontrol.
As entrepreneurs, we eithercontrol the company or we get
liquidity, and I mean realliquidity, cash or freely traded

(30:54):
stock.
We don't go in a scenario wherewe don't have either of those
two, and those were sort of thetwo big lessons.
This book covers a lot ofFailure, not only my own failure
, but failure from otherentrepreneurs and we.
You can learn a lot sometimesby understanding what went wrong
, so you don't repeat that aswell down the road.

(31:17):
We spent ten years buildingthat company number one fastest
growing company in Canada tolast place finish Such, a, such
a stupid mistake.
Ten years building it, tenweeks selling it and we blew it
all, not only for us, ourinvestors, but also all of our
employees.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
We had over ten, ten paper millionaires at the time
and they lost it all as well so,looking back at it, I guess the
only thing you could have donebetter, because you wouldn't
have known about the storm youwere selling into nobody did at
the time but you could have nothad the lockout right, and so
you could have at least soldsome of the stock.

(31:56):
But a lockout period is apretty common thing when selling
An asset to a publicly tradedcompany.
If you're getting stock or ifyou're publicly traded yourself,
I mean, usually you have towait a little bit of time for
stock to vest.
I'm guessing I probably can'ttalk about it with doc club you
probably got some cash in stockand that stock couldn't have

(32:17):
just been liquidated day one.
You probably had to hold it Fora period of time with bigger
companies like I mean, fastforward.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
Six years later we took hostopia public and then we
ended up selling it for 17times EBITDA and this time it
was all cash.
Typically, when you're sellingto a publicly traded company
like dot club, it was all cash.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
There's a cow, it's all cash.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
You don't?
They don't like to issuesecurities Publicly traded
companies because they have todo a lot of work with the SEC.
Okay well, we were doing it backin in 1990s.
It was a hundred million dollarcompany merging.
Well, let's say, anotherhundred million dollar company
and you know.
So it became a 200 milliondollar company that won a
license that got to over abillion dollars and it was

(32:59):
publicly traded.
It was a much smaller companyand At that point you know, when
you're smaller you try to comeup with innovative ways to come
together and you just have to bevery careful of those
structures Mm-hmm.
Bigger companies are generallyall cash, like when Frank
Shilling was bought out with allcash, when Birkin spot out from
go daddy all cash.
They would prefer to do thatthan to get into securities got

(33:21):
it All right.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
So Everyone kind of took me by surprise.
That's quite a quite a storyand it must have been quite a
roller coaster ride.
What did it feel like on adaily basis when you're just
seeing the stock going down andpinned?
You know and I remember itquite well, I was still in
college then but seeing anypossibility of a good-paying job
and good opportunities startingto Kind of vanish.

(33:45):
What was it like, going to workevery day and just seeing the
stock going down and down andpeople's you know just that,
seeing some of those papermillionaires turning into
hundred thousandaires, then lessthan that and less than that
over time what was that like?

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, it was like you know, it's just not horrible.
I shouldn't really compare this, but you know I watched the
movie Titanic in the 90s and youremember that scene where
Leonardo DiCaprio and the otheractress she's there at the top
of the ship.

Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
So there's this one day when I had a board meeting,
I was on the board of directorsand we all agreed to go into
bankruptcy protection and I said, okay, well, I'm gonna go and
fire all my staff, includingmyself.
Mm-hmm right and I called all ofthem together and I knew at
that day that happened, that theship was going down.
It was just like coming downfast and it was obviously

(34:38):
horrible.
What we did my brother and Iwas focused on what we love, how
technology can change andimpact the world, and by doing
that, we focused on building ahosting company called hostopia
and we just had a lot of funbuilding that company and it
Recame the the number oneprovider of hosting an email for

(34:59):
telecoms around the world,including AT&T, vodafone,
british telecom, bel canada andso many other companies as well.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
So you pretty much sold out of that, decided to
start a hosting company.
Was was hover part which becametwo cows.
Was hover part of the companythat went and bankrupting got
sold in that, or is that atotally separate thing?

Speaker 2 (35:21):
totally separate company.
So we had internet directs.
We did the two cows business.
We built it up, we sold twocows off.
Thankfully, that was ourtransaction.
That was our first bigtransaction when you get to Exit
.
There's a funny story I talkabout when we closed at two
o'clock in the morning and Idrove home with my partners and

(35:43):
we get, I get home and I climbedthis very tiny home, very tiny
little three-story home okayclimbed to the top floor and
Touched my wife and I hand herthe check and she looks at it.
She goes I don't understand.
And it was a 20, it was a $22million check.
Okay, I do not understand, I donot understand, I do not

(36:07):
understand.
And I was 20, 28 years old, andso that was.
That was the good, sort of agood story.
And then after that, we usedthat funding to support to start
hostopia and, yeah, we lost alot on this on the internet,
direct collapse.
But we saw opportunities.
We launched two cows, welaunched hostopia and then,

(36:29):
within hostopia, we launchedgeeks for less geeks for less is
800 programmers in Ukraine.
Currently, right now, mm-hmmthat code and that company's
grown quite sizable.
My partners and I still ownshares in that company and and
then from there, while I wasworking at hostopia, I sold to a

(36:49):
fortune 500 company.
I worked for three years there,by the way.
It was horrible, absolutelyhorrible putting.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Putting an entrepreneur working at a
publicly traded fortune 500company and making him work
there.
It's like putting a lion in avery small cage.
It was horrible.
I'll probably talk to gothrough all the processes and
the meetings and the way theyhave to make decisions and the
waiting.
I'm sure some of it was painfulfor you.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
Well, I give Lee Shram credit, who was the CEO of
deluxe.
He actually I reported to himdirectly.
I remained tamed CEO ofhostopia for that three-year
period and I reported to him.
There was a five or six peopleand his advisors and I was one
of them, and, and, but it wasvery political and but I did

(37:32):
learn how big companies think.
In any case, while I'm there, Ihired Roger Collins, an old
name he used to own after Nickinvested in after Nick, and I
hired him to do a study of newdomain extensions and there's
one that popped out for me.
It was doc club.
So in 2012, I said I'm gonna gofor this because that's when

(37:53):
they deregulated.
They opened that opportunity upand I went for it and you know,
we sold almost a million domainnames before we sold us to go
daddy.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
So I remember with the history of doc club you.
I remember the launch in NewYork.
I remember reading about it.
Yep, you can tell everybody whoyou had.
They're visiting to kick offthe.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Into club 50 cent.
Right, we had to go.
You know we had to be a.
I talk about this in the book,this concept if you have a
really good product and you, Icall it a rotten tomatoes of 93%
or higher, okay, yeah then youneed to spend money on marketing
.
You know, I think of think of amovie like waterworld again,

(38:36):
that's an old one, but in thecase of waterworld they spent so
much on a marketing but had ahorrible rotten tomato store and
the company they just didn't dowell.
A company, I'm sorry, a moviecalled Hugo by Martin Scorsese
my kids loved it, we loved ithad a 93% rotten tomato but it
didn't do very well because itwasn't marketed properly.

(38:57):
Okay, the third was Example Iuse is Top Gun last year.
I Mean it was a great movie andthey marketed it really well
and it absolutely.
Club the same thing.
It's a great TLD.
We decided to put the moneyinto it.
We raised 12 million dollarsfor the whole enterprise To win

(39:20):
it win the name in auction, butalso to launch it in a big way
and we knew it was a big nameglobally.
The word worked in almost everycountry in the world, from
Russia to China.
They loved the word club andthat's sort of the same with the
book.
We know the books doing verywell.
It's got a very high reviews.
So we're putting energy intothe book to promote it, to make

(39:42):
certain with Forbes and we'reworking alongside Forbes.
They're the publishing.
Forbes books is the publishingcompany, so we're working along
with them to to make certain itgets the right exposure it needs
to.
And we're applying for Dozenawards for the book as well.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
So, going back to doc club, and I know right before I
don't know when the agreementbegan or the discussions and
negotiations began to purchasedoc club from you, from go daddy
, but was clubhouse out yet ordid clubhouse come out, the app
which really got super popularvery fast?
You guys caught some seriouswind from that and you're

(40:19):
talking about a tornado.
You had kind of your owntornado by kind of latching on
with that, that app and a lot ofpeople.
We're getting the matchinghandles to the clubs that they
had within clubhouse and itseemed like that was the launch
of that during the pandemic andand the whole side gig idea was
the perfect storm and you,obviously your company,

(40:39):
capitalized on that opportunityTo help you get to a million
registrations would probablymade that your GTLD so much more
Juicy and interesting to to godaddy right, because it just
didn't seem like they probablyjust want to buy one, because at
the same time they purchasedthe MMX TLD is all 28 of them
and yours was kind of like aside deal within that deal as

(41:02):
well.
So what was your relationshipwith you guys in the clubhouse
app at the time?

Speaker 2 (41:07):
So no relationship at all.
I mean it just happened.
It's called catching the break.
It's chapter in the book and inour case, you know, it's almost
a weird story.
I'm walking around with JeffreySass we could go for walks
every day, you know, in SouthFlorida when it's not too hot
and walking around the blockwith Jeffrey Sass.
By the way, he does dot art.

(41:29):
Now he's in the dot art field.
Marketing for dot club for thosewho don't know about very nice
guys and I'm like I can'tbelieve like we spent because we
had received an offer fromGoDaddy and we're like sort of
like a little bit depressedbecause we're like you know, we
work so hard we never seem tocatch the big break and we
literally get to the office andwithin minutes we get a call

(41:55):
from George for do go.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Remember George Okay.
So he says hey, are you seeingwhat's going on?
This thing called clubhouse?
Everybody's buying dot clubnames Because you know, john Lee
started buying dot club namesand yet so many, so many
entrepreneurs and club ownersbuying dot club names and we
literally saw our dot clubpremium names.

(42:19):
We sold like I think I thinkthe best day was like 1000
premium names sold in one day orsomething crazy.
And these are the high.
You know we had high low models, so the renewal was always low.
But you know, selling even $200or $500 names like we're just
went off, went off the chartsand then GoDaddy had to increase
their offer to make the dealhappen based on that.

(42:41):
So thankfully it happened atthe right time, Perfect timing
for us.
In the chapter called catchingthe wave, I actually have a
better story Because, again, weinterviewed over 200 people for
this book and one of the people.
I interviewed was Joe Foster.
Joe Foster was the founder ofReebok and in 1979, he managed

(43:02):
to get three five star reviewsfor his company.
He had $9 million in sales in1979.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
That's a lot of money .

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Three, five star reviews on from runners world.
And then he got a distributiondeal in the United States.
And then he launched into a newspace called aerobics and
somebody wore the Reebok shoeson television it was Jane Fonda
and when she wore those shoesthe company exploded.

(43:31):
They went from $9 million to$900 million in four years.
It was absolutely incrediblesuccess story.
And so we get into thatcatching the wave.
There are techniques, there arethings you can do to position
yourself to catch it.
Of course, there's an elementof luck.
We all know that right.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
But luck happens to the same people over and over
again.
The harder I work, the luckierI get right.
That's one of the things andyou guys walking that day we're
talking about.
We bust our asses, we're tryingto do everything right.
You caught a break, but youcapitalized on it.
You know you also what peopledon't listening might not
understand.
The high low model that yousuggested means that you can
take domains based on thequality and you put them in

(44:12):
different tiers and that thefirst year's registration is
high.
So a good name could be $500,$200, $5,000.
You know, depending on the tier, you put it in based on many
metrics and then the followingyear would be like $20 a year,
forever renewing that name.
That's the high.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
$10 was about $10.
Yeah $10.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
So there you go.
So they were collecting allthose funds up front.
And then there's a renewal ratethat you're going to look at.
So when people usually use thedomain, like create a club on
dot club, like startup dot club,he Colin's going to renew that
name for perpetuity because he'susing it for his business.
So then there's a percentage ofchance of renewals of that, of

(44:55):
those domains.
So there's a value of thosenames going forward and that's
why they had a reprice.
But talking about Reebok andexploding to that amount, I mean
once the shoes are on the feetand people love the shoe, it's
very hard to break that bondwith people and again it becomes
a renewal business.
Really, you know, and I'mpretty attached to Nike's myself

(45:18):
, I just walk in, grab a pair of10 and a half, so I don't even
try them on at this point.
They're always the same,they're always consistent,
they're always comfortable and Ileave, you know.
So I'm actually wearing a pairright now.
But yeah, I can see, and thatcame from a part in the book
that you discussed isdistribution right?
That's a, that's a big oneoutside of luck.

(45:38):
Is distribution and what aresome of the other things that
somebody can do?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, and in Joe Foster's case it was.
He calls it going into thewhite space and that's enough.
That's a place where othersdon't play your your the time.
Everyone thought those types ofshoes were for running only.
They thought you know aerobics,that's like dancing shoes.
They were talking about howthey described it Dancing shoes,

(46:06):
why we're running business,we're not dancing business.
And but then in the end theymight.
They did a test and they theylaunched it.
You know domains.
You have a lot of domaininvestors in your community,
your listeners, and one thing Iwill say is I've never liked the
high high model at all fordomain investors.

(46:27):
If you're not getting the lowrenewal pricing, I don't know
how you can measure the, thevalue, or because you're really
basically just renting thatdomain name.
The other thing I will sayabout domain investors is they
tend to be a little bit ahead ofthe market because they have to

(46:48):
be right.
So when something's bigtrending, like AI, they got to
be ahead of the market.
They got to be able to think ofoh, this name could work by
adding AI or something like thatand positioning yourself for
that way we talk a lot about inchapter three.
How do you position tocapitalize on a wave and I just

(47:09):
find it fascinating that domaininvestors do a better job of
that than most entrepreneurs andthat's a skill being able to
identify opportunities inadvance.
Now execution for a lot ofdomain investors might be a
different conversation.
Okay, because you know theycould have the ideas but they

(47:31):
don't necessarily have theexecution, and you know that's.
I'm a serial domainer.
You know entrepreneurship is adrug and domaining is a drug.
I get a kick every time Iregister a domain name.
I registered 100.
It's aicom names.
Last year, last November, youknow, and you just, there are,

(47:51):
there are opportunitieseverywhere and I know we have to
check that.
We got to be careful not tooverdo it.
Right when it comes to, youknow, buying domains or starting
businesses, focus can, can canbe as valuable or more valuable
than trying to do too manythings at once as well.
But I do want to say that mostof the domain investors I've

(48:15):
talked to, they seem to be thesuccessful ones.
They seem to understand theimportance of catching the wave
before it happens, identifyingopportunities before they happen
in the world.
And we talk about thetechniques in this book.
I'm actually doing a keynotewith Ish Ish Milley.
You know Ish.
He's got a domain conference, aWeb three domain conference, in

(48:37):
Vegas next week and we're doinga keynote on how to catch the
wave and how domain investorscan catch the wave, and that's
something that we're working onright now.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Presentation for Well , you can give me the link to
that.
I can share that in the podcast.
If people would like to go, I'msure you can go virtually or
sign up late for the conference.
We can do that and give you alink to the Amazon page where
your book is, obviously.
I have a question, though.
You said you don't like the thehigh low.
I'm in the high high model.
I did some consulting for MMXprior to them selling to GoDaddy

(49:10):
and they also use the high lowmodel, and one of the things
that I noticed was and I didsome consulting to dot inc and
they do the high high modelright quite a bit but they also
try to create value where youwould get Microsoft Office suite
along with the registration orthrow in additional sweeteners
with it.
I find it interesting with thehigh low model that a lot of the

(49:35):
registrar's that I was lookingat had some trouble presenting
to their customers that itwasn't that price all the time
or they thought that the namewas registered and owned by
somebody because it was the highlow.
So there's some there's alittle bit of confusion there
and I think with like dot incwhen they were selling the
Microsoft Office suite as asweetener as a package.
You know, I talked to themabout it and they were saying if

(49:58):
people weren't using the promocodes, you know that the
registrar would give them to getit for free for a year or
whatever.
And it was just interesting,you know, to see some of the
perception of folks and how theysaw that.
And when I was at MMX theyswitched from a high low model
to just like five or sixdifferent tiers that just had
standard pricing and some ofthem were higher than others and

(50:20):
a lot of names.
Their registrations went up insome ways and other ways, yep,
they went down.
So I wonder what would be themore efficient?
And then, going forward withyour six in the future, are you
going to you know, I kind ofsaid a lot there but are you
going to stick with, potentially, the high low strategy or do
you think you're going to kindof just do it as a the higher

(50:42):
premium?
Yearly, yearly renewal wouldnot go, you know, very expensive
up to like, say, five grand ayear or 10 grand a year or
something like that.
What do you?
What do?

Speaker 2 (50:53):
you know, I don't think we'll go that way.
Look, I know that dot club wasactually the very first TLD to
do a high, low model.
We convinced Newstar at the timewas Newstar, now it's GoDaddy
registry.
But we convinced them to enablethat and we convinced GoDaddy
to launch it and the success was, was, was it was very strong
Part of my concern because wehave about 20 companies I'm now

(51:17):
invested in 10 of them I'mprincipal shareholder in.
We have an incubator we run outof here in Fort Lauderdale and
I get concerned when I see abusiness that can be held
hostage for any reason.
So, for instance, I'm abusiness owner.
I could pay $50,000 for thisname, let's say podcom.
Use podcom as the example.
We own that.

(51:38):
You know we paid a lot of moneyfor podcom, but every year we
renew it for I don't know 12bucks or whatever it is on
GoDaddy and I know exactly theequation that we're at.
I know exactly what we're goingto pay for it.
I know how much the investmentwas.
It's all sort of solidified.
I knowcom can't raise the pricesof all the comms to $5,000 a

(52:03):
year or anything like that.
They might be able to raise itto 20 bucks over the next five
years, whatever.
Sure, it's not material.
But if I buy a domain name for$5,000 a year, what's to stop
that registry from raising theprice to $10,000 a year or to
$20,000 a year or to $50,000 ayear, forcing me to change over,

(52:24):
rebrand my company to somethingtotally different.
I don't want that stress.
I don't want that risk as astartup.
Startups already have enoughstress.
I would never recommendgenerally that they do that.
I do believe in financing,though.
I think if you can come up witha good financing model, we had
one called Namesclub.
Unfortunately, godaddy registrynever continued it, but we sold

(52:46):
a lot of names that werefinanced over five years and we
probably made a lot more moneyfinancing the names than we
didn't, because if you have agood portfolio, people will buy
those names and you can financethem for 36 months or even two
years or even a year.
You can actually increase thetotal sales value.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Yeah, I think with any of the GTLDs.
As we know, the GTLD owners canraise pricing whenever they
want, but it's with backlash ofwhat you said.
You have great partnershipswith your distribution channel
and if you change the price ofCoffeeDotClub from $100 a year
to $5,000 on somebody, thatregistrar that you're

(53:28):
distributing it through has togive that registrant the good
news that their registration isnow going to be $4,900 a year.
Now they can renew it up to 10years, but at year 11, they're
going to get burned and it'sgoing to be five grand and that
registrar is going to come backto you and say you've made us
look bad, we're not going to dobusiness with you anymore.
They're going to probably cutyou out.

(53:48):
So there is a little bit ofbuyer beware, I think.
But at the same time, I thinkthe distribution, the people
doing the distribution, kind ofhave power over the GTLDs by
saying we're just not going tosell them anymore if you're
going to mess around with ourclients, which makes sense as
well.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Whether you can't do that.
You can't take CoffeeDotCluband raise it to $5,000.
You could technically do it,but then you'd have to raise
every single name to $5,000.
And that would cut.
You'd lose all of yourcustomers.
So, there's an incentive to not.

(54:24):
If you got a hundred thousandor 500,000 domains in your
extension, you don't want tolose that $10 times 500,000
every year.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
No way.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Right.
So yeah, you can handle adollar a year, forever, whatever
, but you can't.
You can't raise it, so you'reactually protected from getting
huge increases based on thevolume of the domain domain
extension.
Technically could you do it?
Yeah, but you'd lose all ofyour revenue and your business
and all your distributors andyou'd kill your business.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
So that won't be that won't happen.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
But if you have a tier that's high, high, and you
have 10 tiers, you can raise oneof those tiers, your top tier,
to whatever you want, and you'reonly affecting a small portion
of your customers.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
So that's why I'm nervous about the high high.
That's all for startups and forentrepreneurs.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
I think definitely that's a great and a valid point
.
So I was at my parents' house afew weeks ago in Boston and I
was going through some books andI came across a book I don't
know if you've read it JohnnyTremaine, and it's from my
English class.
It's just a Revolutionary Warbook and it was one of those

(55:34):
that we had to read in Englishclass and talk about the
Revolutionary War and we had tolearn to highlight and when I
was going through the pages Iwas looking at it and almost
everything in the book washighlighted.
I think at that point I didn'treally know what was important
and what wasn't.
It was actually fun to see theamount that I highlighted in
this book and I'm not justsaying that because I'm
interviewing you and you give methe opportunity, but there were

(55:56):
parts where I was I highlightedmultiple pages because I read
it on Kindle that you can goback and then you can go into
your Kindle app and see whatyou've highlighted.
It's because it was a paragraphor certain things that kind of
resonated with me and a few ofthose things was you talk about
or making the analogy of inbeing a startup you call them

(56:19):
stage gates where if you'redriving in a video game and it's
a driving and you go past thenext checkpoint, you get more
time to go, and then each ofthose little checkpoints gets
you to your major checkpoint,like your real milestones right,
and that to really kind ofcreate it in that way.

(56:40):
So it's the way I wrote it downor I summarized it.
Stage gates for startups arelike checkpoints in a racing
game.
Hit them before time runs outto extend your run or pivot if
you fail.
The critical milestones that gobeyond regular goal setting,
which supports the overall planto reach these pivotal points X
number of goals need to bereached to pass a stage gate

(57:00):
right.
That's like really the synopsisof it.
I think that was a really greatway of looking at it.
As an entrepreneur myself, I'mdoing those things and trying to
get to that, but it's not as Iclearly mapped out in my mind.
But you kind of brought thattogether and then when you were

(57:21):
reading about that or I wasreading about that, you were
writing about that I wasthinking to myself how can I
make some more reasonablemilestones for the next six
months, 12 months a year for thebusiness, two years, five years
, and really work on the stagegates and making decisions and
changes in my business.
So that really started to getme thinking.
Then you start asking yourselfhow do I make reasonable stage

(57:44):
gates, how do I make ones thataren't too easy to achieve?
How do you not?
What happens when you don't hitone?
I know you go over that and youhave to ask yourself okay,
that's okay, but do we have topivot here?
You have to reflect and youhave to make a decision.
Another part I really liked ischapter 18.

(58:04):
It's called scale in zeros.
I think that's really goodwhere you go from $10, $100,
$1000, $10,000.
You could do it as product sold10, 100,000, 10,000, whatever
it is, but it really just reallybrings in.
Resonates that to mind assomeone who wants to increase

(58:24):
volume for their business andreally wants to get things going
and I think people starting atzero with nothing and really
just trying to get there thatfirst 10 is important.
Your first 10 sales are huge,but okay, now let's do 100.
Okay, let's go to 200.
Let's try to go to here.
I was very proud of myself whenwe did 50 sales in one month.

(58:47):
That was a big milestone for meand I was really proud of that
as a sale.
We didn't sell any names in apackage.
It was over 50 individual salesin a month and I was really
proud of that.
So scaling in zeros.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
So scaling to 500, now that's your next thing and
it's really, it's a mental game.
We want to think about thestory, the people, the money and
the systems.
You need to scale to 500,because if we're gonna do it
mentally, we've got to almostvisualize it, like actually lay
it out on paper.

(59:23):
These are the people I wouldneed if I wanted to scale to 500
.
Okay, so now we know itsdirection.
We want to go.
This is the amount of moneythat I need to raise to get to
500 sales per month.
These are the systems I need toput in place to get to 500.
We want to be running ourcompany as if it's 10 times

(59:43):
larger in order to get there.
Now, of course, we've gotbudgets and you can't just hire
people right away, but at leastwe can visualize.
We can begin to visualize whowe should put in place in order
to achieve those 500.
And the concept is really justall about scaling in zeros.
It's that mental changing yourmindset.
Actually, it was Jack Welch whosaid hire people with runway,

(01:00:09):
and I don't mean this is animportant point too.
Like if you're doing a milliondollars of sales and you want to
hire a new CEO for your company.
You want to hire somebody who'salready done 10 million in
sales.
You don't want to hire somebodywho's taken a million to two
million because they haven'tgone through that whole process.
And then the other thing, too,is you don't want to go from

(01:00:31):
hire somebody who's going from abillion dollar a company and
work for you because they don'thave the ability to come down to
that DIY level that you need.
You need to be hiring, whetherCEO or other executives, for you
need to be hiring people who'vehad the experience launching or
scaling the company 10X overyour current size.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
That's really good to add to that and that's some
even good advice, some moreadvice.
And then one of the otherthings is again you just already
mentioned it is people.
You focus a lot on people inthe book and dedicate three or
four chapters on it.
I was reading some of that andwe both know that, being a small

(01:01:16):
startup with a limited budget,that you can't offer the
salaries and the bonuses and thehealth insurance and the stock
and all the different benefitsthat some of these larger
companies can provide.
But what you can provide isculture.
What you can provide isexcitement.
What you can provide is beingpart of something that's growing

(01:01:39):
into something.
And then you talk about when youknow you've really made it,
when people start talking aboutthe good old days and the way it
used to be until it got muchbigger, and you know that your
business has grown onto intosomething else.
And it's funny, being inbusiness for me for four years
publicly facing we've had threeversions of our website, but not

(01:02:03):
a lot of technology facing theindustry but there's a lot going
on behind the scenes andthere's a lot of processes we've
created and there's a lot ofthings happening and looking
back to starting day one, when Istarted the business, my wife
gave me this name plate make ithappen.
But I keep right here in frontof me, right on my desk every

(01:02:25):
day.
We have come of every long wayand I look back at I don't know
if they're the good old days,but I look back at those days
and I look at how far we've comeand the milestones that we've
reached and hopefully we cancontinue to do.
And then the other one which Ineed to really reflect more

(01:02:47):
about myself is your nearlyunbearable brand promise, and
you also talk about your Xfactor.
But your nearly unbearablebrand promise is what Domino's
Pizza does, and they go out andthey say we can deliver a pizza
in 30 minutes or less or it'sfree, and that's something that

(01:03:09):
their competitors can't reallydo and that any company should
be able to go out there andpromise something that separates
them from everything else andthat really makes them unique,
and it's not in a crazy,undeliverable way.
It's in a way that really makesthem stand out and be different
, and I think that that's animportant part of the book as

(01:03:33):
well.
What do you have to say?
What have you done with DotClub to achieve that?
What was that with Dot Club?

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Well, let me say this that the X factor which, by the
way, jim Collins talked aboutit in his book and Vern Harnish
in scaling up as well.
We had the opportunity tointerview Vern Harnish twice for
this book and reallyappreciated his endorsement on
the book as well.
But if you wanna scale yourbusiness, nothing can help you

(01:04:02):
scale your business more thanfinding your X factor.
You know the company I talkedabout, hostopia, back in 2006,.
We were told that we were goingto lose the Earthlink contract.
My CTO and I, dirk Baguette,jumped on an airplane, flew down
to Atlanta, went to his officeand the gentleman who was in

(01:04:26):
charge of this decision thecontract was a mid-level
executive.
He said well, we wanna take youout to lunch, so we go
downstairs.
We had taxied over godownstairs and he's got a
two-seater wego and Dirk sits inthe front.
I sit in the trunk of thistwo-seater wego and we drive to
the restaurant.

(01:04:47):
When we started and I'm justusing that to sort of
demonstrate the sort of likewhat we would do to take out a
deal done right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
We'll do whatever it takes.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Right, and.
But we go there and we say tohim well, you know, we know,
your number one issue is that ifsomething goes wrong with the
migration, you're gonna getfired Because, yeah, so here's
what we're gonna do.
We're gonna guarantee 100%migration.
We'll pay you.
At the time, it was $350 percustomer that we lose on our

(01:05:18):
migration and he had 80,000customers.
Right, we called it a 100%migration.
We became the best in the worldat doing migrations.
We hired over 200 people in theUkraine who worked on the
migrations and I mean, we becamethe best.
We had the best heuristics andwe had the best people and we

(01:05:39):
checked every website manuallyand we really did do these
cutovers.
Now, were we 100%?
No, we're probably 99.9 or 99.8.
Do we have to pay a fewthousand dollars out in
penalties?
Sure, we did, but we had tore-engineer our entire
organization.
Now, after we did this, by theway, we won the Earthlink

(01:06:00):
contract because of that.
After we did this, we won AT&T.
We won Vodafone.
We were in British Telecom.
We won them all.
We cleared the slate and wewere up against Vario and
Hostway, two very big companies.
We destroyed them, decimatedthem.
We won Domino's Pizza,destroyed the industry, Won
National car rental.
You just show up, get in yourcar and go.

(01:06:21):
They're number one.
If you can find your X factorin scale it can be absolutely
huge.
It's what Joe Foster said gointo the white space and when
you enter that white space youdo something different.
They did aerobics.
You might find a domain namethat you go into the white space
that no one else is focused onbut you think this is going to
be big.
That can be your X factor.

(01:06:43):
You know every business isdifferent.
It took us seven years to findour X factor at Hostopia, so you
don't have to have it rightaway.
But I did put in the book inthe start section on the four
sticky note business plan which,by the way, takes 30 minutes to
complete.
You can complete a businessplan for a domain name.
You can do it in 30 minutes.

(01:07:04):
What's the plan?
Start to visualize it.
I did put X factor on that listunder the first sticky note
called story.
And then you take it from thisX factor.
Your best in the world at it.
You're doing somethingdifferent that no one else is
doing, that solving a bottleneckin the industry or doing

(01:07:24):
something just totally uniqueand different.
And then you take that and youcreate a nearly unbearable brand
promise from that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
So they're slightly different.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
But you know, your nearly unbearable brand promise
is sort of like the slogan.
It's the guarantee that comesafter you figure out your X
factor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
That's something you definitely got a lot.
I'm going to probably end upwriting it on my wall, my X
factor, and spending some moretime going over these things,
because I think in the end,every entrepreneur wants same
thing.
You know they want theirproject to be successful.
If you, if I, made a businessplan four years ago.
Where I am today, I'm happywith what we've done, but it's

(01:08:07):
certainly not the way I wouldhave drawn it up.
And along the way you trydifferent things and you might
have a little business ADD andtry something out there that
doesn't necessarily work, but inthe end you want it to be
successful.
And the question is, what issuccess to?
Each entrepreneur is totallydifferent.
Could be the, the billiondollar business.

(01:08:27):
Or in your case, like with yourwife, she's built a Montessori
school with 100 and somethingstudents and she's happy with
the size and what's happeningthere.
That's her success.
And I think you know doing thisand taking the time to do these
exercises rather than justwaking up every day, getting to
work and just going through thesame routine and just kind of

(01:08:50):
treading.
You know treading water andtrying to get to that goal but
not really like.
You know creating those stepsand checking them off.
Like, okay, like you saidbefore, jeff, you did, you did
100.
Now it's time for 500 or 50.
Get to 500.
How are you going to do it?
Make your steps?
You know what?
How are you going to get to 500, to 1000 or 5000?

(01:09:10):
Well, you better figure out anX factor and then you better
start getting people to believein your X factor.
And how do you do that?
Well, you have chapters thattalk about your pitch, making
the right presentation.
You know you have the three C'sin there that are all important
.
I forgot them off the top of myhead.
What are the three C's I havein my notes?

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
You're catching me, A lot of the chapters were
interviews of people Calmcomfortable, incredible Right,
that was going to say that wasdone with Lil Roberts and she
had won multiple pitchcompetitions.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
She is also I do.
I teach a cohort at Allen LeVanNSU and she is one of the
speakers in that cohort.
The cohort usually starts withme opening it up and we do a
four sticky note business plan.
By the way, we do it in 30minutes and this is this.
This program is absolutely free.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
How do you do that?

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):
South Florida.
You can join a an incubator foryour business.
They have an ideation session,they have an incubator, they
have an accelerate, they havepost accelerate.
They're all free.
There's a lot of governmentfunding that goes into helping
startups.
Every community has them.
Just Google it, check with yourlocal university to learn what

(01:10:28):
kind of incubators they have.
We had the inter.
We had the opportunity a fewweeks ago to interview Bridget.
She is the CEO of SCORE and shethey have 10,000 volunteers for
mentors in the US and she makesthe claim that you can increase

(01:10:49):
your chances of success with astartup by three times.
Three times.
By using a mentor Connectingwith an incubator, you can
increase your chances of success.
It takes a village to raise astartup.
You're not alone.
We don't need to launch thesestartups in the garage, like
Steve Jobs and you know.

(01:11:10):
Today it's the incubator, it'sthe shared office space and a
lot of them are governmentbacked and there's a lot of
resources there to help you.
Yeah, it is.
Entrepreneurship is a jack ofall trades, isn't it?
Because you talked about?
You have to be good at raisingmoney.
You have to be good at hiringpeople.
You have to be good atunderstanding your shortcomings,

(01:11:30):
how you can improve and how youcan hire people to compliment
you.
You have to be good ateventually selling the company.
You have to be good atmotivating people.
You've got to do almosteverything.
I often say you have to be anamateur lawyer, an amateur
marketing person, an amateur.

(01:11:52):
Thank goodness we do have AI.
By the way, I've done threecontracts using AI.
Get legal advice.
Don't listen to me please, butI've used it for three contracts
already.
It's absolutely incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
I think the basics are fine.
I probably wouldn't do the saleof my company contract.
No, I wouldn't.
The basics, I don't see anissue with that.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
Yeah, if you have to come to a meeting of minds with
an individual for compensationor something like that.
You're doing an offer letterwhich essentially could be a
contract as well.
Those kind of things you candefinitely use chat, gpt or
another AI for, but I tell youit's a game changer.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Absolutely All right.
Well, I think we've gone pastour time a little bit, but it's
been great because of it.
I think there's a lot ofinformation that we've covered
today.
Like I said before, and I'llsay it again, this is a great
book.
You can get it on Amazon, onKindle.
You have the audio book yousaid earlier that just came out,

(01:12:52):
so if you just want to listento it, I think you should read
it.
I'm more of a visual person,especially with a lot of the
pictures they have in there.
What I said before we startedrecording is what I like about
the book is that Colin makeshimself vulnerable.
He talks about his success, buthe also talks about the
mistakes he's made.
He talks to all these peoplehe's interviewed and they admit

(01:13:13):
and talk about some of themistakes they've made, how they
overcame them, and there's justa lot of different things that
make you question what you'redoing and ask yourself how you
can do better and how you can bemore successful for your
business.
And you can pick it up and putit down and really just focus on
certain sections that areapplicable to you right now.

(01:13:34):
So I'd give that a read andI'll definitely put some
information about the incubatorstartupclub where you're going
to be talking tomorrow.
You're a busy man, and is thereanything else, colin, you'd
like me to add in here?

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, I just want to say this process of putting this
book together was a 10-yearprocess Six people in the last
two years interviewing over 200people to get 50 interviews.
We wrote the book for the ADHDentrepreneur.
It has 58 chapters, it has over200 callouts, it's got 30

(01:14:10):
illustrations.
I mean we really tried to makethis simple and digestible.
Some people will call it like atextbook.
Yeah, it's comprehensive.
I admit that it is fairly large.
I'll admit that.
Okay, but the fact is there isso much good information in

(01:14:34):
there and we've made itdigestible like one chunk at a
time and, like you said, youdon't have to read the whole
book in one day.
You can digest it where you arewith your business in life.
But I will say, when you dostart to, when you do read the
entire thing, it connectseverything in your brain
together so that you can start,scale, exit, take some money off

(01:14:56):
the table, repeat.
That is a process and when youlearn all of that, you'll begin
to think about the exit.
The day you start, the day youregister that domain name,
you're already thinking aboutthe exit.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Absolutely Well.
Thanks again, colin, and Imight have to make the trip
across the state to come visityou and go out to dinner some
night, so I'd love that, yep.
I appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:19):
All right, have a good one, thank you.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}CLUB's Founder, Colin Campbell, on Entrepreneurship Triumphs and Trials | Saw.com