Legends are shaped by hard knocks, family experiences, and often miltary service. The story of Bob Parsons is nothing short of extraordinary.
Hear what motivated Bob Parsons to start GoDaddy.
Listen to his experiences in Vietnam and each event moved his life.
Understand how self started businesses and a whole lot of hard work can still happen.
Learn how his leadership helped galvanize a culture of excellence at GoDaddy.
Buy Bob's book and read it today. Fire in the Hole is destined to be a bestseller. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYHGBFH3/?bestFormat=true&k=fire%20in%20the%20hole%20book&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k1_1_16&crid=1VEZ2ODN66ILG&sprefix=Fire%20in%20the%20Hole
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/legends-extraordinary-lives--5351541/support.
Hear what motivated Bob Parsons to start GoDaddy.
Listen to his experiences in Vietnam and each event moved his life.
Understand how self started businesses and a whole lot of hard work can still happen.
Learn how his leadership helped galvanize a culture of excellence at GoDaddy.
Buy Bob's book and read it today. Fire in the Hole is destined to be a bestseller. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYHGBFH3/?bestFormat=true&k=fire%20in%20the%20hole%20book&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k1_1_16&crid=1VEZ2ODN66ILG&sprefix=Fire%20in%20the%20Hole
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/legends-extraordinary-lives--5351541/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
I'm Bridget Brown, one of the founders of the Right One.
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(00:23):
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(00:46):
couples navigating new relationships. For investor relations please contact Scott
Northhouse at Scott at the Right dash one dot com today.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Hey, welcome back to success made to last Legend show.
I'm Rick Tokeinney. It's great to get to talk to
all of you again. This particular program is presented by
The Right One along with play Audio, and we thank
them for their sponsorship on today's show. Is perhaps one
(01:30):
of the most legendary entrepreneurs we've ever interviewed, and we've
interviewed a bunch. Bob Parsons is the founder of Go Daddy.
Most important to us, He's a veteran of the Vietnam War.
He's also a golfer, motorcyclist. He's written this really great
book called Fire in the Hole, The Untold Story of
(01:52):
my traumatic life and explosive success. Bob Parsons, it's great
to have you on Legends.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I'll tell you what it is, totally my honor, Rick,
So thank you. And the fact that you're excited about
interviewing a knucklehead like me, I don't know, but anyhow,
I'm going to go along with it and I'll enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
There you go, all right. We want to know a
little bit more about your backstory, so I want you
to tell us about your upbringing and where are you
from originally.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, I'm from I grew up in East Baltimore, and
that's that's where I was raised. I was. I was
born in a place called pig Town, where they used
to you know, board the streets up and run the
pigs to market. But that was that was before I
showed up on a scene. And then after a year
(02:41):
or so, my parents moved to East Baltimore, and which
was just a little worse than where I was a
little worse in big town, if you can imagine such
a thing. And I grew up there. My mother, for
the most part, was insane most of the time. She
had terrible childhood. Their parents were gamblers. They were broke
(03:05):
all the time, less than broke in deep debt. And
then dad's business failed, and you know, he won't around,
but he always come home at night, which was amazing
because he'd always come home at night, you know, three
sheets to the wind. And when he comes through the door,
Mom would be waiting behind the door with a with
a broomstick or a pot or something. She would knock
(03:28):
him in the next week. Uh, the old man never reciprocated.
He just he just took his beating and up the
stairs he went and crawled into bed. And uh, that's
that's the way. That's the way that went. So there
you go.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Were you Did you have any siblings back then?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I had a little brother and a little sister. My
brother three years younger than me and my sister eight
years younger than me.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What did it mean to be the oldest in the
family back then, Well.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It means that for the most part, I was a
surrogate father. For you know, if you could imagine such
a thing. And I mean, you know, my mother would
do things like she'd she'd call me up at night,
you know, and she'd be, you know, not in the
right mind because she's so stressed out, so depressed, and
she'd go like, I'd be standing there with nothing on
(04:24):
but my little jockey shorts, and she'd say, because I slept,
our bedroom was in the basement, me and my brother,
and she'd say, where's your father. I'd say, Mom, I
don't know, and then she'd loud her where's your father?
And then she'd scream, where's your father? And you know,
of course I would always reply, I don't, I don't know,
(04:45):
and then she'd take her head and start pounding it
into the wall, and then she'd pour her hair out
and clumps, and and then you know, there's there. Then
then you know, I'd call my her sister, aunt Bert,
and you know, would tell her, and sometimes she come over,
and sometimes she wouldn't, you know, And both times I
(05:11):
would just back down to back down the basement and
I'd lay in bed, and that was never fraid, but
I was ashamed, you know, I just couldn't imagine anybody
else's mother being like that, and I'd lay there and
I'd wonder why Mom is the way she was, And
you know, I didn't understand that till I was much older.
But that's kind of the way it was.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Thanks for sharing that. It's all a part of how
people are shaped. And eventually you landed into Marines. And
I want to talk about that today because I like
we talked about the pre show. I have a particular
heart and head that still wrap around Simperfi. But let's
get into Go Daddy. What motivated you to start Go
(05:55):
Daddy in especially from your previous experience of having founded my.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
First business, Parsons Technology. You know, I started it with
with forty thousand dollars and I didn't have forty right away.
I had fifteen the first year, lost all it at
UH had twenty five the next year, and I got
that from a bonus from my real job, and I
(06:22):
had some money I scratched together along the way. And
you know what I was what I was able to
get out of credit cards and then from the tax loss,
let's not forget that. And I lost all it at
the second year, and I was selling shrink wrap software,
(06:42):
and the shrink wrap software I was selling. We called
it Money Council. It was a home money management program.
This was back during the five and five in you know,
quarter inch floppy disk days. And I did that because
I taught my I was was doing a business trip
out into the West Coast and one of the places
(07:05):
I stopped by was Redwood City. And after I finished
the work I had to do, I had a twelve
hour layover till my flight got back. And if I
took off and I went to I found myself on
the Stanford campus because I loved bookstores, and I went
in there and I bought a book on programming in
(07:26):
the Basic Computer Language, and I read that during the
twelve hour layover and wrote my first programs on the
flight back. And just so happens in my office at
the Commercial Credit I had a dumb terminal, and you know,
there was no monitors back then, and so this thing
(07:48):
would look like a teletype machine, and it just so
happened to run that particular programming language, and so I
got good at it. I would write whenever I needed something,
I'd write the software to do it. And I when
the first Apple came out, I bought one and then
bought a book on programming in the Basic Computer Language.
(08:11):
Taught myself how to do that, and uh got good
at it, and then bought an I B m PC
when it first came out, sold the Apple and then
I got really good at it and I and I
wrote this money management software and that's what parts of
technology was built to do. So that was the first
(08:32):
thing I did. And you know, when when when the
let's say when when I when I when I got
my first program done, it was you know, a little
rough around the edges, but it did what it was
supposed to do. I never found anything that worked. I
would get these little ads and they didn't work, you know,
(08:55):
in magazines. And then one day, when I was broke up,
I had to people from this representing this computer rag
out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, called the Computer Bargain Line.
She said, we have an ad that was going to
run on the front cover of our magazine at the
(09:18):
outside front cover it like you do a cover of Time.
I mean, not really Time, but the Computer Bargain Line.
So anyhow, they said, look, we can give you this
ad for five thousand dollars. It's normally fifteen or twenty.
For whatever they told me and they said, but you
(09:39):
got to have artwork to us. When in three days,
I said, I'll do it now. Did I have the
five thousand? No? But what I had was always paid
my bills, always paid my bills on time. So I
had good credit with everybody, and they knew that, so
they offered me to deal. So anyhow, I had an
(09:59):
AD made. I dropped my software all the way down
to sixteen dollars. I think it was at forty nine. No, No,
it was twelve dollars in and the ad said money counts,
but it only costs twelve dollars. And I said that
the software isn't copy protected. Most programs were during that time.
(10:21):
Most of them required you to use it like a book,
and I said you could. You don't have to do that.
Some said that you can only have one backup. I said,
many backups as you want. And I said, if you
want to make copies and give it to your neighbors,
go ahead and do it. Do anything you want to
send me twelve bucks. And so right after I did that,
you know it was. It was a couple of days
(10:42):
after the ad ran and I got one or two
you know orders in the mail, and then five or
ten and then ten or twenty, and then my mailbox
was stuffed. I mean it was it was so many,
so many orders in there. It looked like one of
those ads that showed, you know, a really successful ad,
(11:06):
and it was. And then the mailman got to the
point where he would just put a box down to
put everything in the box that he couldn't fit in
the mailbox. Well, anyhow, so I got all that done.
I at least, you know, I think I made somewhere
around maybe maybe twenty twenty five thousand dollars when he had.
And I learned something what I was doing wrong is
(11:30):
it wasn't little ads didn't work. It took a big ad.
And the big ad conveys the fact that you know,
you know, your your significant company, and that's what people
want to know. So anyhow, so I got busy working
working this, you know, my software. I got to the
point where I went to all the other magazines and
(11:53):
you know, I took him, UH were spending somewhere around
fifty thousand dollars a month on advertising. I never dreamed
I'd be able to do that. And so anyhow, I
kept improving the software, improving the software that first year,
I quit my real job, left the fifty thousand dollars
(12:14):
bonus on the table so I could get some tax
software done. And I made. I made two hundred and
eighty seven thousand dollars that year. I never dreamed I
make that kind of money. The next year, I got
the taxes, I got the tax software done. I made
two and a half million dollars. Two and a half
(12:35):
million dollars. Do you have any idea what a stack
of cash that is, especially for an East Baltimore knucklehead? Yeah,
I mean, brother, you can you stack it up pretty high?
Next year I made five million and to get my
stuff done. You know, you talk about work. You know
I used to work sixty hour shifts. I come in
(12:57):
you know, early one day, work to work, say the
same time the next day, keep calling to the same
time the next day, and halfway through the next day,
you know, I would call it quits for then, and
I'd go home, take a shower, and go to sleep
for about eight hours, and then go over to the
high school track, run around the track a couple of times,
(13:21):
come back, and then and then go back to the
office and do it again. Now, had I not done
that business w wasn't have succeeded. But you know, the
people I was competing with, you know, they could outspend me.
They had more employees, you know, they you know, they
had a lot of stuff going for them that I didn't.
But the one thing I had is I could outwork them.
(13:43):
And you know I did that and I cared more
about my stuff than they cared about theirs. And you
know what, before they knew their well before they knew
they were stabbed, their shoes were full of bloods. But
I'm going to tell you people would ask me to
say where she learned how to program? And I always
told them Stanford, that's right.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
There's so many core values that you just mentioned there,
Bob that are about teaching yourself, having resilience, busting your
butt to get the job done, outworking the competition, and
so all of those most must have flown right into
go Daddy to build this great culture that you had, well,
you know.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Not exactly. You know what happened was I got to
the point where I saw of writing on the wall,
the shrink wrap software was going to start to go away,
and the Internet was going to be the big thing.
Very few people had any websites or that. This was early, early, early,
This was in the early nineties. It's like a million
(14:46):
years ago. And so, I mean, you know, you just
there was I mean, the Internet was just getting gone.
I mean you know that, you know email, most people
didn't even know what the hell that was and that
sort of thing. So what I did was my wife
and I decided if we could get forty million dollars
for this business, we'd sell it into It offered me
(15:09):
sixty million. I told him I was insulted. I got
sixty four million and sold the business. And my wife
was tired of putting up with my dumb ass I
had and I had PTSD so bad from the war
and from growing up that I wasn't a fun guy
to be around. And you know, she hung on as
(15:32):
long as she could, and you know what, you know,
we split everything down the middle. She actually got a
little more than I did, and for putting up with
me all those years, she deserved everything. And that pretty
much was how that wrapped up. And then I moved
to Arizona. I had a one year non compete, so
(15:53):
I you know, decided I'd go there and play golf,
and you know, I would you know, my buddies told me,
he said, you know, if you play golf for a
year and that's you know, you do that every day,
you're going to get really good. Well I didn't get
I didn't get any better. And you know, I played
with the old men because you know, they're the only
guys that are retired that you don't have to work,
(16:15):
you know, right, and you know there's I learned something
about him. It's something about a man that when when
when when he gets older, the way he dresses, you
know that you can you can tell he's a super senior.
You know, when you see him and he looks like
a flag from another country, he's that's the guy. Right. Anyhow,
(16:41):
one day, one day I was playing golf with I
think Guatemala and maybe Leekenstein. And you know, the one thing,
if you want to guy, buy these guys a gift,
you'd think, well, buy him a mirror, you know, because
because they can't know what they look like. Well here
here's here's what I learned. Here's what I learned. They
(17:02):
didn't give a fuck out a.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Look exactly why should there you go?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So so anyhow, I decided that I would I would
get back in the business world because I miss having
being in the action. So I started a business and
I called it Joe Max Technologies. And this was when
my agreements went into it ran out. And you know
(17:28):
when when when I started that business, uh, we didn't
even know what the hell we were going to do.
What I thought is is we would have these guys, uh,
you know the people I hired guys, and guys are
really sharp people. And we try a bunch of stuff
on the internet. And what we do. You know, if
something didn't work, we stopped doing it. If something did work,
(17:48):
maybe that's what we'd look at doing. And we tried
all sorts of stuff. We tried sewing uh uh, other
people's software that didn't work. We we would try building
intranet extra nets that didn't work. We tried education that
didn't work. The only thing that got any traction was
building websites. But the problem was building websites. You know,
(18:12):
it didn't scale because you know, it was limited to
what we could physically do. And you know, so with software,
what you what you got to do is you you
know you've got you you got to do things where
you make money, where you sleep when you sleep. So
we had a lot of people ask us. They said,
(18:33):
can can you build me a website or give me
software where I build my own website. And so we
got the you know, we got the idea from hearing
that that we do that, and it was called Website Complete.
It was very primitive, but you could not know, knowing nothing,
get a website up, and so we started selling that.
(18:54):
It didn't sell many, but one thing that we learned
as we moved along there is that all websites need
a domain name. And all domain name is an address
with an Internet gibberish, but it has a name you
can remember, which is the name of the domain name.
(19:16):
And our company then was called Joe Max Technologies. I
named it after a dirt road because you know, what
we're doing didn't matter. I mean, the name didn't matter
because you know, we didn't even know what we were doing.
So anyhow, so we started doing this and you know,
as things moved on in ninety seven kind of kind
(19:38):
of kind of got around and you know, we started
really getting serious about this, and then we got the
idea that we needed a better name. And then so
me and my right hand the lady who has been
with me through through three different businesses for at fornaw.
Our name is Barbara Recterman, my right hand. I don't
(20:01):
know how it would have succeeded without her. Uh we
uh well, what what what we did was one night
we came up with the name go Daddy, and and
you know, it started with you know, I checked how
about you know, because the same mark every night. You know,
(20:21):
we're all sorts of names. And then after you do
that for a number of hours, you get silly, then
you get stupid. Uh but so so we we eventually,
you know, I said, how about Big Daddy taken? How
about Fat Daddy taken? And remember the old America online
you may not you may be too young for this
(20:43):
where you had that bridge go come go and then
whatever you wanted to do. I said, let's check go Daddy,
and we did, and GoDaddy dot com was available. I
bought it for through my own stuff for six bucks.
And that's what it cost me. I mean, it's when
I paid, you know. And the next day I told
(21:04):
and I bought it as a joke. Rick. The next
day I told my people, I said, we're going to
call the company GoDaddy dot com. And they goes, that's
a terrible name, but you know what, we never come
up with anything better, and it's stuck. And I noticed something.
Whenever I told a customer the company was GoDaddy dot com,
(21:25):
they would smile and they would always remember it. And
I said, how you gonna find a better name than that?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That's right, And if they were the answer the Beach Boys,
they would have remembered, go Daddy go, Daddy, go, Daddy go.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, you know what, that's true. And you know a
lot of people thought we were a porn company, and
so we we had to we had to just spell
that notion and that's hilarious. So it's crazy and so anyhow,
so that's what we did. Uh, our software got really good.
(22:01):
We registered to be a domain name registrar. Cost us
a million bucks, and we were on the brink of failing,
and but we got this up. And in ninety seven
I decided, as a matter of fact, in the year
two thousand, put it this way. You know, I am
(22:25):
a dumbbell from East Baltimore, you know, but I do
things my own way, you know, so I don't look
at a bit and all this other shit you hear
from he's got the fucking money, guys, you know what
I do is I thought back then, is I had
I had thirty six million dollars in the bank. I said,
(22:47):
I won't worry about this business. So I get down
to thirty million, thirty million, and then I'd say, okay,
twenty five million, twenty five million, and then twenty million,
twenty million, then eighteen million, sixteen million, fourteen million, twelve tennine,
(23:08):
hey seven six, and I said, wait a minute, I
said stop. And you know, I kept doing what we
were doing, but a lot slower. And I decided in
my mind to shut the company down. And so I'm
one of these guys that I keep my own counsel.
(23:28):
I learned that from reading about General Grant during the
Civil War. He kept his own counsel. He's got of
benefits to that. You know, first of all, you don't
have people questioning you and pushing you one way or
the other, and you tell them, you know what she
decided when you decided to do it. So I went
ahead and moved and went to Hawaii. I took a
(23:51):
one week vacation by myself, and I was going to
decide how to shut the business down, how to pay
my employees, how to pay the bills. I had how
to sell the assets and then what to do afterwards.
And you know, as as time moved on there, I
just had this feeling, Man, I don't want to shut
(24:13):
this company down, even though maybe if I do it,
I'll still have some money left. And the epiphany happened
one day when this guy was parking my car. It
was this guy, and this guy probably had nothing. He
was parking cars. You know, that's not where you find
the Forbes four hundred, right, you know, they're they're typically
not doing they're doing other stuff. So I went ahead
(24:37):
and I got the h went ahead, and this guy
comes up and he's flipping my key in the ear.
Happy's a lark. Hey, you know, mister Varsons. I said,
I'm doing five brother. He said, man, it's a great
day and that I said, you know what it is.
And you know, so you know, I got my car
and I thought, man, this guy has nothing and he
(25:02):
is so happy. Look at him, and I have right now,
I have six million dollars and I'm miserable. What the
hell's wrong with this picture? And I thought, you know,
money's not the key to this. You know, it's what
you have and how you look at it. And so
I decided right then and there that I would go back.
(25:25):
I would keep doing what I was doing, and I
strapped my I looked at my business like a ship,
and I strapped myself to the mast. And if the
ship sunk, I'd go down with it. And if it did,
I'd go broke. And you know, I could always part cars,
and you know, i'd be happy like that guy or
what I decided to do. You know, I'm not a
(25:47):
big handler, but I like to shoot dice, you know,
so I'd go to Vegas and be stick man at
a table. I'm pretty good with math, and I click
along like that, and you know, you know paid this
to me him three hundred dollars for his superior knowledge
of the game or in the number now number, and
you know that sort of thing. I know it all Rick,
(26:09):
And so I went back and ready for and didn't
do a thing different. And after a month or two
something happened. And what it was it was a dotcom crash.
And when the dot com crash happened, I mean it it,
(26:29):
you know leveled. I mean it leveled the playing field
where I had so many competitors and there was so
much noise, and they were paying such stupid prices because
it wasn't their money. Man, they were they were using
banks money, they were using investors' money, private equity money.
They didn't give a shit, you know. And so I
(26:51):
went ahead and and just just kept operating. And all
of a sudden, our ads started to stand out where
before I had, you know, now everybody vanished, you know,
I mean I would get send somebody a check and
I would get to check back. They don't exist anymore.
Suck up a bitch, you know. First, sorry to hear that,
(27:14):
but it's not entirely bad news. So but any anyhow, Uh,
it's just it's just it was something so I would
I would, I would where all of a sudden, where
I couldn't get people to even talk to me about advertising,
I had guys standing in line to give me advertising.
(27:36):
And you know what, Rick, I actually found out I
had more friends than I thought I had. And so
all of a sudden, our ads, you know, you know,
stood out. Uh. We we made it. We made a
big difference. And where uh and and in October of
(28:00):
two thousand and one. October two thousand and one, our
company turned the corner and we became cash flow positive
for the first time, and we never missed the months.
During the rest of the time, I owned a company. Man.
And so go to our story. Baby, The rest.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Is just all legendary history. Hey, I'm gonna let you
catch your breath here a second. We're gonna pause for
a quick message from the Right One, and we will
be right back with our legends. Guest Bob Parsons, are.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
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(29:24):
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(29:44):
Right dash one dot com.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And we are back with Bob Parsons and we just
talked about the beginning of Go Daddy and the beginning
of Parsons technology and through that are some great themes
and threads for those of you that are trying to
learn from Bob today, teaching yourself, having resilience, sticking with it.
(30:11):
Don't necessarily watch all that money go down to from
thirty six million to six million, but you were watching it,
you were with it, you were in it, and inside
that were I think your core values of who you
are as a man and how you want to be treated,
how you want others to be treated. And as a
(30:32):
customer of Go Daddy, Bob, I must say that you
were fulfilling specific needs that I needed as a business entrepreneur.
And you guys were so connected to us guys in
the trenches out here, and your customer service was spectacular.
So I'd love for you to comment on how did
(30:55):
you galvanize that culture to be the way that they
were to be? Oh customer centric?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Well, first of all, what I knew was the average
guy wanted to or average you know man or woman
would you know, you know, they would, they would work
their ass off and there small but nobody works harder
than a small business person. They got their butt on
(31:24):
the line, right, and they're working to meet payroll and
maybe uh you know, take their wife out the dinner
or their husband out the dinner, paid their bills and
that sort of thing. I mean, they are working, and
so the last thing they're going to do is study
the ins and outs of the Internet. But what they
want is, you know, they wanted to have a website
(31:45):
on the Internet, and they wanted up and they wanted
it cheap, and they wanted it easy. And so knowing that,
that's how I crafted the company, you know, you know,
to to do that for our our average customer. And
you know, and so the one thing I knew was
(32:06):
that you know, my customer and and most customers for
that matter, Uh, when it when it came to using
the internet, you know, they liked using it for doing
a little research, for having fun, for connecting with friends,
for that sort of thing. But when it came time
(32:27):
to solving problems, particularly with software, they just bought. Right.
They want to talk to another person, especially somebody that
understands them, speaks their language, and understands the software inside
and out. And so that's that's what I did, you know.
(32:47):
And so our software, I mean, our service was always good.
But the way our software got spectacular, you know, it
was because I had a girlfriend named Nancy Joe who
was who was a dental hygienis right. And I went
there one time and she said, Bob, we just got
(33:09):
this nitrous outside and would you like to try it?
I said, well, what's to do? She says, it'll make
you feel really good. Well, so you know what, if
you've been to dinnis she said, nitrous outside, you know
you're you're out on cloud nine before you know it.
And she says, and Bob, I'll tell you what. I'll
even goose it a little for you. I said, right on, Nancy,
(33:30):
So so she did, and I felt great. Now, when
you do that, you come right down off of it,
but you know, you go back feeling good. So I
went back to the office and I walked back through
the call center like I always do, and you know,
it just caused me to look at things through a
different lens. And I said to the guys in the
(33:52):
call center that managed it. I said, man, this place
looks grim. I said, you know, why is it? Why
does it look so sad in here? They said, what
looks like it always does? And I said, I'll tell
you what. Let's take a thousand bucks a thousand bucks,
and let's let's run some contests and let's add a
(34:13):
little excitement in here. And for Christ's site, turned some
lights on. Yep, and they said, all right, Donald, all right.
So the results were amazing. First of all, our sales
went up eight thousand dollars in the call center, right
and and you know, and that's that's because you know,
(34:35):
we had a contest. These people loved being in Being
in the contest was fun and maybe wait, winning some
cash and winning some prizes. And then I had the
web board also, which was like a bulletin board way
back when, and so so you know what, people would
post questions when the bulletin board, and I'd have some
(34:56):
people post answers the whole time I owned the company.
The ball the web board never cleared, cleared twice that
day and then so you know, I took the message
and ran with it. Then I started spending as much
as I could on one uh, you know, you know,
contests gave away motorcycles, cars, UH paid rent for a year,
(35:22):
a mortgage for a year, great trips, cash. I would
I would put people in the machine and blow fifties
at them. They could have whatever they could, they could get.
You know, the fat guys would always open their shirts
and suck up a bunch of it. And you know,
I didn't care. You know that, you know they are
they earned the right to suck up the fifties. Yeah,
(35:43):
but they had to peel them off the layers of fat,
so you know, you know, so that's that's what I did,
and it worked. The response from everybody was overwhelming. So
customers told customers told customers, and I learned something. Then,
you know, the number one person in your business for
it to be successful you need to work on inspiring
(36:08):
is your employees, because it's your employees that create enthusiasm.
And you know, if somebody calls a you know, for support,
especially over a nine you know, over a twenty nine
dollars piece of software, how much service did I expect? None?
And if they get the service experience at their life right,
(36:30):
they're going to tell their friends, They're going to have enthusiasm.
They're going to want to share that, you know, so
they look good sharing it. And then so enthusiasm is contagious,
and so the rock upon rich GoDaddy was built is
the rock of enthusiasm. And it was among our employees.
(36:50):
I had employees standing in line to work in my
call center. I had the lowest turnover rate of any
call center we could find. And that's how GoDaddy became
Go Daddy. And then you know, we did the super Bowl.
That's a whole mother story.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Oh yeah, but you, I mean you got a fan
in me. I told one and a half million people
who told I don't know how many people they told,
But I'm a super fan of the company. I know
I don't have you all day to talk to, So
I've got to shift into talking about significance. We are
fixated at my age at least I am on the
(37:29):
topic of moving from success to significance. And I define
it like my mom used to define it to me
back in the fifties. She'd say, it's from moving from
mere living to giving. So I want to know about
this foundation that you started, the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation.
(37:51):
What does it mean to you to be giving back now?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, you know, I started that when I was at
Go Daddy and the name name of the UH Foundation
then was Good Daddy Cares. Now as Good Daddy Cares
still exists, they still doing what we used to do. No, no, no,
no no. They make they make thirty they make a
(38:16):
thousand times the money that I used to and and
they don't give nearly away what we used to. And
you know that's just the way the stock market does. UH.
Great people run it. Uh you know they you know,
they they do take care of a number of businesses,
and you know what, God bless them because you know,
even even though they dialed it down, they do far
(38:39):
more than most businesses do. So you know, we got
to give them a check market in that category. But
what what we do right now, we we're we're we're
giving away UH money at the rate of a million
dollars every other week. And uh, you know, we're we
(39:01):
we decided to do that when we opened the business,
not nearly that much, but you know, it kind of
built up to that much, and and you know it
feels good to do it, brother, and so what we
decided to do, we you know, you have to define
what you're going to do so you can you know,
(39:21):
you can make a difference, right and so you know
the difference we do is is in in the Phoenix,
you know, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tempe, you know, Masa Valley, the Sun.
You know, it's it's you know, we're a wonderful place,
but we you know, we got a lot of problems.
You know, It's has the lowest per capita income probably
(39:44):
of any place in the country. And the reason it
does is because of all the UH people coming across
the border. UH want want to be American citizens, and
you know, they just you know, they don't get paid anything.
What they do, people take advantage of them unmercifully. So
(40:05):
what we try to do is we try to get
involved with organizations that are already operating and they're making
a difference. But because their cause is not glamorous per se,
there's not a stage for them to get up on
and receive a boards and so forth. You know, they
(40:27):
you know, they don't get recognized and so so their
organization is unlikely to receive a lot of funds. So
when you find an organization like that that can't raise
money that's making a difference, that that should be should
be getting funds. That's where you'll find us. So that
so so that's that's one of them. And and you know,
(40:48):
to give me an example. One one of them is
like when when you know there these poor people, you
know that they come. You know that most of them
are Hispanics, but about all of them, Uh, you know,
they're they're working. They're good people, I mean really good people.
And uh they're they're they're working their ass off. They
(41:10):
get paid nothing because most of the money is get
they get paid under the table. You know, the prices
they pay. There's a whole economy that is around taking
advantage of them. Like so if you know, you and
I bought a gallon of milk for two dollars, they
pay three. And I mean and it's like that their
prices are always higher. Uh, they're concerned where they go.
(41:33):
They don't want to get deported. They again, they make
no money. But here's the question. If they have kids,
and and you know they they have to work, who
takes care of kids? We do Crisis center. Crisis Center
is a crisis center, take care, crisis center, nursery kids
(41:58):
kids actually kids of all ages, and they drop their
kids off in the morning, the kids get a couple
of square meals during the day and they you know,
they get taught English and Spanish in a fun way.
Same thing for history, so that when their parents picked
(42:19):
them up at the end of the day, they're a
little better off than they were when they were dropped off.
And then when the day comes where they become American citizens,
because that's what they want to be, they'll be better citizens.
So I mean things like that we do so. And
then the other thing is military causes. The Semper five Fund,
(42:43):
you know, we help them. You know right now we're
giving them money at the rate of ten million a
year and that helps a lot of my brothers and
sisters be treated for PTSD and other war injuries. You know,
they just work with You're used to be just injured marines.
And why injured marines, because you know, marines are the
(43:06):
tip of the spear when it comes to combat or
the first end baby, and you know, you hear all
that glory, but they take the most horrific injuries. I mean,
they are just injuries will boggle your mind. But you know,
there are shock troops. That's what we did, That's what
we did in Vietnam. They didn't think two fucking newts
(43:31):
about and we co in and we'd either handle it
or die trying brother. Uh so any anyhow so that
that's what they do, and uh, you know we we
we you know other organizations, uh like what what what
is zach in this cool place? Headstrong, which which treats
(43:51):
UH tries to avoid suicides of veteran suicides because all
too often of veterental treat PTSD just checking out or
ending their life. And that's not the answer. That's never
the answer.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
It's never the answer.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Bob.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I want to thank you for sharing your heart today.
Your book is firing the whole, the untold story of
my traumatic life and explosive success. And for us, we
think you've moved from success to significance. You've got a
big heart, and if there's there's a story that's out
(44:36):
of this, I think that you've always been aligned either
with your customers or with the America right now. And
we appreciate everything that you said, what you stand for
and your great common sense that came out of Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Well, you know what, at the end of the day,
I'm just an each Baltimore knucklehead and I'll never be
anything more than that. And you know, you know, do
you do? You have like a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
You know when I when when I first got to
my unit in Vietnam, we were we were in the
rife patties Kuang Nam. It was rice patties as far
as you could see on one side, and we're jungling
on the other side. And the bush was always thick
wherever the hell we were. So our job was to
keep the North Vietnamese at a out out of out
(45:31):
of the villages. Well, the first night ship I've seen
my first combat, I wasn't within my unit four hours.
And I mean and and you know what, one one
of the guys that have been there a while, I
mean he got hurt. He had his arm blown off,
side of his head going and I mean, you know
this is not playing. This was no joking around. Uh
(45:54):
so uh later that night I had my first kill.
And you know what I did. I shot a snake. Yeah,
it was it was. It was in the rice paddies
and we were sweeping looking for bodies that you know,
might have been you know, North Vietnamese bodies we might
have killed. And it was all lit up when I
seen this big red snake swiming towards me. As he
(46:18):
got a closer, I thought, surely it's going to go
left and right. This thing looked like he was going
to bite my nuts off. Uh. So, you know, I
mean it, got it got close, and I put my
rifle one automatic and sent it to snake heaven and
I mean it. Then all that water come flying up.
Oh my god, and nasty. I got it. I got
(46:40):
it all out of my eyes and I looked Arim
and everybody was gone. They were all under water, and
so they were a little upset as they started coming
out of the water. I shot a snake. So uh.
My squad leader, who had been there, been there all
a six weeks, said to me, Bobby, next time, don't
(47:03):
shoot the snake. So so, anyhow, and then you know,
another time I threw a hand grenade and landed a
little too close to us, but it was on the
right side of a rice paddy dyke, so the explosion
went away from us, didn't hurt anybody, scared the shit
out it out of them, and I got a talking
(47:26):
too from that. They told me, you know, it'll throw
any more d grenades, and but I said, well, I
have to carry him. They said, yeah, you got to
carry him. Just came to somebody else to throw and
and I said, suppose we're getting overrun. They said, then
you can throw them. So I always look at myself
(47:47):
as me and in East bottom er knucklehead. I'll always
be the guy to shot his snake his first night
in Vietnam and wasn't allowed to throw hand grenades. That's me, baby,
Never forget that past. Never you got it.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Thank you, mister Parsons. We appreciate it. And if you
will hang on or have your wonderful assistant hang on,
I want to get your email address I can write you.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Thank you. Folks.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
We hope that you enjoyed this program about the legendary
Bob Parsons, and we wish you success but on your
way to significance.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Have a great week you
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Did you know seventy percent of singles are avoiding these
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(00:23):
introduces a new experience using comprehensive personality inventories and the
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(00:46):
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Speaker 3 (01:09):
Hey, welcome back to success made to last Legend show.
I'm Rick Tokeinney. It's great to get to talk to
all of you again. This particular program is presented by
The Right One along with play Audio, and we thank
them for their sponsorship on today's show. Is perhaps one
(01:30):
of the most legendary entrepreneurs we've ever interviewed, and we've
interviewed a bunch. Bob Parsons is the founder of Go Daddy.
Most important to us, He's a veteran of the Vietnam War.
He's also a golfer, motorcyclist. He's written this really great
book called Fire in the Hole, The Untold Story of
(01:52):
my traumatic life and explosive success. Bob Parsons, it's great
to have you on Legends.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I'll tell you what it is, totally my honor, Rick,
So thank you. And the fact that you're excited about
interviewing a knucklehead like me, I don't know, but anyhow,
I'm going to go along with it and I'll enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
There you go, all right. We want to know a
little bit more about your backstory, so I want you
to tell us about your upbringing and where are you
from originally.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Well, I'm from I grew up in East Baltimore, and
that's that's where I was raised. I was. I was
born in a place called pig Town, where they used
to you know, board the streets up and run the
pigs to market. But that was that was before I
showed up on a scene. And then after a year
(02:41):
or so, my parents moved to East Baltimore, and which
was just a little worse than where I was a
little worse in big town, if you can imagine such
a thing. And I grew up there. My mother, for
the most part, was insane most of the time. She
had terrible childhood. Their parents were gamblers. They were broke
(03:05):
all the time, less than broke in deep debt. And
then dad's business failed, and you know, he won't around,
but he always come home at night, which was amazing
because he'd always come home at night, you know, three
sheets to the wind. And when he comes through the door,
Mom would be waiting behind the door with a with
a broomstick or a pot or something. She would knock
(03:28):
him in the next week. Uh, the old man never reciprocated.
He just he just took his beating and up the
stairs he went and crawled into bed. And uh, that's
that's the way. That's the way that went. So there
you go.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Were you Did you have any siblings back then?
Speaker 1 (03:47):
I had a little brother and a little sister. My
brother three years younger than me and my sister eight
years younger than me.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
What did it mean to be the oldest in the
family back then, Well.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
It means that for the most part, I was a
surrogate father. For you know, if you could imagine such
a thing. And I mean, you know, my mother would
do things like she'd she'd call me up at night,
you know, and she'd be, you know, not in the
right mind because she's so stressed out, so depressed, and
she'd go like, I'd be standing there with nothing on
(04:24):
but my little jockey shorts, and she'd say, because I slept,
our bedroom was in the basement, me and my brother,
and she'd say, where's your father. I'd say, Mom, I
don't know, and then she'd loud her where's your father?
And then she'd scream, where's your father? And you know,
of course I would always reply, I don't, I don't know,
(04:45):
and then she'd take her head and start pounding it
into the wall, and then she'd pour her hair out
and clumps, and and then you know, there's there. Then
then you know, I'd call my her sister, aunt Bert,
and you know, would tell her, and sometimes she come over,
and sometimes she wouldn't, you know, And both times I
(05:11):
would just back down to back down the basement and
I'd lay in bed, and that was never fraid, but
I was ashamed, you know, I just couldn't imagine anybody
else's mother being like that, and I'd lay there and
I'd wonder why Mom is the way she was, And
you know, I didn't understand that till I was much older.
But that's kind of the way it was.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Thanks for sharing that. It's all a part of how
people are shaped. And eventually you landed into Marines. And
I want to talk about that today because I like
we talked about the pre show. I have a particular
heart and head that still wrap around Simperfi. But let's
get into Go Daddy. What motivated you to start Go
(05:55):
Daddy in especially from your previous experience of having founded my.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
First business, Parsons Technology. You know, I started it with
with forty thousand dollars and I didn't have forty right away.
I had fifteen the first year, lost all it at
UH had twenty five the next year, and I got
that from a bonus from my real job, and I
(06:22):
had some money I scratched together along the way. And
you know what I was what I was able to
get out of credit cards and then from the tax loss,
let's not forget that. And I lost all it at
the second year, and I was selling shrink wrap software,
(06:42):
and the shrink wrap software I was selling. We called
it Money Council. It was a home money management program.
This was back during the five and five in you know,
quarter inch floppy disk days. And I did that because
I taught my I was was doing a business trip
out into the West Coast and one of the places
(07:05):
I stopped by was Redwood City. And after I finished
the work I had to do, I had a twelve
hour layover till my flight got back. And if I
took off and I went to I found myself on
the Stanford campus because I loved bookstores, and I went
in there and I bought a book on programming in
(07:26):
the Basic Computer Language, and I read that during the
twelve hour layover and wrote my first programs on the
flight back. And just so happens in my office at
the Commercial Credit I had a dumb terminal, and you know,
there was no monitors back then, and so this thing
(07:48):
would look like a teletype machine, and it just so
happened to run that particular programming language, and so I
got good at it. I would write whenever I needed something,
I'd write the software to do it. And I when
the first Apple came out, I bought one and then
bought a book on programming in the Basic Computer Language.
(08:11):
Taught myself how to do that, and uh got good
at it, and then bought an I B m PC
when it first came out, sold the Apple and then
I got really good at it and I and I
wrote this money management software and that's what parts of
technology was built to do. So that was the first
(08:32):
thing I did. And you know, when when when the
let's say when when I when I when I got
my first program done, it was you know, a little
rough around the edges, but it did what it was
supposed to do. I never found anything that worked. I
would get these little ads and they didn't work, you know,
(08:55):
in magazines. And then one day, when I was broke up,
I had to people from this representing this computer rag
out of Fort Dodge, Iowa, called the Computer Bargain Line.
She said, we have an ad that was going to
run on the front cover of our magazine at the
(09:18):
outside front cover it like you do a cover of Time.
I mean, not really Time, but the Computer Bargain Line.
So anyhow, they said, look, we can give you this
ad for five thousand dollars. It's normally fifteen or twenty.
For whatever they told me and they said, but you
(09:39):
got to have artwork to us. When in three days,
I said, I'll do it now. Did I have the
five thousand? No? But what I had was always paid
my bills, always paid my bills on time. So I
had good credit with everybody, and they knew that, so
they offered me to deal. So anyhow, I had an
(09:59):
AD made. I dropped my software all the way down
to sixteen dollars. I think it was at forty nine. No, No,
it was twelve dollars in and the ad said money counts,
but it only costs twelve dollars. And I said that
the software isn't copy protected. Most programs were during that time.
(10:21):
Most of them required you to use it like a book,
and I said you could. You don't have to do that.
Some said that you can only have one backup. I said,
many backups as you want. And I said, if you
want to make copies and give it to your neighbors,
go ahead and do it. Do anything you want to
send me twelve bucks. And so right after I did that,
you know it was. It was a couple of days
(10:42):
after the ad ran and I got one or two
you know orders in the mail, and then five or
ten and then ten or twenty, and then my mailbox
was stuffed. I mean it was it was so many,
so many orders in there. It looked like one of
those ads that showed, you know, a really successful ad,
(11:06):
and it was. And then the mailman got to the
point where he would just put a box down to
put everything in the box that he couldn't fit in
the mailbox. Well, anyhow, so I got all that done.
I at least, you know, I think I made somewhere
around maybe maybe twenty twenty five thousand dollars when he had.
And I learned something what I was doing wrong is
(11:30):
it wasn't little ads didn't work. It took a big ad.
And the big ad conveys the fact that you know,
you know, your your significant company, and that's what people
want to know. So anyhow, so I got busy working
working this, you know, my software. I got to the
point where I went to all the other magazines and
(11:53):
you know, I took him, UH were spending somewhere around
fifty thousand dollars a month on advertising. I never dreamed
I'd be able to do that. And so anyhow, I
kept improving the software, improving the software that first year,
I quit my real job, left the fifty thousand dollars
(12:14):
bonus on the table so I could get some tax
software done. And I made. I made two hundred and
eighty seven thousand dollars that year. I never dreamed I
make that kind of money. The next year, I got
the taxes, I got the tax software done. I made
two and a half million dollars. Two and a half
(12:35):
million dollars. Do you have any idea what a stack
of cash that is, especially for an East Baltimore knucklehead? Yeah,
I mean, brother, you can you stack it up pretty high?
Next year I made five million and to get my
stuff done. You know, you talk about work. You know
I used to work sixty hour shifts. I come in
(12:57):
you know, early one day, work to work, say the
same time the next day, keep calling to the same
time the next day, and halfway through the next day,
you know, I would call it quits for then, and
I'd go home, take a shower, and go to sleep
for about eight hours, and then go over to the
high school track, run around the track a couple of times,
(13:21):
come back, and then and then go back to the
office and do it again. Now, had I not done
that business w wasn't have succeeded. But you know, the
people I was competing with, you know, they could outspend me.
They had more employees, you know, they you know, they
had a lot of stuff going for them that I didn't.
But the one thing I had is I could outwork them.
(13:43):
And you know I did that and I cared more
about my stuff than they cared about theirs. And you
know what, before they knew their well before they knew
they were stabbed, their shoes were full of bloods. But
I'm going to tell you people would ask me to
say where she learned how to program? And I always
told them Stanford, that's right.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
There's so many core values that you just mentioned there,
Bob that are about teaching yourself, having resilience, busting your
butt to get the job done, outworking the competition, and
so all of those most must have flown right into
go Daddy to build this great culture that you had, well,
you know.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Not exactly. You know what happened was I got to
the point where I saw of writing on the wall,
the shrink wrap software was going to start to go away,
and the Internet was going to be the big thing.
Very few people had any websites or that. This was early, early, early,
This was in the early nineties. It's like a million
(14:46):
years ago. And so, I mean, you know, you just
there was I mean, the Internet was just getting gone.
I mean you know that, you know email, most people
didn't even know what the hell that was and that
sort of thing. So what I did was my wife
and I decided if we could get forty million dollars
for this business, we'd sell it into It offered me
(15:09):
sixty million. I told him I was insulted. I got
sixty four million and sold the business. And my wife
was tired of putting up with my dumb ass I
had and I had PTSD so bad from the war
and from growing up that I wasn't a fun guy
to be around. And you know, she hung on as
(15:32):
long as she could, and you know what, you know,
we split everything down the middle. She actually got a
little more than I did, and for putting up with
me all those years, she deserved everything. And that pretty
much was how that wrapped up. And then I moved
to Arizona. I had a one year non compete, so
(15:53):
I you know, decided I'd go there and play golf,
and you know, I would you know, my buddies told me,
he said, you know, if you play golf for a
year and that's you know, you do that every day,
you're going to get really good. Well I didn't get
I didn't get any better. And you know, I played
with the old men because you know, they're the only
guys that are retired that you don't have to work,
(16:15):
you know, right, and you know there's I learned something
about him. It's something about a man that when when
when when he gets older, the way he dresses, you
know that you can you can tell he's a super senior.
You know, when you see him and he looks like
a flag from another country, he's that's the guy. Right. Anyhow,
(16:41):
one day, one day I was playing golf with I
think Guatemala and maybe Leekenstein. And you know, the one thing,
if you want to guy, buy these guys a gift,
you'd think, well, buy him a mirror, you know, because
because they can't know what they look like. Well here
here's here's what I learned. Here's what I learned. They
(17:02):
didn't give a fuck out a.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Look exactly why should there you go?
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So so anyhow, I decided that I would I would
get back in the business world because I miss having
being in the action. So I started a business and
I called it Joe Max Technologies. And this was when
my agreements went into it ran out. And you know
(17:28):
when when when I started that business, uh, we didn't
even know what the hell we were going to do.
What I thought is is we would have these guys, uh,
you know the people I hired guys, and guys are
really sharp people. And we try a bunch of stuff
on the internet. And what we do. You know, if
something didn't work, we stopped doing it. If something did work,
(17:48):
maybe that's what we'd look at doing. And we tried
all sorts of stuff. We tried sewing uh uh, other
people's software that didn't work. We we would try building
intranet extra nets that didn't work. We tried education that
didn't work. The only thing that got any traction was
building websites. But the problem was building websites. You know,
(18:12):
it didn't scale because you know, it was limited to
what we could physically do. And you know, so with software,
what you what you got to do is you you
know you've got you you got to do things where
you make money, where you sleep when you sleep. So
we had a lot of people ask us. They said,
(18:33):
can can you build me a website or give me
software where I build my own website. And so we
got the you know, we got the idea from hearing
that that we do that, and it was called Website Complete.
It was very primitive, but you could not know, knowing nothing,
get a website up, and so we started selling that.
(18:54):
It didn't sell many, but one thing that we learned
as we moved along there is that all websites need
a domain name. And all domain name is an address
with an Internet gibberish, but it has a name you
can remember, which is the name of the domain name.
(19:16):
And our company then was called Joe Max Technologies. I
named it after a dirt road because you know, what
we're doing didn't matter. I mean, the name didn't matter
because you know, we didn't even know what we were doing.
So anyhow, so we started doing this and you know,
as things moved on in ninety seven kind of kind
(19:38):
of kind of got around and you know, we started
really getting serious about this, and then we got the
idea that we needed a better name. And then so
me and my right hand the lady who has been
with me through through three different businesses for at fornaw.
Our name is Barbara Recterman, my right hand. I don't
(20:01):
know how it would have succeeded without her. Uh we
uh well, what what what we did was one night
we came up with the name go Daddy, and and
you know, it started with you know, I checked how
about you know, because the same mark every night. You know,
(20:21):
we're all sorts of names. And then after you do
that for a number of hours, you get silly, then
you get stupid. Uh but so so we we eventually,
you know, I said, how about Big Daddy taken? How
about Fat Daddy taken? And remember the old America online
you may not you may be too young for this
(20:43):
where you had that bridge go come go and then
whatever you wanted to do. I said, let's check go Daddy,
and we did, and GoDaddy dot com was available. I
bought it for through my own stuff for six bucks.
And that's what it cost me. I mean, it's when
I paid, you know. And the next day I told
(21:04):
and I bought it as a joke. Rick. The next
day I told my people, I said, we're going to
call the company GoDaddy dot com. And they goes, that's
a terrible name, but you know what, we never come
up with anything better, and it's stuck. And I noticed something.
Whenever I told a customer the company was GoDaddy dot com,
(21:25):
they would smile and they would always remember it. And
I said, how you gonna find a better name than that?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
That's right, And if they were the answer the Beach Boys,
they would have remembered, go Daddy go, Daddy, go, Daddy go.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
Well, you know what, that's true. And you know a
lot of people thought we were a porn company, and
so we we had to we had to just spell
that notion and that's hilarious. So it's crazy and so anyhow,
so that's what we did. Uh, our software got really good.
(22:01):
We registered to be a domain name registrar. Cost us
a million bucks, and we were on the brink of failing,
and but we got this up. And in ninety seven
I decided, as a matter of fact, in the year
two thousand, put it this way. You know, I am
(22:25):
a dumbbell from East Baltimore, you know, but I do
things my own way, you know, so I don't look
at a bit and all this other shit you hear
from he's got the fucking money, guys, you know what
I do is I thought back then, is I had
I had thirty six million dollars in the bank. I said,
(22:47):
I won't worry about this business. So I get down
to thirty million, thirty million, and then I'd say, okay,
twenty five million, twenty five million, and then twenty million,
twenty million, then eighteen million, sixteen million, fourteen million, twelve tennine,
(23:08):
hey seven six, and I said, wait a minute, I
said stop. And you know, I kept doing what we
were doing, but a lot slower. And I decided in
my mind to shut the company down. And so I'm
one of these guys that I keep my own counsel.
(23:28):
I learned that from reading about General Grant during the
Civil War. He kept his own counsel. He's got of
benefits to that. You know, first of all, you don't
have people questioning you and pushing you one way or
the other, and you tell them, you know what she
decided when you decided to do it. So I went
ahead and moved and went to Hawaii. I took a
(23:51):
one week vacation by myself, and I was going to
decide how to shut the business down, how to pay
my employees, how to pay the bills. I had how
to sell the assets and then what to do afterwards.
And you know, as as time moved on there, I
just had this feeling, Man, I don't want to shut
(24:13):
this company down, even though maybe if I do it,
I'll still have some money left. And the epiphany happened
one day when this guy was parking my car. It
was this guy, and this guy probably had nothing. He
was parking cars. You know, that's not where you find
the Forbes four hundred, right, you know, they're they're typically
not doing they're doing other stuff. So I went ahead
(24:37):
and I got the h went ahead, and this guy
comes up and he's flipping my key in the ear.
Happy's a lark. Hey, you know, mister Varsons. I said,
I'm doing five brother. He said, man, it's a great
day and that I said, you know what it is.
And you know, so you know, I got my car
and I thought, man, this guy has nothing and he
(25:02):
is so happy. Look at him, and I have right now,
I have six million dollars and I'm miserable. What the
hell's wrong with this picture? And I thought, you know,
money's not the key to this. You know, it's what
you have and how you look at it. And so
I decided right then and there that I would go back.
(25:25):
I would keep doing what I was doing, and I
strapped my I looked at my business like a ship,
and I strapped myself to the mast. And if the
ship sunk, I'd go down with it. And if it did,
I'd go broke. And you know, I could always part cars,
and you know, i'd be happy like that guy or
what I decided to do. You know, I'm not a
(25:47):
big handler, but I like to shoot dice, you know,
so I'd go to Vegas and be stick man at
a table. I'm pretty good with math, and I click
along like that, and you know, you know paid this
to me him three hundred dollars for his superior knowledge
of the game or in the number now number, and
you know that sort of thing. I know it all Rick,
(26:09):
And so I went back and ready for and didn't
do a thing different. And after a month or two
something happened. And what it was it was a dotcom crash.
And when the dot com crash happened, I mean it it,
(26:29):
you know leveled. I mean it leveled the playing field
where I had so many competitors and there was so
much noise, and they were paying such stupid prices because
it wasn't their money. Man, they were they were using
banks money, they were using investors' money, private equity money.
They didn't give a shit, you know. And so I
(26:51):
went ahead and and just just kept operating. And all
of a sudden, our ads started to stand out where
before I had, you know, now everybody vanished, you know,
I mean I would get send somebody a check and
I would get to check back. They don't exist anymore.
Suck up a bitch, you know. First, sorry to hear that,
(27:14):
but it's not entirely bad news. So but any anyhow, Uh,
it's just it's just it was something so I would
I would, I would where all of a sudden, where
I couldn't get people to even talk to me about advertising,
I had guys standing in line to give me advertising.
(27:36):
And you know what, Rick, I actually found out I
had more friends than I thought I had. And so
all of a sudden, our ads, you know, you know,
stood out. Uh. We we made it. We made a
big difference. And where uh and and in October of
(28:00):
two thousand and one. October two thousand and one, our
company turned the corner and we became cash flow positive
for the first time, and we never missed the months.
During the rest of the time, I owned a company. Man.
And so go to our story. Baby, The rest.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Is just all legendary history. Hey, I'm gonna let you
catch your breath here a second. We're gonna pause for
a quick message from the Right One, and we will
be right back with our legends. Guest Bob Parsons, are.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
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(29:24):
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(29:44):
Right dash one dot com.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
And we are back with Bob Parsons and we just
talked about the beginning of Go Daddy and the beginning
of Parsons technology and through that are some great themes
and threads for those of you that are trying to
learn from Bob today, teaching yourself, having resilience, sticking with it.
(30:11):
Don't necessarily watch all that money go down to from
thirty six million to six million, but you were watching it,
you were with it, you were in it, and inside
that were I think your core values of who you
are as a man and how you want to be treated,
how you want others to be treated. And as a
(30:32):
customer of Go Daddy, Bob, I must say that you
were fulfilling specific needs that I needed as a business entrepreneur.
And you guys were so connected to us guys in
the trenches out here, and your customer service was spectacular.
So I'd love for you to comment on how did
(30:55):
you galvanize that culture to be the way that they
were to be? Oh customer centric?
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Well, first of all, what I knew was the average
guy wanted to or average you know man or woman
would you know, you know, they would, they would work
their ass off and there small but nobody works harder
than a small business person. They got their butt on
(31:24):
the line, right, and they're working to meet payroll and
maybe uh you know, take their wife out the dinner
or their husband out the dinner, paid their bills and
that sort of thing. I mean, they are working, and
so the last thing they're going to do is study
the ins and outs of the Internet. But what they
want is, you know, they wanted to have a website
(31:45):
on the Internet, and they wanted up and they wanted
it cheap, and they wanted it easy. And so knowing that,
that's how I crafted the company, you know, you know,
to to do that for our our average customer. And
you know, and so the one thing I knew was
(32:06):
that you know, my customer and and most customers for
that matter, Uh, when it when it came to using
the internet, you know, they liked using it for doing
a little research, for having fun, for connecting with friends,
for that sort of thing. But when it came time
(32:27):
to solving problems, particularly with software, they just bought. Right.
They want to talk to another person, especially somebody that
understands them, speaks their language, and understands the software inside
and out. And so that's that's what I did, you know.
(32:47):
And so our software, I mean, our service was always good.
But the way our software got spectacular, you know, it
was because I had a girlfriend named Nancy Joe who
was who was a dental hygienis right. And I went
there one time and she said, Bob, we just got
(33:09):
this nitrous outside and would you like to try it?
I said, well, what's to do? She says, it'll make
you feel really good. Well, so you know what, if
you've been to dinnis she said, nitrous outside, you know
you're you're out on cloud nine before you know it.
And she says, and Bob, I'll tell you what. I'll
even goose it a little for you. I said, right on, Nancy,
(33:30):
So so she did, and I felt great. Now, when
you do that, you come right down off of it,
but you know, you go back feeling good. So I
went back to the office and I walked back through
the call center like I always do, and you know,
it just caused me to look at things through a
different lens. And I said to the guys in the
(33:52):
call center that managed it. I said, man, this place
looks grim. I said, you know, why is it? Why
does it look so sad in here? They said, what
looks like it always does? And I said, I'll tell
you what. Let's take a thousand bucks a thousand bucks,
and let's let's run some contests and let's add a
(34:13):
little excitement in here. And for Christ's site, turned some
lights on. Yep, and they said, all right, Donald, all right.
So the results were amazing. First of all, our sales
went up eight thousand dollars in the call center, right
and and you know, and that's that's because you know,
(34:35):
we had a contest. These people loved being in Being
in the contest was fun and maybe wait, winning some
cash and winning some prizes. And then I had the
web board also, which was like a bulletin board way
back when, and so so you know what, people would
post questions when the bulletin board, and I'd have some
(34:56):
people post answers the whole time I owned the company.
The ball the web board never cleared, cleared twice that
day and then so you know, I took the message
and ran with it. Then I started spending as much
as I could on one uh, you know, you know,
contests gave away motorcycles, cars, UH paid rent for a year,
(35:22):
a mortgage for a year, great trips, cash. I would
I would put people in the machine and blow fifties
at them. They could have whatever they could, they could get.
You know, the fat guys would always open their shirts
and suck up a bunch of it. And you know,
I didn't care. You know that, you know they are
they earned the right to suck up the fifties. Yeah,
(35:43):
but they had to peel them off the layers of fat,
so you know, you know, so that's that's what I did,
and it worked. The response from everybody was overwhelming. So
customers told customers told customers, and I learned something. Then,
you know, the number one person in your business for
it to be successful you need to work on inspiring
(36:08):
is your employees, because it's your employees that create enthusiasm.
And you know, if somebody calls a you know, for support,
especially over a nine you know, over a twenty nine
dollars piece of software, how much service did I expect? None?
And if they get the service experience at their life right,
(36:30):
they're going to tell their friends, They're going to have enthusiasm.
They're going to want to share that, you know, so
they look good sharing it. And then so enthusiasm is contagious,
and so the rock upon rich GoDaddy was built is
the rock of enthusiasm. And it was among our employees.
(36:50):
I had employees standing in line to work in my
call center. I had the lowest turnover rate of any
call center we could find. And that's how GoDaddy became
Go Daddy. And then you know, we did the super Bowl.
That's a whole mother story.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Oh yeah, but you, I mean you got a fan
in me. I told one and a half million people
who told I don't know how many people they told,
But I'm a super fan of the company. I know
I don't have you all day to talk to, So
I've got to shift into talking about significance. We are
fixated at my age at least I am on the
(37:29):
topic of moving from success to significance. And I define
it like my mom used to define it to me
back in the fifties. She'd say, it's from moving from
mere living to giving. So I want to know about
this foundation that you started, the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation.
(37:51):
What does it mean to you to be giving back now?
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Well, you know, I started that when I was at
Go Daddy and the name name of the UH Foundation
then was Good Daddy Cares. Now as Good Daddy Cares
still exists, they still doing what we used to do. No, no, no,
no no. They make they make thirty they make a
(38:16):
thousand times the money that I used to and and
they don't give nearly away what we used to. And
you know that's just the way the stock market does. UH.
Great people run it. Uh you know they you know,
they they do take care of a number of businesses,
and you know what, God bless them because you know,
even even though they dialed it down, they do far
(38:39):
more than most businesses do. So you know, we got
to give them a check market in that category. But
what what we do right now, we we're we're we're
giving away UH money at the rate of a million
dollars every other week. And uh, you know, we're we
(39:01):
we decided to do that when we opened the business,
not nearly that much, but you know, it kind of
built up to that much, and and you know it
feels good to do it, brother, and so what we
decided to do, we you know, you have to define
what you're going to do so you can you know,
(39:21):
you can make a difference, right and so you know
the difference we do is is in in the Phoenix,
you know, Scottsdale, Phoenix, Tempe, you know, Masa Valley, the Sun.
You know, it's it's you know, we're a wonderful place,
but we you know, we got a lot of problems.
You know, It's has the lowest per capita income probably
(39:44):
of any place in the country. And the reason it
does is because of all the UH people coming across
the border. UH want want to be American citizens, and
you know, they just you know, they don't get paid anything.
What they do, people take advantage of them unmercifully. So
(40:05):
what we try to do is we try to get
involved with organizations that are already operating and they're making
a difference. But because their cause is not glamorous per se,
there's not a stage for them to get up on
and receive a boards and so forth. You know, they
(40:27):
you know, they don't get recognized and so so their
organization is unlikely to receive a lot of funds. So
when you find an organization like that that can't raise
money that's making a difference, that that should be should
be getting funds. That's where you'll find us. So that
so so that's that's one of them. And and you know,
(40:48):
to give me an example. One one of them is
like when when you know there these poor people, you
know that they come. You know that most of them
are Hispanics, but about all of them, Uh, you know,
they're they're working. They're good people, I mean really good people.
And uh they're they're they're working their ass off. They
(41:10):
get paid nothing because most of the money is get
they get paid under the table. You know, the prices
they pay. There's a whole economy that is around taking
advantage of them. Like so if you know, you and
I bought a gallon of milk for two dollars, they
pay three. And I mean and it's like that their
prices are always higher. Uh, they're concerned where they go.
(41:33):
They don't want to get deported. They again, they make
no money. But here's the question. If they have kids,
and and you know they they have to work, who
takes care of kids? We do Crisis center. Crisis Center
is a crisis center, take care, crisis center, nursery kids
(41:58):
kids actually kids of all ages, and they drop their
kids off in the morning, the kids get a couple
of square meals during the day and they you know,
they get taught English and Spanish in a fun way.
Same thing for history, so that when their parents picked
(42:19):
them up at the end of the day, they're a
little better off than they were when they were dropped off.
And then when the day comes where they become American citizens,
because that's what they want to be, they'll be better citizens.
So I mean things like that we do so. And
then the other thing is military causes. The Semper five Fund,
(42:43):
you know, we help them. You know right now we're
giving them money at the rate of ten million a
year and that helps a lot of my brothers and
sisters be treated for PTSD and other war injuries. You know,
they just work with You're used to be just injured marines.
And why injured marines, because you know, marines are the
(43:06):
tip of the spear when it comes to combat or
the first end baby, and you know, you hear all
that glory, but they take the most horrific injuries. I mean,
they are just injuries will boggle your mind. But you know,
there are shock troops. That's what we did, That's what
we did in Vietnam. They didn't think two fucking newts
(43:31):
about and we co in and we'd either handle it
or die trying brother. Uh so any anyhow so that
that's what they do, and uh, you know we we
we you know other organizations, uh like what what what
is zach in this cool place? Headstrong, which which treats
(43:51):
UH tries to avoid suicides of veteran suicides because all
too often of veterental treat PTSD just checking out or
ending their life. And that's not the answer. That's never
the answer.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
It's never the answer.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Bob.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I want to thank you for sharing your heart today.
Your book is firing the whole, the untold story of
my traumatic life and explosive success. And for us, we
think you've moved from success to significance. You've got a
big heart, and if there's there's a story that's out
(44:36):
of this, I think that you've always been aligned either
with your customers or with the America right now. And
we appreciate everything that you said, what you stand for
and your great common sense that came out of Baltimore.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Well, you know what, at the end of the day,
I'm just an each Baltimore knucklehead and I'll never be
anything more than that. And you know, you know, do
you do? You have like a few minutes.
Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yes, sir.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
You know when I when when I first got to
my unit in Vietnam, we were we were in the
rife patties Kuang Nam. It was rice patties as far
as you could see on one side, and we're jungling
on the other side. And the bush was always thick
wherever the hell we were. So our job was to
keep the North Vietnamese at a out out of out
(45:31):
of the villages. Well, the first night ship I've seen
my first combat, I wasn't within my unit four hours.
And I mean and and you know what, one one
of the guys that have been there a while, I
mean he got hurt. He had his arm blown off,
side of his head going and I mean, you know
this is not playing. This was no joking around. Uh
(45:54):
so uh later that night I had my first kill.
And you know what I did. I shot a snake. Yeah,
it was it was. It was in the rice paddies
and we were sweeping looking for bodies that you know,
might have been you know, North Vietnamese bodies we might
have killed. And it was all lit up when I
seen this big red snake swiming towards me. As he
(46:18):
got a closer, I thought, surely it's going to go
left and right. This thing looked like he was going
to bite my nuts off. Uh. So, you know, I
mean it, got it got close, and I put my
rifle one automatic and sent it to snake heaven and
I mean it. Then all that water come flying up.
Oh my god, and nasty. I got it. I got
(46:40):
it all out of my eyes and I looked Arim
and everybody was gone. They were all under water, and
so they were a little upset as they started coming
out of the water. I shot a snake. So uh.
My squad leader, who had been there, been there all
a six weeks, said to me, Bobby, next time, don't
(47:03):
shoot the snake. So so, anyhow, and then you know,
another time I threw a hand grenade and landed a
little too close to us, but it was on the
right side of a rice paddy dyke, so the explosion
went away from us, didn't hurt anybody, scared the shit
out it out of them, and I got a talking
(47:26):
too from that. They told me, you know, it'll throw
any more d grenades, and but I said, well, I
have to carry him. They said, yeah, you got to
carry him. Just came to somebody else to throw and
and I said, suppose we're getting overrun. They said, then
you can throw them. So I always look at myself
(47:47):
as me and in East bottom er knucklehead. I'll always
be the guy to shot his snake his first night
in Vietnam and wasn't allowed to throw hand grenades. That's me, baby,
Never forget that past. Never you got it.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Thank you, mister Parsons. We appreciate it. And if you
will hang on or have your wonderful assistant hang on,
I want to get your email address I can write you.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Thank you. Folks.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
We hope that you enjoyed this program about the legendary
Bob Parsons, and we wish you success but on your
way to significance.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
Have a great week you
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