Not to say my way is the right way but it is nevertheless, my way. I always paid more attention to the one who is giving the advice than the advice itself. Few questions I would like to ask you: Would you take a fitness advice from a person who isn’t in shape? Would you take a cooking advice from a person who does not know how to cook? And with your financials, would you take a financial advice from a person who isn’t doing well? I remember a little over eight years ago when I first met Rick Schwartz and joined his message board, as many other members, I too had many conflicting issues with Rick’s personality. Rick, as many of you know, isn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with. With that said, at the time, Rick had few years in the domain business prior to me joining the board (started in 95/6), has done extremely well by making highly calculated bets, “talked the talk” and “walked the walk”, and in addition, had over 20 years of sales experience offline. While I had some issues with Rick’s personality, I had absolutely no issues with his thinking, visionary outlook on business and life, and then I chose: This guy, pay CLOSE ATTENTION to everything he says!
While at the time there were many other in the domain industry on the board there were very few who have done well but many who seems to be doing well. The credibility Rick brought because of his proven success was of more importance to me than the actual advice given. What I mean is from a person who walked the walk, say from 1 to 10, I would give him an 8 for their advice without even listening to what they had to say. The last two points would be for the content. On the other hand, If someone who had not walked the walk would give an advice I would start it at zero, and very rarely they would get to an 8 on my personal scale.
Today, there are many blogs and message boards out there and one has to be extremely careful what one listens to, what one accepts. There are many who never walked any walk but will gladly tell you what you should do, for no other reason than their personal self interest. It is up to you to sort between the good and the bad. It is up to you to choose who you listen to, and who to give the time of day.
How do you find out who knows their stuff, who to seriously pay attention to? You have to read between the lines, look for hidden motives, look for personal agendas. When one says he is doing well you have to ask at what cost? How long did it take to do well? Is it scalable? How the operation looks like? What is the time invested? Is what they say can be repeated today? Is it fundamental or a timing issue? Is it even real? One important point to note, those who always have positive stories of what they say/promote are the ones to ALWAYS question and question hard. There are always two sides to any issue, the good and the bad, and if a person cannot understand this, he is likely there to sell you into something rather then help you learn something. I remember at DRT last year (Seattle) I was on stage with a number of reps from other companies and one question was about development. While I said a person can approach our company for development partnership opportunities, in the same sentence I also said there are other companies in the marketplace, even those who were on stage with me, who may be of equal help. My focus was to help others, not just help myself.
If you choose to take an advice from someone, my advice, if you choose to take it, is to make sure you ask, and ask a lot.
Have a great weekend!
Sahar
P.S.
If you were to adopt these ideas that will make many who do not walk the walk and who continuously are trying to push their own personal self-serving agendas with you of less importance. Because of that it would not be of a complete surprise if this post attracts some fire from other bloggers, especially the weak ones who feel threatened by it. Why post it then? As I said at the first line of this post, these are just my ideas, and since it is my blog, I’m simply expressing myself. You do not have to adopt it, you do not have to agree with anything I say. Bottom line, whether I say it or not at the end of the day you will do whatever works for you, and I’m perfectly fine with that.
Sahar
Another good life lesson, thanks.
It’s always about the quality (of the person) and not so much about the quantity (of the content).
I find this (quality vs. quantity evaluation) applies to LOTS of things in life.
Rick has been absolutely correct about a whole load of things and totally wrong about a whole load of others. He has done well but many have done far better, many have run into trouble following his leads, and others have done much better by ignoring what he has said on certain subject. I think you should listen to Rick as you should listen to other experience domainers, but also use your own judgement as to which ideas to adopt and which to ignore. Rick’s greatest success was recognising the reasons why dot com would be much much more valuable than other extensions. His greatest weakness has been his inability to comprehend the internet beyond the North American market, which has meant that most of the finest opportunities in recent years have just passed him by. Everyone has an agenda and that includes you Sahar. Some are more generous and others very manipulative. To succeed you need to be able to collate, analyse and filter information. You will make your own destiny one way or another.
—-answer—-
Your idea of weakness is a SOUND and CALCULATED calculations of odds. While you and many others for years have been chasing the IDN ghosts (and various weak extensions) more sophisticated investors, in particular those who have done well, have placed their bets where they convert well today.
Sahar
“IDN Ghosts”
Sahar, I cannot believe you are an experienced domainer. IDNs are not for Americans… When will Americans learn? The world does not revolve around them!
The post title was poorly chosen. Currently it is “Who Should You Learn From?” and after further thoughts, changing it now to “Who Should You Take Advice From?”.
Sahar
First of all, I have been digging int to details of domainers such as Sahar, kevin ham, and more on. But one question that comes to my mind is would any of them give me the honest reply, if I have some great idea, some kind of unique approach, I doubted. For example, I have an great idea for advertising, which there is great need, and would improve Pay per Performance for advertisers way beyond their limits, but the question is should i share my idea? I go to lot of people blog, some of them says, got an idea, why dont submit your idea and help you work?
But then should I share my idea? what is possibility that they would help me and reply to my idea, or not using my idea for their own personal benefit, like stealing ideas??
The thing here is I dont have great amounts of budget to implement my idea, but I gues rather than sharing, I should just wait for the right time when the budgest will be arranged. I do want to take advice but who should I trust?
Recently, Facebook founded, marc zukenberg, was thrown in to the court cases due to he was accused of stealing the idea from Harvard college students who offered him to develop an code for their ConnectU.com.
I think listening to everyone, and not quitly following everyone is great idea, which means that implement your ideas based on your observation, who is giving you right advice, and then who want to get benefit from you, and who does not want to give you advice because they are somewhat scared that the person whom they are giving the advice may end up being more successful than what the person who is giving an advice is.
So generally speaking, I would just observe and dig in to person;s life experience for just my inspiration sake but, I would not exactlie follow them or would intend to do what they want me to do.
Regards.!
sorry bit confusin in my fifth paragraph that I would like to correct.
what I am trying to say there is that I would simply listen to the advice but would not follow up on it. Because the successful person would not give great advice to others because they are somewhat scared that the person who is an advice from them may be benefited and would become more successful than what they are. So they would not exactlie give you great succesful ideas simply because they do not want to regret that they had created one more compititor.
So I would just listen to an advice but would not follow up on it, because no compititor wants some compititors when there are already many!
Yes, there could be people who offer advices, what I mean here is honest advices, but that is like .001 percent out of wholesome 100 percent.
So rather risking my ideas sharing ideas, I would just listen to advice but would not follow up on it.!
And I would rate an succssful person advice 4 out of 10, but an person who is not there yet, I would rate their advice 7 out of 10.
Regards.
I think there are considerable points on both sides of the argument here. In making investment decisions, all people want to maximize success and to operate on the best advice available. Learning is a lifelong process, and the path to success often is built on one’s prior failures. These act as important life lessons and allow an entrepreneur to refine his/her judgement moving forward.
I agree that it is very important to make a distinction between those with sound ideas and experience vs. posers. There is plenty of bad advice out there in all walks of life, and there are people looking to exploit the naivete of newbie investors.
Regarding domains in particular, many of us moved into the “long shot” realm of alternative extensions. I would not characterize these people as “unsophisticated” or devoid of sound experience and advice. In fact, many of these folks are insightful and intelligent having already become profitable on their investments. I would suggest to anyone entering the domain game that they keep an open mind, and do not limit themselves to the advice of a handful of self-appointed experts. Future and evolving opportunities usually lurk beneath the surface … out of the masses view. I, for one, prefer to not look down on others’ ambitions under the pretense of “I know best”. Look, learn, adapt, persist. Successes are not made overnight. Nor is there only one true path to the end goal.
Something should be said too for the value of the journey. And that, in itself, is the attraction for many people. That being said, I support following the example of proven, successful people. Good direction acts as a springboard. In the end, persistence is probably the greatest ingredient in building success. That refusal to give up.
@S.Sin,
If you’d like legal protection before you reveal/pitch your ad idea, buy a copy of the latest edition of Patent It Yourself by David Pressman; where you’ll learn that for about $100 you can file a provisional patent application (which gives you a year before having to put out the bigger bucks for the utility patent you’ll need).
Though it sounds like your idea may be protectable “only” in the US; PIY explains exactly how to do so.
“Your idea of weakness is a SOUND and CALCULATED calculations of odds. While you and many others for years have been chasing the IDN ghosts (and various weak extensions) more sophisticated investors, in particular those who have done well, have placed their bets where they convert well today.”
The dice have yet to pitch. Once they have stopped rolling we will all be in a sound position to say whose advice should have been listen to. I think it will prove that you should have been analysing the arguments not following the Guru. When it comes to sophisticated investors, perhaps you should take a leaf out of Rick Latona’s book who has now added IDN.com to listen of domains he is seeking to buy. How serious he is I don’t know. I have not approached him with any domains. Now is a bad time to sell the cream of the your IDN portfolios, so we will be shadow boxing for a few months yet. The bottom line is that ASCII crowd was never going to be our real market. You might have been useful if you had come in with some early cash. It is is unlikely that any of you will be able to outbid the Chinese and Arabs, or indeed the Russians in the end game. So we will just have to put it down to a missed opportunity. Who will win? I don’t know, but what I do know is if IDN are worth 10% or more of their ASCII equivalent, my portfolio will be worth a damned site more than Ricks.
Totally agree. It’s better to take advice from the climber that has come down the mountain that one taht is just thinking of going up it. The great thing about this business is there are many successful people to look to, tallk to and interact with. At the end of the day, it’s up to each of us to choose our own path. But I certainly am not above taking guidance from those that have already blazed the way and shown their own success.
Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason not to give it. - Agatha Christie
It bothers me when I see people handing out advice, as if they were the authority. When in reality, they have not accomplished anything noteworthy. It just ads confusion.
I have always been very selective on who I take seriously, and heed the advice of. The ones I have decided to listen to, have been a huge reason for any of the successes I have had. A person’s level of success goes miles beyond words. When those truly successful domainers speak, everyone should listen. That is, if you care about having “real” success.
So I agree, less is more as it applies to taking advice. Quality over quantity.