One man’s voice

Just keep swimming — Bob Parsons: An inspiring man

Posted on July 11th, 2005 in General, My Business, Personal Messages

Every now and again something comes along that really kicks you in the butt and insistst that you shift your position. Whether it is changes to your family situation, your financial position, your business… whatever, if you are not moving you are stagnant. I heard someone say once that “if you are green you’re growing, if you are ripe you’re rotting”. I suppose that part of me believes that if you set a position to be at, then get there, you better move or you are going to stay there. This, most often, seems to be easier said than done (especially if you comfort zone issues like I do). But no matter the size of your desired comfort zone, sometimes someone says or does something that totally knocks your face in the dirt with a common sense slap of reality that you have no choice. You have to nuke your comfort zone.

Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com is an inspiring person
Few people can say they have pushed themselves to the brink of complete failure, refuse to lose and make a complete reversal into success. Even fewer can say that they did this twice. I am hoping to become one of the folks that can say they did this just once. Bob Parsons, Founder and President of GoDaddy.com, can say that he did this twice. And aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world are a lot better off for his willingness to discuss it.

Bob just gets it. He is willing to lay it all on the line to reach the levels only he can see in his vision. He understands the success of failure and how to quickly adapt to his surroundings when failure comes upon him. He seems to know how to find the right people to support his vision and get them on board with it so together they achieve success. Man, if only that type of character could be put into a pill everyone in the world would be a successful business owner.

Amazing what change can do
Whether you invoke the change or the change is thrust upon you, change in and of itself seems to make people a lot less comfortable with their current surroundings. Of course this is a statement I make using my own personal experience and I cannot broadly make this assumption. But I do believe it is a fair estimate to say that if you do not react well to change than you are probably way to comfortable or miserable with your current lot in life. For me, I am feeling quite a little itch right now.

You see, my wife has just given birth to our fifth child (and first boy I might add). This is such an exciting time for us because our entire household is enjoying the change. Is it tough being tired and living in a dirty house trying to feed an army of children every day? Yeah. But the joy of having him home with us far outweighs the short term struggles brought on my the change. In fact, I am feeling an ever stronger pull to get my business moving along so I can spend more time with the family. Again, either move with the change or spend a long time wondering what could have been.

Read Bob Parsons’ blog
Make it a point to inspire yourself by reading Bob Parsons’ blog. Even if you are not looking to be in business for yourself, his tales of perseverance and weathering trials will motivate you and inspire you to excel in whatever you are doing. There are two blog posts in particular that I would highly recommend. The first post talks about Bob’s experience with forming, building and sustaining the GoDaddy.com vision amidst several setbacks. The second one sort of catalogs the steps he took in developing Parsons Technology (his first company). Both are excellent reading. You will not be disappointed.

I know it seems silly to use this as an anology, but in Disney’s “Finding Nemo” the seemingly dim-witted Dory used a little song to keep her sights fixed. The gist of the song was “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”. If you don’t believe me ask the nearest four year old. I love that song because it is inspiring and true. No matter what comes at you, just keep swimming.

I hope this helps someone. I know that hearing about how other people have made mistakes, were hit with failure, thought all was lost yet managed to succeed greatly helps me immeasureably. Take care… on second thought, take a risk.