Lesson 6: You Have to Work for It

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I’ve thought lots of times, as many of you have, “Man, I wish I had what Frank has.” “Schilling built his phenomenal domain empire from scratch despite taking the field just five years ago, when almost everyone else thought the game was already over.” Phenomenal. Why can’t that be me (or you)?

I think the biggest thing we lack is the desire to put in the work that Frank did, and Ron Jackson points that out early on in his article: “How … could he start in 2002 and still build such an empire when everyone ‘knew’ all of the good names had already been taken by those who pioneered the space in the 1990s? The answer is what I have often said is the domain industry’s ‘dirty little secret’ — hard work.”

And it’s not just the domain industry’s secret. If you want to make it on your own, you have to be willing to work for it. Frank spent “every waking hour in front of his computer scouring expiring domain lists.”

He burnt the candle at both ends and in the middle, often working 20 hour days while swilling coffee to stay awake. Before long he had a pretty good impersonation of Howard Hughes going on. “My hair got long and I turned skinny and snow white,” Schilling recalled. People who hadn’t seen him for months mistook him for a tourist on the rare occasions he ventured out.

What did that buy him?

Schilling’s single minded pursuit paid off. Within a couple of years he had bagged over a quarter of a million domains and revenues for his company, Name Administration, cracked the 8 figure mark annually.

Don’t expect success if you’re not willing to work for it. No one’s going to hand you anything. If you’re not willing to put in the work, forget it. Not only will you almost certainly not succeed, you’ll end up chasing get-rich-quick methods that will leave you unsuccessful and broke.

Remember what Thomas Jefferson said: I find the harder I work, the luckier I am.

Update (12/19): Great commentary on this by Shoemoney today by way of his Nigerian cab driver: Americans are Fat and Lazy

This article, “You Have to Work for It,” is Lesson 6 in the Lessons from Frank Schilling series.

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