Go Daddy.com - Scottsdale, AZ

Bob Parsons has been in some tough spots. In 1968, he was a high school senior, unsure he’d have the grades to graduate, and worried that the Marine Corps wouldn’t accept him.

That was 40 years ago, a long way from Parsons’ role as Founder/CEO of The Go Daddy Group Inc., the world’s leading Internet domain registrar known for its edgy culture, Super Bowl commercials, and a roster of celebrity pitchers including NFL receiver Chad Johnson and Olympic swimmer/Playboy covergirl Amanda Beard. The firm has annual revenues of nearly $500 million.

“A couple of my buddies talked me into going to the recruiting station,” Parsons said.  “I still remember the sergeant saying, ‘Robert, I think you’ll make a fine Marine!’ I got orders to report to Parris Island in August, and my teachers took pity on me and let me graduate. I owe my diploma to the Marine Corps.”

Parsons went to Vietnam and, he said, came back a man, with a Purple Heart. He worked as a laborer at Bethlehem Steel, where the specter of layoffs replaced the threat of a jungle trip wire, and scraped together the wherewithal to go to college. He went to the University of Baltimore on the GI Bill, and ended up an accounting major largely because it was the first subject listed in the catalog –“If I had started from the back of the catalog, I’d be a zoologist,” he jokes – and ended up graduating magna cum laude and became a CPA.

Along the way he was a serial entrepreneur, starting a series of companies with varying levels of success. In 1984, he started Parsons Technology in his basement, using his training and self-taught programming skills to create tax and accounting software. The company almost went bankrupt over the next few years, but grew to a $100 million firm with nearly 1,000 employees in 10 years. Parsons sold the company to Intuit (TurboTax, Quicken, QuickBooks), for $64 million.

In 1997, he started Jomax Technologies, which became Go Daddy in 1999. By 2001, he was losing money, and ready to shut down the company. Today, The Go Daddy Group Inc. serves nearly five million customers, manages 26 million domain names and had revenues of nearly $500 million, up 71 percent from 2005 and more than three times its 2004 total. The company, Parsons said, has grown into one-stop shopping for anyone looking to establish an online presence, including domains, website hosting, security, and e-mail accounts.

“The Chinese have a saying,” Parsons said, “and it’s one of my 16 rules for survival [available on www.BobParsons.com]: ‘The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed. That’s so true. The same thing happened to Parsons Technology. I once asked a buddy if he’d want to buy the company for five grand. I saw him after I sold it for $64 million, and I asked him if he ever thought about that. He said, ‘Yeah, I think about it all the time.”

Parsons laughs. He’s outspoken, with a loud voice and a hint of a Baltimore twang, peppering his conversation with funny and useful anecdotes. It’s the sort of personality that has allowed him to build one of the world’s most popular blogs—including an annual post saluting the Marine Corps’ birthday—and a radio show at www.GoDaddyLive.com.

NaVOBA talked to Parsons about his military service, his risk-taking nature, his struggles and his overwhelming success:

NaVOBA: How did you get into business?

Parsons: I was an accountant, but I was always making money for myself. I never was good academically, but I could always turn a buck. I’ve been in a number of businesses, from bookkeeping to … hell, my buddy and I made rat traps for a while. It was a good business in Baltimore. In the city, there were a lot of rats.

NaVOBA: You’ve said that you started Go Daddy without a real business model. How did that develop?

Parsons: We had no idea what we were going to do. When I sold Parsons Technology, by agreement I had to retire for a year. I could’ve retired, but that’s not how I’m wired. I wanted to be at risk again, I wanted to be back in business, and wanted to be doing something fun. I hired a group of very sharp people and the idea was to try a lot of things and eventually do what worked. I didn’t realize at the time that it’s a whole lot easier to find something that doesn’t work than something that does. A couple of years went by and I almost lost my shirt, and I decided to get back to my roots. My dad always told me, “a smart dog chews his own bone,” meaning you do best what you know how to do. So I started doing intellectual property, software. We started that in 1999 and really, because of the dot-com boom, couldn’t make any penetration.

NaVOBA: When did things turn around?

Parsons: We saw that the people who needed our website software also needed a domain name. And we saw that the companies in that business were overpriced, and their service was crappy. We sold our first domain name in November 2000, but I was still losing money, so much I decided to close the company. I went to Hawaii to figure out how to pay vendors and employees and wind it down. When I was there, I saw a guy parking cars and he seemed really happy. That was the epiphany. I thought, if this doesn’t work, I’ll just park cars or go to Vegas and be stickman on a craps table.

I came back in 2001 with that thought, and in October, we became cash flow positive for the first time.

NaVOBA: How did your military experience help you in the beginning?

Parsons: A lot of ways. First of all, I learned organization and accountability, which are the keys to this company. It helped me with perspective. I learned that in Vietnam, and Parris Island: One day at a time, baby. It helped with respect to discipline, giving me the ability that even though you’re tired and you’d rather be doing something else, you have to have the discipline to stick with what you’re doing and to keep at it. That’s what Marines do. When we have a job, we finish it.

If I had it to all over again, I’d still do it. The Marine Corps is where I grew up, where I became a man. It was a life-changing experience for the better, and I wouldn’t be here without it.

NaVOBA: In the past, you’ve talked about being a risk-taker, about wanting to walk point in Vietnam because it won you the admiration of peers and was something you could do for the group. Does that risk-taking help in business?

Parsons: Absolutely. When I look at an opportunity, first I look at the likelihood that I’ll be able to do it. But after I do that, I spend no time worrying about it. I just look at the positives and run for it. [Olympic swimmer] Mark Spitz told me that [Hockey Hall of Famer Wayne] Gretzky has a saying, “The 10,000 shots you never take will always be misses.” You’ve got to take your shot.

NaVOBA: A lot of people recognize you for your controversial Super Bowl ads, including ones that weren’t shown during the games because they were rejected. Even the rejections made news, and some became Internet hits. Tell me about that.

Parsons: We got to the point—and these are the keys to our success—where we felt we had the best programs, the best products, the best pricing and the best service in the business, and we were only writing about 16 percent of the new domain names worldwide. We couldn’t understand why we didn’t have everybody. We hired a market research firm, and they told us it was because people didn’t know that we existed. They told us to step outside our normal promotions and advertising and go mainstream.

It was the fall of 2004, and we decided to advertise at the Super Bowl. At the time, I was criticized roundly, people saying that any dot-com that tries to do that fails. They didn’t realize we were already a viable company, and our cash was such that it didn’t matter if it worked or didn’t.

I wanted a commercial that was going to be outrageous, so we’d get noticed. I knew I couldn’t explain what we do in 30 seconds, but I could create interest in the name Go Daddy. I told the ad agency, “Whatever the ad is, I want a big-breasted brunette and I want our name across her chest.” We ended up pissing off 10 percent or 15 percent of the people, but the rest of them loved it. And the news organizations who reported on that ad said, “You may not know what this company does. Well, here’s what they do.” It was perfect.

That ad was worth $50 million to us. It was the home run of home runs. After that first ad, our market share of new domains went from 16 to 25 percent. Next ad, Super Bowl XL, 25 to 32 percent. Next ad, 32 to 38 percent. Now we’re over 42 percent worldwide now.

NaVOBA: What advice do you have for veterans starting or thinking of starting a business?

Parsons: Don’t expect it to be easy. If you’re having trouble getting moving, do something every day toward that goal. Something. And you’ll find that if you make the effort to sit down and do something, there’s a good chance you’ll do something else and something else. I mean, the whole crux to being successful in business, mostly, is to do it. Keep at it. Stay focused at it.

Secondly, it’s important to do something that you love, because as my dad told me, “When you love something it tells you all its secrets.” You tend to work at it more, and even if it’s crowded, if you love something, it’ll make a difference, because you’ll know the nuances. Those are my two pieces of advice.

NaVOBA: How should business owners handle it when things don’t go well?

Parsons: That’s a learning experience. Edison was asked once, when he was working on the dry-cell battery, he had made like 8,000 or 10,000 attempts to build a dry cell battery. And it failed. Someone asked him if that was frustrating. And he said, “Absolutely not. I know 10,000 ways not to build a dry cell battery.” Even if you do something and it doesn’t work, you learn that it doesn’t work. And that makes you that much wiser and that much likely to succeed the next day.

My largest business successes always follow me being on my ass for one reason or another. Knocked on my ass. When things seem really bad, we’ll dig into it, and figure it out, and we usually come out roaring.