best friend. Those
two were always around the house and Marc was told
grandpa's pal was his uncle Moe. "Uncle Moe was
very funny," Ostrofsky recalled. "He taught me to
be creative at a different level. Later, after we moved to Houston,
Texas when I was 7, I learned Uncle Moe was Moe
Howard of The Three Stooges. That also
explained why my middle name is Howard!. I have a
letter that I've never shown anyone that Moe wrote to me
when I was in 3rd grade in which he told me about his
life in show business."
|
|
Above:
The Three Stooges with Moe
Howard, Marc's "Uncle Moe,"
in the middle.
Right:
Letter, signed "Uncle Moe,"
that Howard sent to Ostrofsky
when Marc was in 3rd grade. |
|
Whether it was
Moe Howard's influence, the creativity Marc said he inherited
from his mother or some other innate quality, Ostrofsky has
marched to a different drummer for as long as he can
remember. "I
always was able to think outside of the box - how to think
creatively, do things differently," Ostrofsky said.
"I took these qualities and applied them to business.
I was always looking ahead, planning, learning as much as I
could about any product, service or idea that I was working
on."
|
"At 5, I ran my own lemonade stand. That’s the
way to learn business as a kid! It’s the reason I was a
major donor to “Lemonade Day” which teaches kids
about entrepreneurship. At 7 I did some work for a neighbor,
I think I cleaned his car, and he paid me $10. That
was it! I was RICH!!!," Ostrofsky laughed.
Shortly before
that his dad had given him $5 - a seemingly huge
amount that made a big impression on him until he made twice
as much doing that off job for the neighbor. "I
learned right then that I could get more money from others
and from work than I could from my dad," Ostrofsky
said.
"I started a car waxing business and that
was the beginning. I loved to work, to make money - to find
“the next big thing” and make money from that.
Figure out where to buy it wholesale and where to sell it for the highest price and pocket the
spread. It’s just the entrepreneur in me and I seemed
to always do it well. I'd find the next thing to make money,
the next idea.
|
Ostrofsky
(circled) in a class
photo from elementary school. |
Ostrofsky's
Entrepreneurial Instincts Blossom in the Lone State State
Ostrofsky's
family moved to Houston so his dad could take a new job
teaching Business and Logistics at the University of
Houston. His father's expertise in those subjects had an
impact on young Marc. "That's where I got my sense,
good or bad, for over planning each and every
step for each business I started. It is much less
expensive to learn about the good and more importantly the
bad – before it happens. Learn on someone
else’s experience and try to apply the good to your
situation and know about the bad – just in case."
|
Ostrofsky
(circled) with fraternity
brothers at the University of Texas |
When it came time
to head off to college, Marc decided to enroll at the University
of Texas in Austin. " At UT I learned more
about business and started to learn about girls as
well," Ostrofsky recalled. "What I learned then
and there was that I had to be better in business as
it was expensive to hang with the girls! They liked
“stuff” and now with a loving wife and five
daughters, it was a lesson I learned all too well!,"
Ostrofsky smiled.
His time at Texas
paid other dividends as well. "I realized I loved
marketing so I started the first “American
Marketing Association” for students at the University
of Texas. We called it AMA-UT. I was VP, then
President of the group," Ostrofsky said. "To raise
money, I called a local beer distributor and he gave me $1,000
for a “sponsorship” of one of our events. Wow…that
was serious money and I got it via a phone call? I guess
that was the impetus for my making money in the trade
show business with |
| sponsorships. There were clients, there were
exhibitors, but those sponsorships, THAT was where most of the income (profits that is) came
from
the serious money was!" |
"While my
friends and fraternity brothers partied, I wanted to get
going on the money making thing. So I got a real
estate license and made great money on the weekends selling
condos to parents of college students. I knew the kids
wanted their own place and a microwave oven while the
parents wanted a great financial opportunity and a safe
place for their kids to live. I knew the lingo and made money selling real estate when I was a junior and
senior at Texas," Ostrofsky said.
| Ostrofsky often
found inspiration for making money in places others
overlooked. "The
Rubik’s Cube craze hit while I was in college,"
Ostrofsky recalled. "While I was visiting my former high
school, a teacher introduced me to a young man that was not
a good student but had this amazing talent. He could solve
the Rubik’s Cube in 25 seconds! If not a world
record, it was darn close. He turned that thing so
fast you could not see his hands moving - it was
shocking actually. Here I am a big shot in college and I’m
sitting in the cafeteria of my former high school learning
how he did this. He had figured out his own mathematical
“formula” to solve that brain teaser that only required 3
moves. That was so easy for him to do, he could look
away and solve the cube in 30-60 seconds."
Ostrofsky learned
the "trick" and took
that new talent back to Austin where he showed it to his |
|
|
best friend. "We took it to the University and
wound up teaching a class called “how to solve the
Rubik’s Cube in under 60 seconds." It was just an
after hours non credit class for fun but Ostrofsky used his marketing
skills to turned it into something bigger. "My friend
and I went to the major wire services - Associated
Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI)
and they jumped on the story. It ran across the wires worldwide
getting us thousands of “hits” and a slew of letters
sent to us from across the globe. That taught me the
power of the media," Ostrofsky declared. |
|
|
Dell
Computer Founder Michael Dell
(Photo: Dell.com) |
During his
college years Ostrofsky also crossed paths with a fellow
student who would go on to become of America's most
successful entrepreneurs ever. "I
placed the little bit of money I had made with a family
friend who was our family's stock broker in Houston. Brokers
worked with partners and his was a nice lady named Lorainne
Dell. One day when I called my broker, Mrs. Dell
answered. She asked me if I would be interested in working for
her son to help him with marketing. He had started a computer
building business in his dorm room at UT. I told her I
knew her son Michael but wouldn't work for a kid that was
two years younger than I was because I would look silly to
my fraternity brothers! I tell folks if I had been his
Marketing Director, Michael Dell (of Dell Computer
fame) might be a bum on the streets of Austin these
days!," Ostrofsky laughed.
When Ostrofsky
graduated he scored another marketing coup, one that landed
him in a national magazine. "Newsweek Magazine
ran a story about
the many entrepreneurial businesses I had started and
operated while in college," Ostrofsky said. "I had
five different business |
| cards and that was the photo that
ran with the story in Newsweek. Thanks to the
publicity, I had a lot of job offers when I graduated but
turned all of them down because I really wanted to do my
own thing," Ostrofsky said.
|
Upheaval
in the Telecom Industry Gives Ostrofsky His First BIG
Payday
It
didn't take him long to find the opportunity he was looking
for. "Telecom deregulation had just happened," Ostrofsky
said. "I was walking down the street and met
a guy hawking "DISCOUNT LONG DISTANCE SERVICE"
on the street. The cards he was handing out claimed the
service saved the user 50-70% off of AT&T's
prices. I asked him "do you actually get paid
for giving this to me? and he said yes, I get 25%
of the third month's bill plus $5 for every card I
give away. OMG!
I had found what I wanted - a serious gold mine!" Ostrofsky exclaimed.
| With
his interest piqued, Ostrofsky headed to Dallas to
visit the company's headquarters. "It was a start up
that was reselling Sprint service at the time. It was
real and it worked!," Ostofsky said. "I made so
much money so fast, they made me the sales manager of
this firm and I opened up the Houston market."
"During that
time, I attended a telecom industry trade show and
learned about the pay telephone industry. Seemed like
a smart market – a pay telephone just sat there, day after
day, taking a lot of quarters and making a lot of
money with very little expense. So while I planned to get
into that business, I gathered so much information about the
market that folks asked if they could buy my information
because I had done all of the legwork for six months,
had all of the info and could save them time and money if I
could or would share it. That taught me about the value
of information."
That
in turn sent Ostrofsky down a new entrepreneurial path.
"It led me to start a |
Ostrofsky
(right) with another
well-known Texan, former U.S.
President George W. Bush |
| trade magazine called Private
Pay Phone News. That quickly morphed into a full
fledged magazine (PayPhone Magazine) which led
me to start several magazines, research reports and trade
shows, all in the deregulated telcom markets,"
Ostrofsky said. "Buyers
needed information about sellers and sellers needed
information about buyers and the guy in the middle (me)
made the first money and often a lot of money supplying
information about the market to all of the players in
that market. In 12 years, I sold those two firms for almost $50
Million and never looked back." |
Ostrofsky's
Sister Points Him to the Opportunity of a Lifetime - Domain
Names
As
successful as he turned out to be, Ostrofsky said the real
brain in the family was a sibling who also
happened to be the person who led him to domains. "My
older sister Keri was the smart one," Ostrofsky said.
She was really “book” smart - top 10 in
her graduating class, Stanford MBA and Harvard PhD.
She went on to become a college professor where I
went to school - the University of Texas. When I
went to visit her in 1994 to speak to her class about
Entrepreneurship, she showed me this new thing she
was researching called “The Internet.” After a
few moments, the first thing I asked her was “how do
you get one of those names?," Ostrofsky recalled.
| "I
went home and started buying domain names – I think
it was $70 for two years to register each name. I
thought and thought and came to realize that the four best
names in my world were in the newspaper each day - news,
weather, sports and business. The first
three were |
|
|
already being used by firms with sites devoted to
those topics. The fourth, Business.com, was owned by Business
Systems International, a firm in the UK that sold
business telephone systems. I |
| contacted the owner and over a
two-week period, we agreed I could but the domain for $75,000.
The day before the purchase, he bumped the price to $150,000.
I went to my dad for advice and he said “do you have the
$150k?” My business was successful so yes, I had it
in the bank. He said “which is better for you, to have the
money in the bank or to own that name?” |
Business.com
- Sold for $150,000, Then $7.5 Million, Then $345 Million -
Here's the Full Story Straight from the Horse's Mouth
| You
already know that Ostofsky wound up buying the domain, but
you don't know the background on why it was worth $150,000
to him at a time (1994) when domain names were still an
unknown quantity in the business world. Ostrofsky explained.
"I was the owner of a firm I founded that owned
magazines and trade shows in the deregulated telecom space.
After learning about domain names I started another firm
called iNAMES.com to register domain names for
clients that needed to protect their brand outside of the
U.S. I
went to my very close personal |
| friend and fraternity brother
from UT, Pinky Brand (a heck of a nice guy who now
runs sales for .Mobi) and said “Pinky, why don’t
you come join me at this firm I have started - it’s
really an interesting concept. I’m busy with my
publishing firm but we can get a small staff together and
you can run this firm in some extra space in my office."
"Pinky came onboard and our first three clients were, and
I’m not kidding you, McDonalds, Harley Davidson
and AOL! The goal of the firm was to register their
domain names in foreign countries so cyber squatters could
not take those names," Ostrofsky said.
"We
were looking for ways to get the word out about iNames.com
and I was just about to buy Business.com. So I though "why
not marry the two concepts?" So we dropped a press
release saying iNames.com represented “an unidentified
buyer” in the purchase of the domain name Business.com
from the firm in Europe. That buyer was me. We paid
$150,000, the most money |
Ostrofsky
and long time friend
Pinky Brand (right) at the 2008
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Las Vegas. |
| ever paid for a
single domain name at that time – just the URL, no
website, no income stream, no database - nothing but the
URL. The purchase price of $150,000 created a media
frenzy - they went nuts with one headline reading
“A Fool and his Money were just parted," Ostrofsky
smiled.
Of
course it was Ostrofsky who would have the last laugh. Fast
forward to 1999 when Ostrofsky was planning to launch a
magazine about doing business on the Internet on
Business.com. "I received a phone call from Jake
Winebaum, an executive that had worked at Disney and
had left to partner with Sky Dayton, the founder of Earthlink,
to form their internet incubator called eCompanies.com
in Los Angeles. They were popping out internet firm after
internet firm," Ostrofsky said. "I had sold my
publishing and trade show firm less than a month before Jake
called and the sale of my firm created a tax bill that
was more than my income had been for the previous 20 years -
combined! I had not started Business.com magazine yet so I
had the domain just sitting there." |
"After
Winebaum's call I contacted his competitor who I knew and
discussed the sale of Business.com to Jake. The competitor
said “I’ll give you $2 Million if you’ll sell
it to me.” By the end of the week, in one 24 hour
period, I sold Business.com to Winebaum for $7.5 Million
and sold eBusiness.com to his competitor for $10
Million (a sale we did not tell the media about). Jake
on the other hand, wanted to release the info to the
media about his purchase of Business.com because he knew it
would get him a ton of free PR about his
companies."
|
|
Ostrosky
reflected on the role the purchase and sale of Business.com
played in creating a new industry. "I
think the purchase of Business.com for $150,000 got the
attention of those I will call “leaders” and they
started buying up domain names from 1994 -1999. The
sale of Business.com for $7.5 Million in 1999 and landing in
the Guinness Book of World Records was the real benchmark
that got the attention of the rest of the world which
realized that there was a real serious industry here. A gold
rush for sure! One could buy a domain at that time for
$35 a year and sell it for millions?! I told the
media the same thing I said five years earlier - that “Domain
Names are Internet Real Estate,” Ostrofsky said.
Over
the years there has been some debate about how the
Business.com sale at $7.5 million was structured - was the
deal really worth that much in cash or was it mostly stock
that would later deflate when the .com bubble burst? Obviously,
Ostrofsky is one person who knows all of the details and he
shared them with us.
"At
the time of the sale, I had just sold my other company so I
sure didn’t need the cash much less the tax burden. I knew
about a business concept known as “put rights”.
My tax issues for that |
| calendar year were big enough to say
the least, so I asked if I could buy into the company
as they were going to build a search engine called Business.com. The “put right” allowed me to keep the
cash or get stock anytime I wanted to over the next
three years," Ostrofsky said. It
gave me the luxury to see how the firm would be doing - a
kind of "free look" before I Invested. At
the end of three years, I decided to hedge my bet and
took part cash and part stock - approximately 3%
ownership of Business.com. It was a good deal as we sold
Business.com in 2007 for $345 Million,"
Ostrofsky noted about the blockbuster sale of what by then
had become a well developed business.
Ostrofsky
Re-Invests His Earnings to Build a New Internet Empire
While
I a lot of people would have taken such a windfall and
ridden off into to the sunset, perhaps to play golf or buy
their own private island, Ostrofsky, whom the Houston
Chronicle aptly described as a "technology
wildcatter," kept seeking out new opportunities
and today he operates a sizeable portfolio of profitable web based
businesses. Here's a summary of those with his comments on each:
|
| SummerCamps.com:
"I bought this domain from a doctor in Philadelphia
whose son had created a very crude site. It had much more
potential than what was on the site. I gave it to the woman
who used to help run and operate my publishing firm and we
paid for the purchase of the domain in 2.5 years. It
is the #1 site on
|
|
| most search engines for
the terms "Summer
Camps" and is meant for parents to find the right
summer camp for their children. It just throws off
cash each year but if the right buyer came along, I’d sell
it.
|
eTickets.com
and e-Tickets.com:
"I own those and simply point the traffic to a third
party that runs a ticket site and sends me 10% of
the profits each month. I don’t do a thing but
get that money each month.
CuffLinks.com:
"Ravi Ratan, my partner, founded and runs the
site. I became his partner after I had such a good
experience with his firm. I had the money and experience in
building firms and he is a great operator. The firm
has doubled since I got involved and today we do over $5
Million a year and CuffLinks.com is the largest seller
of cuff links on the market today. We sell retail on the
site and wholesale to most major department stores in the
U.S. As I teach folks, "Online - The Riches are in
the Niches."
| Blinds.com:
"This is the best of the success stories. The
founder and CEO of the firm is Jay Steinfeld. Jay and
I partnered up when we met in Houston and decided to raise
money to build the firm and buy the Blinds.com domain name. |
|
| We
bought that name, closed down two retail stores Jay had
started and began to build the business online and spend
money on a new technology called "Pay Per Click."
Over the last five years, we did a few buy outs and have grown
that firm to where we will hit $80 Million in 2011.
Jay is the best business operator I have ever met - he
really “gets it” and has done a fabulous job building
out the infrastructure." |
Two
Book Sites: "I
now operate a site for my book which has been on the New
York Times Bestseller list for five weeks. Get Rich
Click! teaches hundreds of ways folks are making money
online especially in the domain name field. We operate www.GetRichClick.com
for that book and I am about to launch www.WordOfMouse.com
for my upcoming second book on ways to use the
internet in Marketing, Advertising, Sales, PR and Customer
Service."
"Finally,
I still own a host of fantastic names," Ostrofsky
noted. "I want to find firms that have a good track
record in building out domain names into profitable websites
and partner with them to build out some of my other
“internet real estate” including: Consulting.com,
Photographer.com,
MutualFunds.com, HeartDisease.com, BeautyProducts.com,
TechToys.com, Bachelor.com, .net and .org, Psychologists.com,
Cars.info, CosmeticSurgery.net and 300 others. If
your firm has a track record building out websites or you
can put a deal together to do this, we are all ears!
Contact [email protected].
iREIT:
How
an Innovative Idea Went Wrong
|
|
The
formation of Internet REIT (iREIT) was another important chapter in
the Ostrofsky story though that company hit a major pothole
along the way. The company was the first to have some real
heavyweights from the mainstream business world (including Starbucks
founder Howard Schultz and Texas tycoon Ross
Perot) backing a major domain project. They got off to a
fast start but then came a widely publicized lawsuit filed
against iREIT by Verizon.
Ostrofsky
recounted what happened. "I
had learned about “rolling up” several small companies
into a larger firm,"
|
| Ostrofsky said. "We had done
this with Blinds.com and I had seen it done many other
times. I realized that you could own a $10 domain name
that could generate $20 a year. Now that wasn't
exciting for one name but what if you could put several
hundred thousand names under one roof? I met Bob
Martin n Houston - a very young guy but smart as a whip
with a degree from Harvard. He spoke “investment
banker” and these guys loved him. We raised many, many
millions of dollars to launch that firm." |
|
| "After
the fundraising, I wasn't involved in any day to day
activities at the company. I just showed up at the
quarterly board meetings while Bob ran the place. We bought
up a lot of domain portfolios along the way, creating a
"roll up" of sorts. I think we had 375,000
domain names at our peak. When we would buy a
portfolio, it would often have names in that portfolio that
we could not keep because it may have been porn related, had
trademark issues, personal names or some other reason. One
portfolio we bought had 75 or so names in it with the word
“Verizon” in them. A few weeks after our purchase of
that one portfolio, we were sued for owning their
trademarked name "Verizon", Ostrofsky said.
"We
offered to give them the names for free but the lawyer
wanted to make an example out of us because we were
one of the big boys in the market and had a lot of
cash. So they filed suit against the firm just to make a
point. That was the beginning of the end. The lawsuit
was settled after almost two |
Former
iREIT CEO Bob Martin |
| years but the board decided it
was not the game they wanted to play any longer and
had seen enough. The firm sold most of the assets and
for all intent and purposes, shut down the day to day
operating side of the business. The firm is still in existence
today and holds some great "internet real estate"
in it's portfolio. The assets are managed by the former
president of the firm, Mr. Bob Hurtte,"
Ostrofsky said. |
In
recent years Ostrofsky was involved in another highly
publicized legal battle, but this time he and his partners,
Albert and Lesli Angel, were the ones on
offense. It all started when a domain thief named
Daniel Goncalves stole one of their domains - P2P.com
- and sold it on Ebay for $121,000 to former NBA
player Mark Madsen.
Though no domain thief had ever been sent to jail before,
this criminal picked the wrong targets. Ostrofsky and the
Angels spent years tracking him down and getting law
enforcement and judicial officials to realize the gravity of
the crime and hold Goncalves accountable. Just last week
(July 22, 2011) their long quest for justice finally paid
off when Goncalves, in a precedent setting case,
was sentenced
to five years in prison.
Get
Rich Click! How a Five-Year-Old Book Idea Landed Ostrofsky
on the New York Times Best Seller List and May Turn Him Into
a Multimedia Star
|
|
Over
five years ago Ostrofsky told me about plans to write a book
encapsulating the knowledge he had acquired along the way.
He even had the title nailed down – Get Rich Click!
As I noted earlier, the book became a reality this
year. Ostrofsky told us about the long journey from the
original concept, through the execution of the project and
finally the realization of the dream in
2011.
"When
I put my mind on something, it usually gets done,"
Ostrofsky said. "I took that long because I was
learning about the book publishing industry, starting a new
company, writing, editing and making sure Get Rich Click!
was exactly what I say it is on the cover of the book - The
Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet! You won’t
find too many folks that have opened this book and read a
few pages that are not in total agreement with that
statement. It’s a very well researched book about how many
folks make money. There is chapter after chapter about
people of all ages that make $10,000 a week to $1
Million a month. Most started with little or no money."
|
|
"My
ultimate goal is to write many business books and I
wanted to make certain I made a great first
impression. After a very long journey, it culminated
in
Get Rich Click! becoming a New York Times
Bestseller which is a tremendous honor and thrill. In
addition, it made #1 on other best seller lists including
the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon and
Barnes & Noble. I’ve also had the privilege of being
on ABC-TV's hit talk show The View twice
and that was fantastic!," Ostrofsky said. |
Get
Rich Click! Author Marc Ostrofsky on ABC-TV's The
View (June 9, 2011)
(L to R in the photo above): Whoopi Goldberg, Joy
Behar, Marc Ostrofsky,
Sherri Shepherd, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Barbara
Walters.
"I
also learned in the five years that to really make it
in the book business, you need great testimonials for your
book. So I reached out to my friends and racked up one of
the most impressive lists ever for a business book
including testimonials from:
Steve Wozniak (Co-Founder of Apple Computer),
Jack
Canfield (Co-Author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul
series - the #1 book series ever - selling over 150
million copies), Steven
Covey (author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People),
David Bach
and Brian
Tracy.
The book has
brought Ostrofsky a flood of media attention and that
attention in turn has opened up even more doors as
his polished TV performances made it clear he could
successfully navigate all media platforms whether they are
print or electronic. Ostrofsky talked about how that has
impacted his life and how he plans to capitalize on those
new opportunities going forward.
|
Ostrofsky
and former CBS News Anchor Katie Couric |
"Maybe
it’s my Uncle Moe. Maybe it’s my uncle that ran a
division of CBS for 35 years. Maybe it’s all ego,
but I love television. I am comfortable doing it and
I’ve been told I’m good at it. They had me on The
View twice and I did ABC National News. I
did a lot of local TV. I did Time Magazine’s Time.com. PR is a big part of the process - nothing online seems to
get anything close to the immediate traffic produced by TV.
But over time, the internet is coming on strong and I
think creating a massive online following is the real
long term play because, as we all know, the ‘riches
are in the niches," Ostrofsky emphasized again.
"I’m
working towards a TV show ala Suze Orman meets
Donny Deutsch with Entrepreneurship and Small Business
topics coupled with Consumer |
| Technologies,
Internet, Tech Toys and the convergence of these with
Mobile. I'd also like to run my small business where I
am authoring a new book every two years, doing a few
speaking gigs each month from now on and managing my
portfolio. Consulting others in business also seems to
be a bigger part of my time," Ostrofsky
added. |
Home
is Where the Heart Is
We've been
talking solely about business but despite being a dyed in
the wool entrepreneur, Ostrofsky says there is one thing
that is more important to him. "I
have a great family - a loving wife, five daughters, two
dogs and a lovely home. That’s what life is all about
for me. I’m the type of guy that likes a stable home
– although with a wife and five girls, stability is a
relative term now isn’t it?," Ostrofsky smiled.
"But coming home, seeing my dogs, knowing there is some
sort of structure in my life, knowing I’m sleeping in my
own bed, going to dinner with friends and seeing my family
– THAT speaks to my core and it isn’t always
about thinking “where is the bigger better deal."
Marc
Ostrofsky, new bride Beverle and five
daughters
on their wedding day, June 29, 2008 in Aspen, Colorado.
Ostrofsky even
finds a little time of a few other pastimes that give him a
break from the business world. "My true passion
is Photography - that's why I bought Photographer.com,"
Ostrofsky said.
Photo
by Marc Ostrofsky
"I also love to play golf. I love to travel –
Italy
is as good as it gets for me. I work out and swim. I was
always into sports – like racquetball, but as I get older,
the athletic ability is like my hair – as I get older,
it’s seems to be going away!"
| "I
also love to teach. My dad was a professor. My sister
was a professor. I think I just have it in my DNA.
But first, I had to make money and prove something works –
and then teach it. So I always get involved with a
project, company or idea so I can say I actually did
it and that is where Get Rich Click! came from. My
own companies played in many of these games, then I set |
| out
and researched for years how others make money
online. Maybe that’s why we hit the New York
Times Bestseller list - because the data
in that book is real. I’ve done it
and show how so many others have done it. This stuff
really does work - just read the book!,"
Ostrofsky said (with his marketing hat firmly back
in place).
Along
those same lines, Ostrofsky emphasized the
importance of surrounding yourself with smart
people that you can learn from. "The
old saying is true - you are the average of the five
people you hang out with. So I set out to meet with,
learn from and hang out with the smartest people in
the world. Presidents, actors, businessmen like Richard Branson, Donald
Trump, Rupert Murdoch or Steve Jobs and Steve
Wozniak. Even Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook,
Tony Hseih from Zappos or Jeff Bezos
from Amazon.com. I have met and learned from
all of them. I've even been to a few of their
private homes," Ostrofsky said. |
Ostrofsky
with Donald Trump |
Ostrofsky certainly has his fair share of celebrity
friends. Another is actor/comedian Robin
Williams. Marc shared an anecdote about how they met.
"I was gambling in Las Vegas with a woman next to me
who had a fat wad of $100 bills," Ostrofsky recalled.
"Robin Williams walks up and says "how you doin'
honey?" Turns out the woman is his wife. I asked
him why he was in Las Vegas and he said, and I quote,
"I'm here to entertain for IBM but I feel like Gandhi
in a meat market!"
"I told him I had just finished playing $5 Texas
Holdem with Bill Gates - and I pointed to the Microsoft
founder at the poker table about 20 yards from us at the Mirage
Hotel. Robin said "Wow...I've actually never met
him myself." About two minutes later Gates got up and
walked by. I said "Bill come here...let me introduce
you to Robin Williams." They both became
like little kids, they were so happy to meet each
other. Williams and I became friends at that moment so when
he was in Houston for a show, Bev and I went down to his
hotel and had dinner with him after his show.
Marc
& Bev Ostrofsky with Robin Williams in Houston (March
2009)
Final
Words of Wisdom
Asked for any parting advice he would like to share, Ostrofsky
added,
"You cannot
do it all yourself." If you do, you are limited in how
big you or your firm can become. I hire great people
and pay them well and learned to try my best to stay out
of their way. The internet and technology allow you to
automate so much, outsource, dropship, etc. but you need smart
people around you to keep you on your toes and take the
ball and run with it. So I live by these main points in my
business life:
1.
KNOW WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW. Most folks know they don't
know how to be a CPA or a lawyer. But do you know that
you really don't know how to create the best SEO for
a website or manage or grow a firm to the size you want it
to become? You must know what you don't know and
learn to ask the right questions or you will never get the
right answers.
2. HIRE YOUR WEAKNESSES. If you are not a CPA,
hire the best one you can afford. If you are not a lawyer,
hire the best one you can afford. If you are not good at
running, growing and managing a company, hire great people
so that firm can grow and you are free to concentrate on
other things.
3. LEARN MORE, EARN MORE™ That is a
Trademarked term we use in our firm and in the book to help
people truly understand the game especially in the
internet world. The more you learn, the more you read, the
more conferences you attend the more you learn - the more
you earn! It's so very true - these days more than ever! |
Ostrofsky
with U.S.
President Barack Obama |
4. HIRE SLOW. FIRE FAST. I used to do it the other
way around but learned this is the only way to run a good
business.
5. AUTOMATE. OUTSOURCE. DROPSHIP. Three
words every successful firm must know well to make it in
these competitive times.
With that
Ostrofsky was off in search of his next business
adventure,
leaving both aspiring entrepreneurs and the already
accomplished ones in our audience to further benefit from
the kind of wisdom that only comes with experience. We
appreciate him taking the time to share it with us.
|
