Not too long ago I introduced Gary Vaynerchuk to my Brother-In-Law. After watching and reading up on Gary he was fired up. We had a few emails go back and forth and then he hit me with a question that has been stuck in my head. He asked…”How Do I Know What I’m Passionate About?”

I honestly didn’t know what to say. I had two answers that immediately came to mind.
The first was… “Wrong Question, you are screwed if you have to ask that question!”
The second was… “It doesn’t feel like work. You can work 16 hours straight on it and the time just flies by.”
For some reason I always have a nice guy reply and asshole reply that comes to mind. Luckily I usually pick the nice guy reply (unless I’m having a bad day). I gave him the second reply but I didn’t like it. It bothered me because I felt my reply did nothing to help him. It left me wondering how can I be such a passionate person and not be able to answer his simple question.

I wanted to help him but didn’t know how. I started to ask others how they’d answer the question. Nobody was able to answer the question any better than I was.

I then decided to identify my own passion. What was I passionate about? Surprisingly it was a very tough question to answer. I looked up the dictionary definition and one of them was “boundless enthusiasm”. Doesn’t that sound motivating and powerful? What did I have boundless enthusiasm about? The Answer: Making Money. I didn’t come up with that right away but after thinking about my life that’s what I came up with. I always loved sports cars (always wanted a Porsche) and loved the power money gave people. As a teenager I wanted that power. I wanted to be in control of my life. Wanted to be able to buy whatever I wanted, do whatever I wanted and not have anyone have any power over me. I always felt money was the way to get that and I was determined to do whatever it took to get it. I didn’t have to go to extremes. It turned out devoting all my time and energy to business was all I had to do to attain my financial dreams.

What are you passionate about?

How would you have answered the question, “How Do I Know What I’m Passionate About?”

I always get motivated by numbers. Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy. Maybe it’s because I get motivated by the possibilities. Here are some numbers I recently came across that I find extremely motivating.

In 2007 Twitter had 5000 Tweets a day
In 2008 Twitter had 300,000 Tweets a day
In 2009 Twitter had 2,500,000 Tweets a day
In 2010 Twitter is now doing 50,000,000 Tweets a day

I go those numbers from the http://blog.twitter.com/2010/02/measuring-tweets.html

Do you realize how amazing that is? If that doesn’t get you motivated nothing will. Great ideas that are well executed have the potential to be bigger than ever. Our parents and grandparents never had opportunity to way we do. What are you going to do with that opportunity?

I was watching Jason Fried’s talk at Web Expo 2.0 in 2008. At the 6:50 mark he discusses a very important topic that few people (in my experience) touch on. Here are the key points…

I’ve experienced everything Jason discusses first hand. Customers always feel their wants, likes and dislikes represent everyone’s feelings. In many instances customers don’t actually know what they want. MySpace customers WANTED freedom to customize their myspace pages. Facebook came along and took that freedom away. What happened? Users switched from Myspace to Facebook. Why? Because in theory customizing your own profile page was great. In reality it was an absolute nightmare.

I believe this is often the difference between a successful website and an unsuccessful one. As a website owner you have to understand your customers’ needs but you also have to know what’s best for them and the site. It isn’t easy and takes a lot of trial and error (and analytics studying).

Here are a few things I’ve learned…

I wrote this as a reminder to myself. It’s very easy to forget the points discussed and as soon as you do you’ll find yourself heading down the wrong path.

I’d love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this.

Here is a link to the Jason Fried Video

Once in a while I come across a gem. I like to do my best to spread the word so these gems get a chance to really explode as a company and enjoy the great success they deserve. Not to mention I want them to stay in business so I can continue to using them.

A few years ago I was planning a trip to New York City for my wife and I. I was looking for a high end (4 or 5 star) hotel. I usually would book directly from the hotel website or use expedia. The prices I was getting quoted were insane. So I decided to head to google. The first paid sponsor link was http://www.newyorkcityluxuryhotels.com. I rarely click a paid sponsor link but for some reason this time I did. When I got to the site they had some great hotels but no prices. You had to call to get a quote. To this day I have no idea why I called but I’m extremely happy that I did. When I called I was given a quote that was almost 50% off the lowest price I had found online and that was for a 5 star hotel. I booked it hoping it was for real. I couldn’t believe my luck. Sure enough it was for real and I’ve been using that company “Magellan Vacations” ever since.

<strong>What is Magellan Vacations?</strong>
My understanding is they book hotel rooms in the best hotels in major cities and book in such bulk they are able to offer the rooms at INSANE prices. I’ve been using them for 2 years now and not once have I ever found a lower price than what they offer. It’s not always 50% lower but it is ALWAYS lower than the best price you’ll find online.

There is no membership. No bs. Use them as you need them. They offer hotel rooms in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago. Usually they only have really high end hotels.

I can’t say enough about Magellan. I tell all my friends about them. You can call them anytime and they’ll hook you up. I missed  a connecting flight in NYC once and was stranded there for the evening. It was 11pm. I called Magellan and explained my situation to the agent. He asked me if I wanted the same hotel, same price as my last trip. I replied yes. Same credit card? Yes. DONE! The call was less than 90 seconds long and I was checked in and ready to go. Not only did they bail me out of a jam they saved me on cell phone roaming charges.

I have nothing to do with the company. They are just the best hotel service I’ve ever come across and I hope someone reading this can enjoy the same fantastic experience I’ve had with them as well.
You can check them out at http://www.magellanvacations.com

I was thinking about all the domains I’ve bought and sold over the years. There is one domain that really sticks out. It wasn’t the best domain I ever bought. It wasn’t the most expensive domain I ever bought. It wasn’t even the domain I sold for the most. Yet it still is my favorite domain story. Here it is.

This took place in early 2001. I wanted to buy the domain CrazyApe.com. The domain was already registered and listed for sale. I emailed the owner to find out his asking price. He wanted $1500 for it. I replied with a counter offer of $600. He never bothered answering my counter offer.

After I made my counter offer I pretty much forgot about the domain. One day, 2 months later, I was cleaning out my email and came across the original email correspondence I had with the domain owner. I decided to see what he had done with the domain. I was surprised and pumped when I logged on and found out he failed to renew it and the domain was available to be registered. I gladly picked it up for $15.

Here is my favorite part of the story. 2 weeks after I registered the domain I was approached buy someone who wanted to buy it. After a very brief negotiation the buyer agreed to pay $3500 for it.

Ahhh I’ll never forget CrazyApe.com.

What’s your best domain story?

Here is a little business idea I had today for restaurant owners.

NOTE: If anyone is already doing this let me know. I’d love to use their service.

I’ll start by setting up the story. My wife wanted to make a reservation at Harbour Sixty, in Toronto, tonight. We’ve been there many times and spent a lot of money there. I think it’s safe to say we are good to very good clients. We both hate the process of finding a phone number, calling, waiting and booking a reservation. Thank God for OpenTable. We use it for all our bookings and unless we REALLY want to eat somewhere we rely on OpenTable to find out if there is availability.

So what is my idea? If the restaurants are going to allow OpenTable to book a reservation those same restaurants should automatically have a profile of me on their local systems. They should know how frequently I visit, how much I spend, favorite drinks, favorite meals etc. In tonight’s example if Harbour Sixty had had this in place their system would have shown an opening to OpenTable (maybe the times where they could best squeeze us in) and not lost our business.There is much more you could do with this idea. If you have this system you can make sure your frequent customers don’t have to rely on a waiter recognizing them for the experience to be memorable. You would already know their favorite waiters and make sure they are assigned to them. If their is something special happening you make sure they are in on it. For example we’ve eaten at Nobu Atlantis more than 100 times. The last time we were there Chef Nobu Matsuhisa was in town and we happened to meet him. We should have been guaranteed to meet him and introduced as very loyal and frequent clients. 

The world has changed so much in the past year. As a business owner there is so much information regarding your customers that is now available.  As an example with Facebook connect you can pull pretty much all the relevant information you could possibly have ever wanted. The companies using the tools available and providing a better customer experience will be able to dig deeper (and more frequently) into those customers’ pockets.

It isn’t safe for any business (including restaurants) to continue to run the way they’ve traditionally been run. It’s a new world embrace it and, in the words of Gary Vaynerchuk, CRUSH IT!!!

If you implement this let me know. I’d love to use this service!

Sean Shapcott

I had to Dexter someone in my dream last night. That can only mean one thing… We are going to kill it in business this week!

Don’t try to bring back the past. Concentrate on Embracing the Future ;)