Bob Parsons, an interesting guy

In 1984, he founded Parsons Technology in Cedar Rapids, IA and began selling MoneyCounts, a home accounting program out of his garage. Not only did Bob create Money Counts, but he also was selling a word processing program and a spreadsheet program at that same time for $99. This was unheard of, as business application software was several hundred to thousands of dollars, and out of the reach for most individuals.

In late 1987, Parsons was able to quit his job and focus completely on selling and programming MoneyCounts. I met him in the mid 80's. His daughter and my son were the same age and eventually went to school together. I started a software company in 1982, in Cedar Rapids. I spoke to Bob a few times over the years. He was a delightful, interesting man, and always treated me with respect. He was a legend, and he treated a small software vendor with respect. I never forgot that. One difference between our software and his, was that Bob, was trying to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of his software at a low price, and we were trying to sell $100,000 software to a select few. Bob's idea worked out better.

Bob also created a tax program which he sold for $39.95. Intuit's program was much more expensive, but not any better. Parsons Technology grew to be a 1,000-employee privately held company and in 1994 Bob sold his company to Intuit for $64 million. Whether Intuit used Bob's program, or their own really doesn't matter. The key was, Intuit eliminated the competition, and as Paul Harvey used to say, "Now you know the rest of the story."

Today, Bob is the CEO and founder of The Go Daddy Group, Inc., a family of companies comprising three domain name registrars, including the one you are certainly familiar with, GoDaddy.com

While following his success over the last twenty-five plus years, I have always been facinated by the way he did things. He seemed to swim against the current, when others were swimming with it, and he seemed to have the right formula in business. When I found his rules for success, I knew I had to share them on my Blog and tell this story.

Bob Parson's 16 Rules for Success

1. Get out and stay out of your comfort zone
2. Never Give up
3. When you are ready to quit, you are closer than you think
4. Accept the worst possible outcome
5. Focus on what you want to happen
6. Take things a day at a time
7. Always be moving forward
8. Be quick to decide
9. Measure everything of significance
10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorat
11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you are doing.
12. Never let anybody push you around
13. Never expect life to be fair.
14. Solve your own problems
15. Don't take yourself to seriously
16. There's always a reason to smile

These rules are exactly what I would expect from Bob Parsons.  Whether you are investing in a business or a real estate venture,  if you want to have success, then I suggest you take what you can from Bob Parsons 16 rules for success.  If it works, for you,  someone might ask you, the ultimate compliment "Who's your Daddy?"