KickstartCommerce.com Turns 5 Years Old!

This post is for persons yet to realize their dream, purpose, and calling for their lives. What are you waiting on?

It’s hard to believe five years ago I set out on a journey to start a search marketing business.

Long story short, I’m a long way from where I started and planned to be. But hey, I started. 🙂

During this time, experience has shaped me into an objective communicator and publisher of interviews, podcasts, and videos in one of the wildest rides of my life.

Truth be told, I never aspired to be a communicator and publisher of any sort when launching KickstartCommerce.com.

I simply wanted to share affordable search marketing strategies, tactics, and services to help small-to-medium sized businesses realize greater customer growth and revenue.

But then an interesting thing happened along the way: I was passionately drawn to write and share insight about domain names and their impact on business.

After all, hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, it’s quite clear domains made an early impression upon my life with the registration of AlvinBrown.com a week after the horrific events of 9/11.

Domains have been at the core of my two decades of professional experience in developing, automating, and marketing websites for startups, small businesses, and a few global tech conglomerates.

When considering the early days of the Internet and the famous digital gold rush to register lucrative domains, one might wish away the last two decades to have been apart of those early days.

Not me though. I realize and see with great clarity how every stop along my journey — the good, the bad, and ugly — has played a role, even til’ this very day as I type.

It’s because of those past experiences that I’m able to currently write and share experiential nuggets of wisdom and perspective.

And to believe I almost quit and deleted KickstartCommerce.com (3 distinct late-night moments!) when overcome with frustration because the process of operating a search marketing business wasn’t sexy, profitable enough, and failure was too burdensome to bear.

I guess I envisioned a linear progression of grand success, profitability, and wealth when I naively launched a vanilla WordPress installation using the TwentyTwelve theme March 2013.

It didn’t take long for the intoxicating delusion of grandeur to wear off.  I should known from experience that hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. 😉

Simply put: Success isn’t linear, but a winding path of adventure that one should celebrate and bask in the smallest of wins every step of the way.

I didn’t celebrate the first, but I did celebrate years two and three. And although I didn’t write about year four, I lived the celebration the entire year in my newly ignited passion.

But not too fast though. Even after finding domains to be a passion and having a handful of decent domain sales per year since late 2012, I almost quit!

Yet, something in the very being and fabric of my soul wouldn’t allow me give up so easily on all that had been invested.

It was then at a low point that I then decided to do the one thing I had yet to do: Go All In!

I had lived the safe and comfy life matriculating up the software development ladder in other companies and my very own consultancy. But what I truly lacked was a challenge that forced me to grow as my previous professional experiences offered.

And so, January 2017 marked the year that I would dive into domains to become great, rather a hopeful domain expert and industry thought leader.

Going all in meant I would have to travel and no longer hide behind the keyboard and monitor. It meant getting and being actively involved, all of me — mind, body, and spirit!

One of the first goals I wrote down was to create one tutorial video a week. The next goal was to attend all domestic domain conferences.

Long story short, I realized 63 tutorial videos by time January 2018 came rolling in. I also attended DNHouston, DNSeattle, and strangely enough, won a ticket to attend MERGE! via DNW.com.

And what happened along the way? Let’s see, I connected and established relationships while journaling about personal and professional experiences through the one filter that has been there all along the way: domains.

Although a trying experience filled with as many rejections as triumphs thus far, yet what a rewarding experience of relational growth and adventure I’ve realized starting KickstartCommerce.com.

And whether I share my “labor of love” passionately via KickstartCommerce.com, DNW.com, TheDomains.com, TLDInvestors.com, or any other opportunities that come along, I’m grateful for having simply been brave and courageous to have started and not been great. 😉

I’m far from the finish line, and just getting started. I don’t know what’s around the next bend for KickstartCommerce.com, but rest assure that I’ll keep giving all that I have to give — embracing every challenge as an experience and opportunity to grow and build upon.

And most importantly, YOU SHOULD TOO!

In closing, THANK YOU ALL for reading, sharing, commenting, and cheering me on the last five years.

Happy 5th Birthday KickstartCommerce.com, and here’s to another five years…

That’s all for now!