Colin  0:00  

Parties we had that we had the recession keg party when the recession happened and then two years later, it still never ended in Canada and we had the end of the recession. Keg party so

Norman  0:12  

Everyone, welcome to another episode of I Know this Guy.., the podcast where we dive deep into the lives of some of the most interesting people I know. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to I Know this Guy.. wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, my kids want me to say something about ringing a bell. What the hell is a bell?

Norman  0:36  

So you’re really an underachiever?

Colin  0:39  

Well, I don’t know what that is. So it’s interesting you say that though. It’s not been an all straight up, situation, I’ve had that. I’ve had a roller coaster. , there’s been times when you do so incredibly well and then fast forward a year or two later and it’s just like, you’ve lost almost everything. And then you’re back up again, two years later, and you’re back down again, it’s just been a phenomenal ride over the last, 18 to 20 years.

Hayden  1:09  

So, Colin, how do you find yourself dealing with that? I mean, I think for most people that they do like stability or like some sense of what’s coming next. But if you get hit that hard, what kind of pushes you forward to take that leap of faith and try again.

Colin  1:25  

I think, ultimately, it’s my passion, right? And my passion has been trying to build technology that can help , help people function better and, and work better in society and live better. And the way that technology can influence the world. And making those changes is very exciting for me. So I love being part of that. I love being part of that revolution, part of the early internet revolution that , when we went into high speed we had that big change of high Speed coming on and being part of that. And then we went into social media and we went into mobility and all those changes, enabled huge amounts of opportunities for entrepreneurs and anyone who wanted to get in to be part of that, but it’s also a very exciting thing to be involved in. And I think that , when you fail at certain things, focusing on those things that you love the most and being part of that and just sticking with it, even through the .com crash, when quite frankly,  that was a time was probably one of my hardest times. After I sold my company. And the shares had collapsed in value because I was locked up. It was really hard for me to get over that. But what I did is really think about what I truly love about what I started with my first company that virtually I lost in this transaction after 10 years? And what am I going to do going forward right now to build something new and different, and obviously make money along the way as well. And, that’s where the genesis of the next idea had come from.

Norman 3:19  

I remember Tucows. I mean, that was something that I always use. It was for freeware and shareware were back at the time. And I was a geek and I was always on Tucows. And I remember I joined this association called YEO, and it was the first meeting. And all of a sudden, these three guys walk in. And I didn’t know who the guys were. And anyways, we were introduced and it was the guys from Tucows and it was like, Oh, my God, these are rock stars. And there you were. I was a groupie.

Unknown Speaker  4:01  

I mean, it was a great website Tucows originally was the ultimate collection of Winsock software, which is totally geeky. And that’s actually was the original name and we changed it to Tucows, people would understand that a little better. And then we had a famous five cow rating, we rated the software on the internet and we became one of the top 100 websites on the internet, but basically, based on PC magazine’s list of internet companies during the 90’s. We quickly saw traffic exploding in Tucows. And, in fact, so much so that it was costing us like we were losing a lot of money because back in the 90s, believe or not Hayden, you’d pay for the internet and it would cost you money to use the computer and internet could be very expensive. And so what we did is actually we created a new system called mirror sites. We had Internet Service Providers all over the globe, put on servers at their local site. We sent them copies of our data. And we disseminated that on a daily basis. Well, we did that to save money. But little did we know what that would do would make that a global brand, and became one of the largest software download sites on the internet in the 90’s.

Norman  5:22  

I remember that, if you had a one, it was a one cow rating mean, you were dead. It went up to five cows, right?

Colin  5:31  

That’s correct.

Norman  5:32  

That’s right. I remember.

Colin  5:35  

Then we had a big fight with gateway computers. I don’t know if you remember that one where gateway claimed they had trademark the cow spots. And so we posted that on our front site, and people started boycotting gateway computers on our Firmware gateway, but it was I remember them yeah. And then and then they eventually back down and said okay, no, you can use the cow spot. on your site as well.

Hayden  6:02  

Who knew cows could be ammunition.

Colin 6:06  

Who knows?

Norman  6:09  

That’s great. , there’s all this. I mean, everything sounds great Col, you’ve got these huge hosting. And when you talking about hosting, you’re not talking about a little hosting company here and there. You were the hosting company, for huge corporations that you were talking about huge telcos. You were the brand behind the brand, correct.

Colin 6:33  

Yeah, that’s, that’s correct. So companies like Bell Canada, AT&T, Earthlink, Vodafone, British Telecom, the South American telecoms we had as well. All of those companies sold or continue to sell, hosting and email services and Hostopia became the leading provider of those services, basically, globally, for Telecom. So think about if you buy a website or you buy a business email from one of those companies Hostopia was the leader in that space.

Hayden  7:06  

It seems like you’ve kind of had your pulse on what’s happening during these changes and like, with Tucows or Hostopia, like kind of rode that wave, do you feel like you have, like, a certain ability to sense when something’s kind of bubbling or rising? Or is it more just, as I imagine, there’s a lot of luck in it. But like, do you feel like you have that sensibility to kind of test the air?

Colin  7:34  

Yeah, and so much so actually, I’m not going to brag here but I am, but so much so in that I’ve actually sort of started to document it and to understand the effects that occur in the marketplace. There’s technology shifts in the marketplace. And if you look at some of the early companies I was involved with like Internet direct, which is an ISP and internet service provider. , that company, obviously took advantage of people getting on the internet, primarily through dial up internet. That’s when people use phone phone lines to connect. And then we saw the advent of broadband internet and Hostopia, the way we succeeded in that market was providing Software as a Service online software. They actually called it something different in the early 2000s, called application service provider. We often changed the name but it really today is known as cloud computing. We were one of the first in our space to provide those services which could not have occurred unless you have broadband. So broadband itself is actually a paradigm shift and it can unleash a whole set of new opportunities. And then if you fast forward another 10 years, you forgot the advent of social media with Facebook and now you’re seeing Tik Tok and so many other of these social media companies just rise up and people interacting with those companies. You saw the advent of broadband through Mobile and mobile friendly websites and how applications, all those applications you download on your phone how that created a whole set of opportunities in the marketplace.

Colin 9:13  

There are also regulatory changes and shifts that occur in the marketplace. , when anyone who’s interested in starting a business, you should always be keeping their eyes open, whether there’s a technology shift or a regulatory shift, as an example of that, in 2012, the ICANN, which is the internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. It’s a long one, but they’re the ones that govern the internet, including the domain name space, which includes .com. In 2012, they opened up the domain name space to allow for new domain extension. So I saw that coming and very excited about those changes, right. I really do like surfing when it comes to the waves of technology changes or in this case, it was actually a regulatory change. So I applied for a domain extension called .club and .club, it’s a great domain and then all about people coming together and sharing their passions together. And I thought that was just like one of the best domain extensions you could have on the internet. So I applied for that extension. We went through an extensive auction process took about two years, and we finally won that domain extension. But you can see the opportunity that for me there was actually based on a regulatory change. Now it’s more interesting. I’m looking at some of my more recent investments in companies that I’ve invested in companies like meowingtons.com, which is a cat product site, and paw.com, which is a dog product site. And these companies, I call them microbrands, and we’re beginning to see the rise of microbrands in society. So we’re literally talking about offering products that compete or products and really at the store that competes with Amazon. Now who’s going to compete with Amazon? Come on? Are you kidding me? You think we can really do that? Well, I’m going to say right now you can. And the reason why we can is because of Amazon. Amazon paved that path, to make it easy for customers to buy online, and feel comfortable with buying products online. And now customers are beginning to realize that they want a deeper relationship with the people who provide those products and build those products. And we’re seeing traditional retailers Go, go just go under the bus. They’re just they’re going away. Yet people still want to buy and connect and have some form of relationship with those companies. And I can tell you those that sign up to the mailing list for these micro brands, they get better deals than what you’ll get if you buy on Amazon or you’re gonna buy through a third party because they’re not paying the 30% Commission, or whatever the third party charges, they’re not paying that commission. So end users get lower prices, and they get better services and a better variety. And the company itself makes more money and invest that money back into the products and services. So you have a positive cycle. So , I’m here to call that, I think the next paradigm shift for the paradigm shift that’s occurring in our society today in the internet is the rise of microbrands, and the company that’s leading that is Shopify. I think they’ve really done a phenomenal job. And they’re taking on Amazon in a way we’ve never seen before because it’s never been easier to launch your own brand or microbrand. And, with the advent of the new domain extension, we’ll talk a little bit that later, you can also put a great domain name and brand up there as well. 

Norman

There’s two things it’s a one two punch and right now, like during the time of this podcasts it the whole COVID thing is happening so you’ve got a lot more people buying online that would never have bought before but they’re at home and they’re buying that’s number one. The second thing is the way that, and I hope I don’t get in trouble for this, but there’s still a way that Amazon treats its sellers they don’t care about their sellers.  I’ve seen so many sellers that have done nothing wrong get suspended, put time and money into a product and then what happens is Amazon. It happened today with one of my clients that he did nothing wrong and he just got his listing 100% gone, no email, no nothing. It forces people to go online and try to go off Amazon. So I think you’re nailing it and I think you’re gonna see a huge surge in the microbrands. , touching on .club, I want to go back and talk about it because, everybody says .com.  .com is the only thing you can do you want to go a little bit further on that, like why are you able to take on a .com? or any of these other tlds? And what is it with a club?

Colin  14:13  

Yeah, I mean, why is.org able to take on com, my wife and I bought a school in Fort Lauderdale. 10 years ago, we actually chose to get a .org over a .com because it meant something different. , and I think that’s, I think that’s a key key component to any new domain extension. I’m not a big fan of the .com wannabes, those who are similar to calm like a .net or .co. I have to admit I’m not because I feel like , in those cases, why didn’t you get a .com you just couldn’t afford it. I am a big fan of names that have meaning and that are relevant. And I’m a fan for a couple of reasons. One is because they’re very memorable. You can understand them very easily, soap.club, for example, the company you have. The second thing is if you type in soap space club on Google, Google does give you I know in the case so club I checked this morning, do you actually have the top ranking on Google for that term. And if you get a name, like a wine club, or a coffee club or cigar club, you can actually really get some very good Google juice. I can really help your business, and the third thing is, is that .com has over 120 million names registered. So in many cases, you’re looking at a three word and sometimes a three word spelled incorrectly. , you’re not looking at names that are very easy for Google to index on on the internet. Because those names are already taken popular keywords, key phrases, key searches, those names are already taken online. The internet by other companies. And if they’re not, and they’re for sale by domain investors, they tend to be very expensive. So this is a much more affordable alternative you can bribe by a .club, for instance, at probably at one to 2% of the value of a .com. Now, as time goes by and club become more popular in the marketplace, you’ll see the prices of those domains rise. And then the last last point is just there isn’t a lot of .coms left. I mean, 120 million registered. It’s just very hard to find it. So , I think that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s the difference. Now that being said, .com is still the king. It’s still 1-800 of space. , if you look at the morning, hundred habits evolved, if you’ve got the 1-800 people recognize that and say, Okay, this company’s been around for a long time. If you own paw. com, that means this companies put a lot of money in this domain. And we did by the way We also do on paw.club, by the way, and we find club also complement people who have a .com website to provide other services or to promote their social community. In the case of meowingtons, we launched a daily cartoon. It’s called Miltonthecat.club. And actually it’s funny because Milton’s been in in isolation now for 64 days. And , the cats go nuts and not like any of us are right but my point is that they use meowingtonsthecat.club as their comic club so you can see you don’t necessarily have to use your .com for everything. You can also brand some of your projects as well.

Norman  17:48  

People don’t know Miltonthecat, but Miltonthecat is one of the biggest downloads on Facebook. Isn’t it?

Colin  18:00  

Yes I think the meowingtons has peak and we have been told is the number one cat product site on the internet we’ve also been told that giphy just sold to Facebook but that Miltonthecat and I’m not actually technical here on this issue but he they do little icons and things like that and they’ve been downloaded billions of times so Miltonthecat has been getting out there a billion Giphys I’ve never use Giphys okay so Hayden probably has seen that he’s he’s gonna start laughing at me. Right like you start laughing I’m sure you’re on with a Usenet, Ping and

Norman 18:41  

yeah, I always get it when it’s the ping file right the PNG file. , it’s what are you talking about ping file, it’s a ping file. So yeah, but I’m an old guy with a beard. I don’t know anything. But , going back to that cat. It’s the last time I talked about it, it was 2.2 billion downloads. Talk about getting exposure. And then with Paw, one of the things that people don’t realize is you’re really not going after having Amazon. This is really more of a Shopify play. And you’re doing incredibly well with your product line.

Colin 19:23  

Yeah, so let’s just, let’s just talk a little bit. I will talk about the rise of microbrands. And Meowington and paw.com are two examples of that. Meowington starts with a daily cartoon.  how much we make on the daily cartoon zero. Dude, how much we make them the 2.2 billion download Giphy’s of Milton zero. The fact is, we’re trying to create a community. We’re trying to create a community of people who love cats at Meowingtons, and Amazon doesn’t do that. And I’m just going to point that out. I don’t know if you’ve ever ever seen an Amazon cartoon. Right and we’re a tiny company. A few employees. Obviously we have manufacturers who do  a lot more employees there, but a few employees. And we’re actually putting out this content. We write many how-to articles on how to take care of your cat and how to have your cat live a healthy, long life. We do the same with Paw, these microbrands have the ability to create content and engagement that you can’t get with Amazon and I just want to circling back to that point. Um, and really emphasizing that because I think that’s the key in the rise of the microbrands, strategy is creating that content and community and then selling the products that people can trust.

Hayden  20:43  

Even just the way you see microbreweries taking on large brewers. now we’re,  what, 2030 years ago, you wouldn’t have heard of like some of these boutique beers, I think as of two years ago is around like 30% of the market up from nothing. So I don’t know if it’s for the same reasons where people are just kind of craving that closer connection or seeing that there’s actually like people that care about them behind selling products or, yeah, why that trend is actually there seems to be pervasive.

Colin  21:15  

Yeah, I think what’s what fuels it really is a change in consumer behavior. And it’s very easy for consumers to adapt and change to new technologies. When it’s a continuous innovation. It’s very difficult if it’s a discontinuous innovation. Now, what do I mean by that? Okay, so if you get it, if you get a computer, and it’s got a faster processor and works faster, that’s continuous. But if you change the device itself to access information, like by going to an iPad, or using an Alexa to get your information, that’s a discontinuous innovation. So that’s something that’s very hard to make happen. However, there are companies as we know, and I just gave a couple examples right there that have been able to make those happen. And I think that, this continuous innovation I’m talking about with e-commerce was going to a retail store, people would physically go there, buy the stuff, and then take it back. And then innovative companies like Amazon and Chewy came along and said, Okay, well, you can do it this way differently. And I think it’s actually now easier for the microbrands to succeed than it would be 10 15 years ago, when people were stuck in stores. Because you’re set you’re not saying Phil from a store, to a microbrand online, you’re saying go from Amazon to a microbrand online. And that’s a lot easier for entrepreneurs for concepts that they’ve developed. And for adoption rates.

Norman 22:51  

.club has also gone over to China. So setting up in China has been a hassle. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Colin  23:01  

Yeah, I’ve been to China about 12 or 13 times. I did not go in last year. Thankfully, I did that bring Coronavirus back

Hayden  23:12  

to zero. Yeah, exactly.

Colin  23:18  

Okay. , I think China is a fascinating place. I think the people in China are amazing. I think their technology in some ways is more superior than the West. So, traveling on trains, 300 kilometers an hour. I don’t see that in North America. , you see a little bit of that in Europe, but I mean, it’s everywhere in China and they’re building train after train, they’ve got a lot of things going on that are very good there. And, club resonates very well globally, in almost every language, including in China, and in fact, even though they don’t have the word club in their language no conversion direct conversion, they use CLUB, and you see it on every street in China.  whether it’s a KTV Club, which is their, their karaoke clubs. I think they’re 100,000 plus in China, they see it everywhere. gym clubs, they use the word club and club is very popular in China and taking off very well. Now, did we have to work with the government? Yes, it took us four years to get approval with the state governments and also the local governments, we had to be approved in every province. And, through a lot of hard work and effort and connecting and following their regulations, we were actually able to get approval in that country. And we were able to launch and this is an American company launching in China. It’s a very challenging thing. I understand the challenges that most companies go through in order to launch there. And we’ve seen that especially in the technology space, companies like Facebook and Google, how they’ve been blocked from China. But .club was able to get in and I do think that the Chinese government recognizes the value of owning and having access to certain things like domain extensions and or domain names. So they want their entrepreneurs to be able to launch companies using the .club TLD because they think that’s going to be that’s going to help them succeed globally as well. , when

Norman  25:27  

you start talking about China, in both domains, I have a Soap.club, and I have it over in Japan. So one of the things I learned over there is you better get the translation down. So here’s what happened. I launched, thinking gig that it’s soap.club, but the translation that I had, was it meant brothel. So, I think I got more. I got more. Yeah, I got more Traffic because of it but

Norman  26:02  

I’ve been in Japan a number of times to launch club clubs popular in Japan as well. And I can tell you one thing though, is there one country we can all look at when it comes to germs and this whole Coronavirus. They don’t shake hands as most  the bow, a lot of them wear masks. They typically in Japan, you would wear a mask if you were sick. But if you were coughing openly on a subway or something like that people would look down on you. It’d be like be a full pot, you would not go out in society without a mask on. They’ve been doing that for 10 15. I don’t know how many years they’ve been doing that for everything in Japan is touchless. I remember flying from Japan to Beijing and Tokyo to Beijing. And we’re just so amazed by the Dreamliner that I was on and how when I walked into the restaurant as a coach By the way, and walk into the restroom, and you’d wave your hand and the toilet seat would go down and whatever Each everything was automated You didn’t have to touch a thing and that was on a plane ? And you see that all over Tokyo and all over Japan they really understand this and the really paranoid of germs I used to say the whole country is OCD but the reality is it probably works very well from an environment like the Coronavirus. , I remember when only I didn’t know, a month ago, everybody said I would never wear a mask. Now, when you go outside if you don’t wear a mask people look, you look a little strange and people like to give you the eye. Why is he not wearing a mask? , so it’s actually become socially awkward not to wear something on your face.

Norman  27:43  

I was talking to my brother the other day. So he has a family and has a company over in China. And he says oh yeah, we’re manufacturing mass now everybody’s manufacturing masks. So yeah, just new line of business for him

Colin 27:59  

you. , talk about, we talked about those shifts, right? Hey, there’s one right there. So, Who would have guessed that making masks would be an opportunity. I do know that Meowingtons has come out with a line of four, three or three weeks, I think three separate face coverings there. They haven’t launched it yet. They’ve been working on it. And they’re all custom designed. When you first saw this, launch these masks, everybody’s wearing medical masks, they look like we’re all surgeons and stuff, but I’m thinking, Okay, this isn’t gonna last,  that people are starting to go clock based a little bit now they’re storing masks. And I’m saying, well, this isn’t gonna last. And , people are gonna start to adopt, they’re gonna have summer scarves, you’re gonna have, like, this tube I have right here that I use, and you just, it’s so much more comfortable and convenient. And, it doesn’t look like I’m going into an operation or something like that, and there we go. And I can rob a bank. It’s like Bandanas, and they’re making now they’re making matching hair pieces and styling them. And by the way, that’s exactly how it is in Japan as well. It has been like that for many years and I saw that, but there’s an example of a change in our society Hey, where something entrepreneurs can make. They can sense Okay, so the wave is we’re going to have masks, they’re all medical beginnings but then people are going to say, Hey, wait a minute here. This is my face. I don’t want to, I don’t want to say who I am. Why do I wear fashion? Why do I wear a shirt that looks like it represents me or jeans. I’m gonna wear a mask that represents me and so Meowingtons decided to launch a lineup of custom designs, face coverings, some masks and some face shields. That  for cat lovers. So if you love cats and you want to represent what represents who you are, you might consider wearing a mask like a mask or a face shield or face covering like that or summer scarf. If you’re in another business or another I other people could offer those services or those types of products to other people who have passions and other areas as well. There’s just a whole series of opportunities that opens up here. When it comes to things like facial coverings that it’s just gonna it’s just gonna unleash a whole new set of opportunities. 

Hayden

We could have a new light of merge actually, dad.

Norman 30:23  

There we go. 

Hayden

Beard attachments for all fans out there

Norman  30:27  

that would be awesome. There we go. 

Colin 30:29  

That would be I could have a beard. I could put it on a mask and have an acoustic beard. And it’s, I take them out. They take the face covering off and that’s it. 

Colin

It’s all my problem, too.

Norman  30:40  

I I want a mask that has hair on the top. Yeah.

Norman 30:45  

Yeah. So Colin, I know that I’m just looking at your shirt. And what the hell is startups, like, it’s got to be something because it’s the .club.

Colin 30:57  

For me, I love startups and I love it. I talked about the microbrands and you can see I’m involved in a number of startups and I had the opportunity to build a building in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale. That houses startups. In fact, we completed construction after three years. A week before Coronavirus, and it’s , it’s a building that we try to emulate sort of a San Francisco like factory warehouse concepts. And what we’ve done is we’ve brought in a lot of my companies into it and we’re inviting other companies into startups.club and we’re really trying to support startups in the community. I believe that the way we’re going to get out of Coronavirus I think the entrepreneurs need to lead. We need to lead. As we need to start companies we need to grow our companies. We need to scale our companies and we need to hire a lot of employees. To help us do that, and we need to lead this country out of one of the greatest depressions we’ve ever seen, although it’s really I’m going to call it a flash depression. Because I believe in American Canadian Canada, and what entrepreneurs could do in this country. And I believe that we can get out of this relatively quickly. With the right incentives and the right attitudes with entrepreneurs stepping up and starting new businesses and getting out there and making things happen.

Norman 32:34  

And the other thing, I was talking to somebody the other day, and they were just doing a ton of work overseas, tons and you can get good deals over there, but there are so many people that are out of work in the US right now. , just just not getting into the work or just not being able to have a job and the job pool is so for us with writers yummy. Writers are out there right now that are just dying for work. And it’s not like paying somebody overseas. It’s a bit more expensive, but the quality of the work from a US native speaking person is so much higher. And you can find these people, not just writers, but all walks of life. So I think for somebody starting a new business, this is a perfect opportunity. There’s tons of people out there that are really want to work. And, they don’t want to sit on their butt. They do want to work and there’s a huge opportunity, all we need, are the entrepreneurs to get out there to create those jobs.

Colin  33:37  

Absolutely. And , that’s why I started startups.club because I truly believe in helping others build companies and Fort Lauderdale is actually a great place for that. We’re not Silicon Valley. We’re not New York. We’re not Toronto. We’re Fort Lauderdale, but we have a lot of advantages going for us. We know we have the sun and the surf and the We had the low taxes, and we had an environment that, that encourages business and small businesses. And there’s not a lot of regulation down here. So that’s why we started startups club.

Norman 34:14  

So I want to change gears for a second and talk about Networking. This whole show came about just talking to people and somebody asking, and , oh, yeah, I Know this Guy. And then in the same conversation, oh, yeah, I Know this Guy. But it’s all about Networking. And I know you feel strongly about that as well. And can you tell me about your Networking experiences? I know that you’re involved with different associations, but the importance of it and what that’s done, and how it’s contributed to your life?

Colin  34:45  

Yeah, I think that, anyone in life needs to get into clubs, or needs to get into organizations in their professional area, and network with others. And in my case, as an entrepreneur I got involved in 1996. I’m in an organization called YEO or Young Entrepreneurs Organization, which was later named Entrepreneurs Organization. And there are really two components to it. One is we meet every month, eight of us, and we share each other’s challenges and opportunities. And really, I have seven other people who are helping me guide my company, and helping me build everything I’ve done. I mean, I in the last 20 years, I’ve taken almost every major issue that I’ve experienced to my forum, like with a group of people that I meet with on a monthly basis, and they’ve helped me get through those issues. And in addition, they’ve also identified opportunities for me, not only, ideas that they’ve generated, but also people they might know that they’ve introduced me to, who might help invest, help me help me Get an investor and to one of my companies or, help me with getting a new project or making a new sale. I’ve had just such great experience working with Entrepreneurs Organization. And a second component to EO is the, the monthly learning sessions. And if I tell you, it’s really changed myself, in that, years ago, I was doing things sort of off the cuff on my own. Eventually, I began to learn best practices, which were taught by the organization, and I even hired a CEO coach, somebody who’s helped me the last 15 years guide me, on every aspect of running my companies, it’s important , when you , it’s gonna sound a little Hillary, Hillary ish. It takes a village but it really does take a village to build a company, it takes employees, it takes others takes , everyone with talent, around you, it takes money from different people. It’s a really complicated machine and to build something successful, you really do need the right people, you need the right amount of money, you need a great story. And you need great systems. And if you can combine all four of those things together, your odds of succeeding are much improved.

Norman  37:16  

Alright, my friend, so one of the things that we try to get across every episode is what makes you tick. And one of the things that we’d like to, find out is, with anybody who’s on the show, if you’re a musician, artist, entrepreneur, and what’s that quote that you live by?

Colin  37:35  

All right, well quote that I live by.

Well, there is a famous person, the character in history, who said something. His name was Gandalf, reminds me a little of you,” All we have to decide is what to do with the time is left to us.” And if you remember Steve Jobs and some of his famouse talks about how we have little time left. And time is so important. I think that quote is important because all we have to decide is to do with the time that is left to us. And I think that it means it means a lot because we need to get out there. We need to make things happen. We can’t sit back, we can’t relax. We’ve got to change the world. We gotta make things a better place. We got to help others. Many people are in need right now. Many people need help. And that’s that I think that quote epitomizes it.

Unknown Speaker  38:39  

So a lot of entrepreneurs or a lot of people that are looking at entrepreneurs, they look at them in a different light. People that were lucky Oh, if I , if I did this, I could have been there too. But I find that that’s not always the case. Like I’m sure that everything that you do. touched, did not just turn into gold. Did you have failures? And if you did it, what were they? And how did you get out of them? And at the end of the day, what did you learn?

Colin  39:11  

Yeah, and obviously, it’s better to learn some of the stuff through, textbooks and what not. But, one of the things that my partners and I in the 90’s I’d mentioned earlier that we had taken a company, public, small public public company. We sold Tucows in 98. So we were flush with cash like what’s good now 28 years old, really enjoying life and Internet Direct, had begun discussions with a cable company in Canada called Look Communications. Now a few Canadians might remember some of these names. Alright, don’t come after me for any money and I wont come after you but a few of you remember this and Look Communications, had the wireless license for television and then after we had merged the companies, we applied for the wireless license for the internet for Fixed Internet Canada now you can imagine how much money that would be worth today. And we were actually awarded it by the government. 50% of the license was awarded to our entity and our stock at the time had gone to over a billion dollars. Now understand what I had sold my company to this or merged with this cable company. I was in a locked position. My stock was locked up. But , being 29 years old and having your stock value go into the eight nine figures Geez, it was insane, right? It’s just the amount of , just absolutely insane. It was the .com 90’s boom and it was just crazy. And, come middle of

March of 20’s. Up 2000s A Microsoft’s the judges announced that Microsoft would be broken up and the NASDAQ had fallen from 5000 to 4000. And my company decided to pull the offering. Because, let’s wait for the market to come back. Well, if anybody followed that time, hey, the NASDAQ went down to 1300. So it really fell. And fast forward. 18 months later, the company filed for bankruptcy protection. And the stock that was trading at $19 a share one day was now trading at six cents a share. And of course, I was all locked up. And , that was a that was very, very hard on me and my family and on and more importantly on my employees. All of the employees of my company had options in the company and had a piece of the company and then number of them were millionaires On paper during this time, and all of them had lost almost everything, and to work 10 years at a business and go through a process where you exit and you fail on exit and you are the one responsible for that. It was hard, it was just, it was just something that really, it just really affected me and it affected the people around me and I can’t tell you how much pain it caused me back then. And even now when I think about it, but again, you dust yourself, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you continue to focus on what you love the most. And I focused at that point, we launched Hotopia, because we thought that okay, Dial up the internet access site is sort of done. Now let’s focus on the hosting side. We lost everything. We lost all the money, we lost all the shares, the employees lost all the money. And then we launched a new company called Hostopia And then six years later, fast forward Six years later, we took the company public with an F1, but we took the public in the Toronto Stock Exchange, back then you could raise smaller amounts of money, we actually raised $30 million pretty successful IPO. And then three years later, we sold the company to Deluxe checks. And this time, we did not sell the company for a stock trade. We did an all cash deal. And I think what the lesson that I wanted to share there really was about liquidity or control. And if you spend your whole life, whether it’s building a company, or your whole career doing something, you don’t want to fail on exit, you want to maximize your exit when you leave the company or when you sell your company. And you have to be I think too much too many of us focus all of our energy on building something and not enough on that exit plan. And I think that’s an important part of the equation. And then we can talk about dogs

Norman  44:00  

No, I mean, it is something that a lot of entrepreneurs just don’t think about. They get in, they rush. They’re entrepreneurs. There’s a lot on their mind. They multitask. And they forget about the most important thing. And from what I understand, I’ve talked to brokers in the past and been involved with a few businesses, exiting a few businesses, and where you make most of your money. During that lifetime where the business is on exit, that’s where the money happens. So you’ve got to be looking ahead and if you’re not, it takes one or two, kicks between the legs, but then you kind of remember how important it is.

Colin  44:42  

Absolutely, absolutely. And it’s liquidity or control. Yeah, it’s one of the mantras I live by. Right. So

Norman  44:49  

Now we can get back to dogs. I am on Facebook. And at first I thought, Oh no, one of the dogs had died. And then I started seeing these other posts, and I got really confused. I didn’t know what was going on. So why don’t you just tell us a little bit about what happened? This is an incredible story.

Colin 45:13  

Alright, so first of all, I own three King Charles Spaniel. And you may have seen them on Facebook. They’re quite popular because they’re often featured in ADS on Paw.com, one of them. We live on our house backs onto a canal in Fort Lauderdale. One of them had actually, I guess he’d gone after a tomato plant or something and tried to grab it and pull it back and fell back in the intercoast. And I was up in Canada, it’s separated from my family during the corona virus, took care of my mother in law and I was up in Canada and I got a phone call saying that he’d gone , he’d gone missing over the intercoastal over the waterway. And it was about two hours ago and I said well get no I told my son to get out there on the bus. Just go search for him. So they did a search and rescue, and they could not find him. And at the time I was thinking, there’s no way that dog. He’s 12 years old, he’s diabetic, he just had eye surgery, you can barely see, he cannot hear, he’s completely deaf. There’s no way that this dog could survive more than a half hour in the water, swimming. And then, so they went out, they looked for him, they could not find it. We posted something next door. Later that night, someone had said, Oh, they saw a dog swimming in the intercoastal for 20 minutes. And then they mentioned that to their neighbor, their neighbor had read the next door posting. And then they told us that they had seen the dog swimming in this canal quite far away from our house, by the way. And we saw that post the next morning, unfortunately. So it wasn’t till 26 hours after the initial fall into the intercoastal that my son had gone out to that particular canal and he looked under a dock and he could see the dog still swimming after 26 hours. And he pulled him out and he was lifeless at the time. He was virtually alive but could not move, but did drink some water. Imagine a dog didn’t drink for 26 hours. Didn’t eat and didn’t sleep. I can learn from my other dogs. That in itself, did not even mention 26 hours of sleeping but not eating, drinking not, not sleeping for 20 to 26 hours. That in itself was a miracle. Throw on that you’ve been swimming for 26 hours. And I don’t know how it’s possible. What he found in the middle of the night a log or something in the river to hold them up. But somehow he survived and he did have hypothermia. We took him to the vet and he made a recovery after two weeks.

Norman  47:50  

That is an incredible story. Yeah, I can’t even walk to the end of my lawn. Yeah. And he’s completely fine, right?

Colin  48:00  

Hollywood writes we’ll be selling those too . Exactly.

Norman  48:06  

Yeah, we’ll get them on our other podcast. It’s a dog I know.

Norman  48:14  

one other thing I got. I really do have to touch on. I’ve heard a lot. And I know a little bit about your crazy parties. A calling Campbell is known for crazy parties. I don’t know if you want to talk about these parties or the boat parade prior to Christmas type aid.

Norman  48:36  

If you want to get into it, we get

Colin  48:38  

we’re not going to college. Are we?

Norman 48:40  

in college? That’s a different story.

Colin  48:42  

I had two parties. We had the recession keg party when the recession happened. And then two years later, it still never ended in Canada and we had the end of the recession. Okay, party so , we’ve had some fun parties in college and I do enjoy getting together with people and I just, We’re like minded and who I like to have a lot of fun like this about all  always go to having fun. And every year we put on a party in Fort Lauderdale for people I know that families and others and they come over to my house and we have we’re Our house is fortunate to be located right at the end of the boat parade. The boat parade is like the Macy’s day Santa Claus parade, and over a million people watch it in Fort Lauderdale. And so, started out just by a few people coming over and then next year we had about 30 40 people and then the next year we started adding some things we started adding themes, stages fans, and so it’s become bigger and bigger and bigger. , and now we’re actually , we’ve run out of land so we had to build over our pool the whole stage over the pool to handle the more people and , short of buying the house next door. I think we’re going to start running out of room, at the house but we do like to have a lot of fun. Life is hard work and fun, it’s live work and play and part of life and I love it and I’m gonna keep doing it.

Norman

Right. And the theme this year was Gatsby, wasn’t it?

Norman 50:11  

Yeah, it was the roaring 20s Great Gatsby, and everybody dressed up and, and I was amazed at how many people, came fully decked out in her 20s outfits and flappers and, and, and really just just really had a time of their life. , maybe it was, I don’t know. We had the roaring 20s. And then, four months to three months later, we had flash depression. It’s like, isn’t that something

Norman  50:41  

else? Yeah. Let’s see if it’s

Colin  50:44  

yours. I just made that up. By the way, the flash depression. I’m assuming this is gonna be like a huge drop and a huge pickup. Right flash depression, but it’s amazing how time is repeating , it’s the world’s repeating It’s all over and over again.

Norman  51:02  

So I’ve known a lot of entrepreneurs. And I know a lot of people that are just given silver spoons. And, they get anything they want. And one of the things that I really admire about you is I was visiting you one day, you were working at one of the buildings, and your son Quinn was working. And so anyways, it turns out that, Quinn’s working and he had to, he had to buy his vehicle. It was no gimmies he worked. He, he, he was sweat equity. So, there’s so many people that I know that would have just, oh, here’s, here’s your car. , here’s your Corvette. Here’s your Porsche. And Nope, he worked for it. He understands money. And , I just applaud you for that.

Colin  51:56  

Yeah, I think we have to do that. I think every parent has to think about how they want their children to be successful. And if we over spoil them, we can give them too much, I think that can have a more damaging effect on them than having too little. I think if you go one extreme, too little, it doesn’t help versus too much. , like, when I grew up, I didn’t have money for college, I had to work full time to pay for my college. And that was, I think, a little too extreme in one direction. , I want to make certain like my children, they have their colleges paid for at the same time, when it comes to other things like cars, and, things like that, I think, they got to work for it. They got to make it happen. And we teach them that when they’re young, they’ll be able to take care of themselves their whole life. There’s one thing I like to ask at the end of every show, we kind of pass the torch over to the guests and Colin Campbell

Norman

Do  a guy that can come on I know a guy

Colin 53:00  

Do I know a guy that can come on? I know a guy. Um, well, I’ll tell you what I know a gal.

Colin  53:10  

Her name is Lil Roberts, and I invested in her wonderful companies. And she is killing it. And she runs a company called Zendo. And they are building a great platform to help small businesses manage their accounting very efficiently and at a low cost. And I think she would be great for your show.

Norman 53:35  

That’s awesome. We’ll reach out or if you could help us reach out to lil, and we’ll get her on the next or one of these podcasts.

Colin 53:44  

All right, great. Thanks for having me on.

Norman  53:47  

Hey, thanks a lot. Colin. It has been a pleasure having you on.

Colin  53:51  

It’s been a pleasure to be on. I Know this Guy or gal. It’s a great show. I love it. Thanks, Norm , for having me on.

Norman 54:00  

Hey guys and gals thanks for listening. For more great content please like, subscribe and follow me. I Know this Guy… on all social media platforms. I Know this Guy… relies on listeners like you. Please visit our Patreon page to find out how you can help

Date: June 9,2020

Episode: 3

Title: Norman Farrar introduces Colin Campbell, entrepreneur and CEO of Hostopia, a leading Broadband Hosting Company.

Subtitle: The rise of domain extension .club and microbrands

Final Show Link: https://iknowthisguy.com/episodes/03-colin-campbell/

In this episode of I Know this Guy…, Norman Farrar introduces Colin Campbell, entrepreneur and CEO of Hostopia, a leading Broadband Hosting Company.

Colin Campbell is passionate about technology. He discussed the opportunities microbrands can help the community and how Shopify is taking over Amazon. He built a building in Fort Lauderdale that houses startup entrepreneurs to help the community get out of flash depression caused by Covid-19.

If you are a new listener to I Know this Guy…, we would love to hear from you.  Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!

In this episode, we discuss:

• 1:25 : Colin’s passion with technology and his new ideas
• 4:01 : Looking back at Tucows 
• 9:13 : Learn about domain extension .club and microbrands 
• 18:00: The rise of microbrands like Milton the Cat and how microbrands can compete with Amazon
• 22:51: Travelling to China and Japan to launch the domain extension .club
• 27:59: Unleash new set of opportunities
• 30:57: Startups.club and making things happen
• 34:14: The importance of Networking in building a company
• 37:16: The quote Colin live by
• 39:11:  Liquidity and Control
• 45:13:  Colin’s King Charles Spaniel dog incident and recovery
• 48:19:  Colin’s crazy fun parties
• 51:56:  Colin’s take on parenting 

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This weeks question is:

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In this episode, we mentioned the following resources:

• https://www.tucows.com/
• https://www.meowingtons.com/
• https://www.startups.club/
• https://www.eonetwork.org/
• https://www.hostopia.com/
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• https://meow.com/
• Geeksforless.com
• https://www.chewy.com/

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