Google is an unconventional company with a huge stake in our online lives. It is a source of fascination for many, but what really happens in the Googleplex? And what cool factoids and stats exist from the company’s relatively short past?  There is a great post this morning from Mashable that answers just that! read 10 Fun Fact You Didn’t Know About Google

@AndrewHazen

My good friend Adam Toren’s site, YoungEntrepreneur.com has a wonderful post on Common Characteristics of the Best Entrepreneurs by Chris Bennett…..here it is, enjoy it and act on it!

- @AndrewHazen

You’ve heard it said that certain careers require certain attitudes to succeed in. Policemen must possess good physical fitness and courage in the face of danger. Graphic designers must be creative, original thinkers with an artistic mind. Entrepreneurs, too, share several common characteristics that those those who hope to achieve success in the field should strive to emulate. Today we explore seven crucial characteristics of the best entrepreneurs that anyone thinking about starting a business ought to consider.

Perseverance

In the business world, problems and complications are a part of every day life. Especially in the early days of a company, entrepreneurs can be said to be climbing a wall of opposition as they struggle to manage the many goals, tasks and constantly evolving problems of the new organization. Furthermore, many entrepreneurs fail many times when trying to start a small business, and the ones who succeed are the ones who can persevere through failure and try again. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, was publicly thrown out of his own company at age thirty. Fighting thoughts of suicide, Jobs regained his composure and went on to found two other very successful companies, NeXt and Pixar. Later, Jobs was recruited to come back to apple and rescue the company from the brink of extinction. His efforts demonstrate perseverance in entrepreneurship better than perhaps any other.

Task management

The ability to see an end goal, break it down into many tasks, and see those tasks through to completion is a crucial skill of successful entrepreneurs. This skill is one many of us learned in high school and college. When you had a big research paper due, you knew you had to research the topic, find time to write the paper, compile a bibliography, proof read it, and turn it in on time, all the while also working a job and managing work from other classes.

Similarly, you may come into your office one day to find that not only must you prepare a presentation for a big name contract, but must also move everything out of the main office in preparation for a new hardwood floor installation, while also making sure that the design guys finish their website template on time. Rarely will these things work out without any issue, and that is when you must manage the tasks and figure out how to make them all happen.

Courage

It is typical for many people to discourage you in the early days of your new project. This can be even more painful when your first few projects either fail or achieve very little success. Disparaging remarks can be hurtful to the morale of a new entrepreneur trying to get his or her new project off the ground. It is then that you must possess the courage to tune out those who do not share your vision, ignoring the nay-sayers and pressing forward on nothing more than the strength of your own determination.

It takes true courage to reject social pressure and to try to build something truly outstanding, but this is a trait that all successful entrepreneurs must have in order to survive in the business world. When Larry Paige and Sergey Brin were beginning work on Google, they made the decision to max out their credit card and drain their bank accounts in order to fund the nascent project. Such a decision surely must have attracted some negativity from peers and family, but the two showed true courage in seeing the project through to the billion dollar empire it is today.

Social Skills

Rare is the entrepreneur who achieves huge success completely on his own. Even Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17 year old founder of the wildly popular yet incredibly simple ChatRoulette website had to take investment money from his family to get the project rolling. Whether you need help with design, programming, finance, or investment, if you plan on going into business, you must possess the ability to approach other people and convince them of the worth of your idea. More than just a friendly attitude, you must somehow find a way to bend their vision to match your own so that they come to see the brilliance of you work in the same way you do. This is by no means an easy skill to master, but it is one that will help you greatly as you struggle to put your new company together.

Negotiation Skills

There is a saying among business savvy people that “everything is negotiable.” While this might not be exactly true, it does illustrate that most people in business will try to negotiate with you as you strive to put deals together. Unless you possess solid negotiation skills, you might end up getting the short end of the stick. For example, if you hope to put together a deal where a skilled programmer works on your project without pay in exchange for equity, you might only want to give up 5%, but he may be thinking more along the lines of 15%. Unless you possess a strong will and an ability to negotiate in a time of need, you’ll end up giving away more of the company than you had hoped.

Internal Motivation

A key difference between running a business and working a job is that no one will be pressuring you to complete your tasks when you run your own business. Instead, you must be completely self-motivated to do everything it takes to get the work done. In the beginning, you may be working a day job or attending college classes at the same time. This means that after taking care of the work owe to those obligations, you must still find enough energy and determination to sit down and put in long hours for your business.

If you are the sort of person who needs a boss hawking over their shoulder in order to remain on task, or feels that you work best inside the known structure of a job, entrepreneurship will not be an easy life path for you. When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg began work on the project, he was attending classes at the prestigious Harvard University. By finding the drive to not only juggle demanding course work but also to develop a groundbreaking social platform, Zuckerburg demonstrated rock solid internal motivation.

Opportunism

Sometimes the best ideas are ones that are already showing huge success. As an example, when Jack Dorsey launched Twitter in 2007, Facebook’s status feature was already in use and gaining popularity. No doubt seeing the opportunity in the feature, Dorsey and his team made it the central feature of Twitter. This little social web application has skyrocketed in popularity, being regularly used by web surfers, celebrities, and even companies for marketing purposes. Twitter was recently valued at $1 billion after raising close to $100 million in venture funding. The lesson to be learned is clear: if you give the public what it wants, you stand a great shot at success.

Got a great idea? Enter the Create Your Opportunity Contest for a chance to win your your ideal .CO domain and $50,000!

You can enter the Create Your Opportunity Contest between May 4 and June 14 by registering on Pitch.co and telling us and the world about your big idea, your ideal .CO web address and why you should win the contest. The more thorough, well thought-out and passionate your pitch, the more likely it is to get lots of votes from the public. Once you submit your idea, you’ll want to promote it like crazy. Get on Facebook, email, Twitter, your phone and wherever else and beg, borrow or plead to get your friends, family and strangers to vote for your entry. You must be at least 18 years old and a US resident to submit an entry.

30 pitches will be chosen by the public to move on to the final round. Plus, the judges may “save” up to 8 total pitches that don’t make the top 30 vote getters and advance them to final judgment, so make your pitch awesome. Judges will evaluate pitches based upon the originality of your idea, the completeness of your plan, your bio and background, the judge’s opinion of your ability to execute your plan and your demonstrated ability to promote your pitch. By June 20, judges from .CO  and a panel of expert judges will select the overall contest winner. After you win, the real fun begins as you figure out how to spend your hard-earned cash and work with the Pappas Group, an award winning creative agency, to design and build your website.

@AndrewHazen

Some of you may or may not know that I am a serial entrepreneur and admitted domain name addict…..(yes, I do own SerialEntrepreneurs.com GRIN) – with that said, my father and I have been in the bobblehead business for 12+ years and recently got the exclusive rights to sell and distribute the official Michael Jackson bobble throughout the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

As a domainer, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to hand register some amazing domain names like MJBobble.com, MichaelJacksonBobblehead.com, etc. We also procured, in a private domain sale, WhereIsMJ.com which I think will become an extremely popular site as thousands and thousands of people submit funny candid pictures of Where their Michael Jackson bobble is….and what it is doing!  Viewers to the site will vote on the best pictures and those with the most votes will Win Cash and Prizes – how great is that!

To see some pictures already submitted to the site please visit WhereIsMJ.com this will be your morning entertainment today……

@AndrewHazen

Digital News Report – For those that clip grocery store coupons, you might want to pick up extra Sunday newspapers on June 6th, 2010. Proctor and Gamble (P&G) will have over $100 worth of coupons of their branded products in the upcoming Sunday advertising inserts.

P&G will have coupons for beauty, grooming, dental products, and home care products with most coupons expiring around July 31, 2010. The brands include Pantene, Gillette, Crest, Old Spice, Venus, Dawn and PUR water filters.

In addition to the P&G coupons, there will be other coupon ad inserts as well. The June 6th ads should be a little bit more than an average week.

If you clip grocery store coupons, and you use them strategically you can sometimes get products for next to free or at little cost. If you are organized and plan you grocery coupon shopping strategically you can easily save hundreds of dollars each year.  Be sure to visit Coupons.info for more information

@AndrewHazen

Google wants to turn televisions into giant monitors for Web surfing so it can make more money selling ads. The company generated nearly $24 billion in revenue mostly from Internet ads displayed on computer screens…The Internet-equipped televisions are expected to be made by Sony and be powered by an Intel computer chip. Google is expected to provide the software, including its Android operating system and Chrome Web browser.

I think this is wonderful for Internet Marketers as well as domainers; think about sitting on your couch and wanting pizza – just go to Pizza.com on your TV….or if you want a product sample, just go to Sample.com…want to learn about living sugar free – go to SugarFree.com; the examples go on and on.

From an internet marketing perspective, wouldn’t it be great to see a product/service advertised and then with a Picture-In-Picture window bring the website right up on your TV display!

I think the upside here is extraordinary!

@AndrewHazen

Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day to all moms worldwide!!

If you woke up this morning without a gift for Mother’s Day don’t panic, the following domain names are dropping and/or are available and can make a wonderful Mother’s Day Gift….and only $10 a year!

AllergyDepot.com – this has many possibilities (ad revenue, forum, product/affiliate site) DO NOT leave it parked!

ZooEquipment.com – great product site name for what else – Zoo Equipment

BuyRentGuide.com – don’t know if you should buy or rent? Checkout BuyRentGuide.com

ForexGuides.com – Forex trading seems popular these days…how about a guide for it?

HowToCareFor.com  – Great portal site name for tips on How To Care For ….anything

And of course you can always try to buy your mom and/or spouse her name in a .com for them to launch their own site/brand….

As much as I love the internet, I really do not spend a lot of time aimlessly surfing the web and checking out silly sites, games, jokes, etc., etc.

There are a few sites, all ran by the same group I believe, that really make me chuckle and I wanted to share them with you:

PeopleOfWalmart.com

YouDriveWhat.com

GirlsInYogaPants.com

WhiteTrashRepairs.com

BeachCreeps.com

ThatsMyBoss.com

Enjoy….you’re guaranteed to have some laughs!

@AndrewHazen

There was a very interesting article recently published in the Long Island Business News on Geo Domain Names.

The takeaway from the article is that while conventional Long Island real estate may be stuck in a slump, sales of virtual turf of Internet Domain Names are Booming!

Please read the entire article here: City Clickers: Geo Domain Names Are The Hottest Real Estate Deals Going

@AndrewHazen

I have had the great pleasure of meeting some of Long Island’s prominent domainers whose domain portfolios are QUITE impressive….and while there have been some great domainer meet-ups in NYC..mainly thanks to Elliot; I’d like to see a domainers meet-up on Long Island.  Between myself and about five others….let’s schedule a meet-up while the weather is getting better!

If you have a true passion for domains/domaining and have an interest in the meet-up please let me know….

@AndrewHazen