Ravi’s Rants

No, I’m not talking about the mean T-Wolves, who are making their star player’s family starve.

On November 12, 2004, ICANN passed a policy, which basically means this: Domain name transfers will no longer require email-based approval by the domain name’s regsistrant.

So, I could basically ask for your domain name to be transferred over to my name, and your registrar will process it without so much as sending you an email about it. A few registrars are protecting their customers by locking their domain names by default (and for free, too). And if you wish to transfer over a domain name yourself, you would have to unlock it first. Which is still great considering the consequences otherwise.

ICANN has implemented a “Redemption Grace Period Service that provides a 30-day period for domain name holders to reclaim their names if deleted unintentionally from a registry database“.

Their “Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” won’t come to your rescue fast enough when your site with 100,000 visitors a day, 5,000,000 impressions and $5,000 in revenue a month from adwords, suddenly starts pointing to your competition’s web site.

So, go lock up your domain names before the domain-wolves get them.

Link: ICANN’s policy

When you don’t care who is at the helm of a company, you don’t care who its board of directors are, you don’t care who works there, but you care about their product, you’ve got a “Product Brand”.

Think Coke, Marlboro (nope, quit smoking 5 years ago), BMW, Starbucks.

When you are willing to buy a product regardless of how good it is when stacked against the competition, just because you love or trust the folks backing the product, you’ve got a “Corporate Brand”.

Think Google, Apple, Volkswagen, Apache.

When you buy a product for the sake of an individual - because s/he works at the company that makes the product, runs the company, or simply endorses the product (and you are fully aware that they are being paid for the endorsements, and you know that they may have never used the product themselves), but you still feel like you have to have this product just because you love or appreciate this individual so much, then you have the classic “Individual Brand”.

Think Michael Jordan, Al Pacino, Roy Williams, Stephen Pierce.

What kind of brand do you want to create? What kind of brand are you capable of creating?

Like Robert Kiyosaki’s two dads , I have more than one Guru Drona.

My second guru has no hair, and flaunts his shiny pate - even on the covers of his books. He has created a brand out of being bald. Ok, he’s not really bald. Clean-shaven, shall we say?

Lives in the same county as me in New York, has never met me, never heard of me. But I meet him every day for lunch. He talks, while I read. He has my fullest attention while I stuff my face. I’m still listening during coffee right after.

I have read almost all of his books. I have read even others’ stuff that he publishes on his web site. I hang on to every word he writes. I feel disappointed if there’s nothing new on his blog.

Here’s to one of the most unassuming, straight-shooting, groundbreaking, provocative, writer and marketer with penetrating insights and thoughts as fresh as the wisp of warm, coastal air that hits you on a morning walk along the beach.

Thanks, Mr. Godin!

You may not have heard of Ekalavya.

Ekalavya, as remembered by ancient East-Indian mythology, was a poor boy from the jungle. His dream was to become the greatest archer in the world.

The only way to do that was to learn from Guru Drona, one of the great warriors of all times. Drona, who was the archery tutor of the royal family, of course wanted his favorite disciple, Prince Arjuna to become the greatest archer of all times.

When Drona refused to accept Ekalavya as his disciple, a disappointed-yet-undeterred Ekalavya went home, and went on to practice archery in front of a statue of Drona he built himself.

Years later, Drona and Arjuna run into a young boy in the forest, who is such an amazing archer that he is able to pierce the smallest of pebbles from thousands of yards away with his arrows. Troubled by Arjuna’s jealous anger over seeing someone so much better than he, Drona cunningly demands Ekalavya’s thumb from his right hand, as his “Guru Dakshina” (tutoring fees), for having used his statue and hence learning from him “indirectly”.

An unflinching Ekalavya cuts off his thumb without a second thought, and hands it to Drona, thus making history, while letting Arjuna regain the status of the “greatest archer ever”.

I, Ravi Jayagopal - am Ekalavya.

And my Guru Drona is from Texas – one of the greatest writers of all times, a brilliant marketer, a great philosopher, a wizard with words, known as the Wizard of Ads.

I dedicate this blog to my unwitting, involuntary Guru, who doesn’t have a clue that I have been secretly learning from his works for years now; that I have most of his books; that I have his statue built in my mind.

I just hope Roy H. Williams does not come to claim my thumb.