The biggest hassle in starting a business for me was selecting a name with a reasonable domain name.

The problem is that it is next to impossible to find a name that you like, reasonably represents your company, and bows appropriately to the SEO gods. I spent 2 weeks working through hundreds of names before settling on iSupport Services. The maddening thing and the object of my rant is that most of the names I wanted were taken by cyber squatters, not people running a regular business.

My solution to this problem is to charge a $100/year tax on .com domain names. People that know me would be shocked that I would voluntarily advocate taxing anything. I know this sounds extreme for something that costs about $10/yr to register. However, this tax would force cyber squatters that hold hundreds of names hoping someone is desperate enough to big money to get the one that best matches their business to re-think their business plan. Hopefully the result would be for them to release the bulk of the names back to potential real (I would say honest) business owners.

To be a successful entrepreneur, I believe you need help from a good lawyer, accountant, and banker. The purpose of this blog is to give an endorsement to my banker, Mary Rose Willis at First Citizens Bank. I came to her with a business plan and a need to open a simple business account and she has treated me like the treasurer for Cisco Systems. I even got a round of golf with FCB’s regional VP who has helped me with introduction to perspective local customers. If you are within FCB’s footprint, I strongly recommend you consider banking with them and if by chance you are in Greensboro NC, ask for Mary Rose Willis.

I spent close to 20 years in telecommunications starting in the mid-80s and saw first hand the impact the internet and its related technologies had on that industry. The price of a telecommunication class 5 switch dropped 99% from $400/port to a couple of bucks/port (and guess what happened to the price of Lucent stock). The cost to place a domestic long distance call has dropped 100% (fortunately companies like Verizon and AT&T were more adept than Lucent and found new revenue sources). The ripple effect his had created on the entire US economy created a recession in the late 90s.

Well, it is no surprise the same thing is happening to the media market. According to the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper ad revenues dropped 28% in the 3Q09. If you believe Google searches are the best arbiter of a trend, try entering “newspapers are” in to a Google search and look at what Google suggest.

The point here is that I learned from the lessons of the 90’s and with northcarolina.me am trying to get a head of the curve. I believe the strategy is sound. Now I just need to focus on execution.

My career path over the last 20 years has steadily moved from large corporations to increasing smaller companies while my job satisfaction level has steadily increased. Last year I decided to not to seek further employment and to instead dive in to the world of startups and entrepreneurship. It has been an excruciating slow process from concept to actually going live with Connexius and iSupport Services. I have learned many lessons along the way (including how to create a Wordpress-based website). The purpose of this blog is to share my lessons and hopefully build a community of budding entrepreneurs like myself so we can all share and learn together and hopefully create successful businesses.