The Power of One

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of attending the Social Networking Conference in Miami Florida. I was only able to attend one day out of the two and I was able to attend as a press person representing the Orlando Business Journal where I have a regular column.

Verna, who works for Mark Brooks’s company, Courtland Brooks Agency was the press contact who sat me on a bench and brought one interesting entrepreneur to me after another. She kept my plate full with dynamic people doing incredible things on the web.

One such person was a guy by the name of Markus Frind. Markus is a regular kind of guy who looks really smart and wears really cool glasses but when I saw his company name, I nearly got weak at the knees. I started jumping up and down and screaming like I was meeting a rock star. And to me, I was!!! My husband had just recently read an article about Markus who is the owner and founder of the number 1 dating website in the world called Plentyoffish.com Before I stopped screaming and jumping up and down I quickly called my husband and asked him the name of the website we were reading about recently. When he announced it was plentyoffish.com, I promptly handed the phone over to him and introduced the two programmers to one another.

Before you start thinking that I’m a complete geek, let me share, that one report stated that Markus makes about 10 million $ a year off of his free social networking site. Although he didn’t confirm it to me, he told me he stopped sharing the amount of money he was now making. Oh yah, and did I mention, that he only has one employee?? And his biggest competitors, like eharmony or match.com employee 400-500 people? Markus is just ONE person, and he’s recently hired one gal to work for him.

After getting over my initial shock that I was sitting with Markus Frind, the founder of www.plentyoffish.com, I settled in on asking the questions that I wanted to know! I wasn’t interested in how he did it necessarily; I was more interested how one person could achieve such dramatic results, and what sort of person he was to focus on one major purpose like he did.

So my questions started: why did he pick opening a dating website? Because he wanted to service as many people in the general population as possible. How did he do it with just one person? He focused every single day on how to make it better and while he would listen to the feedback from the participants, he ultimately listened to his gut instinct. Why was his site so special I asked? Not because it looked good he told me. He said programmers like bells and whistles, but the average person just wants it to work. That’s all they care about! He doesn’t try to make it look good. He just wants it to be great at allowing people to meet. Then I asked where he worked and what sort of person he was? He told me he grew up on a farm in Canada, originally from Germany and he didn’t know the language when he moved there, but over time he grew up and found he liked programming. He told me he lived in a 2 bedroom apartment and didn’t any distractions. He was competitive, and just loved that he was like David in David and Goliath. I loved that scenario. I loved it that he was sitting in an apartment continuing to make his site better and better, and not out spending all of his money on himself. He didn’t get caught up in the glamour of the money and continued to keep his life simple. I commented to him that now he could afford boats and cars and houses anywhere. He did admit to buying a BMW, but that was about it. He also travels a lot now but other than that, he still likes things simple.

It was such a pleasure to meet Markus. I am impressed by his accomplishment of course, but more than that, by how he chooses to live. He lives simply and without the bravado. It made me want to scale back, and to stop the thousands of things that I do, and think about the ONE thing that I want to achieve.

What about you? Do you have one project that gets you up early every day and keeps you up at night? Do you spend your precious energy thinking about how to make it better or more improved?

Just think about what one person can do. When one person gets completely focused, and puts all of their heart, mind and soul behind a project, the possibilities are limitless.

The power of One.
It’s all we really need.
The power of ONE.