How I Succeeded is a regular series on Lifehacker where we ask business leaders for the secrets and tactics behind their success. Today: Tara Commerford from GoDaddy.
Current gig: GoDaddy country manager for Australia and New Zealand
Location: Sydney, Australia
Current mobile device: iPhone 6
Current computer: Macbook Pro
One word that best describes how you work: Collaboratively
What apps/software/tools can’t you live without?
Manything, Beanhunter and Dropbox. I also use Zoom for day-to-day meetings with the US and for monthly board meetings.
What social network do you find the most useful?
Pinterest (I’m currently renovating and it’s a brilliant tool for collating design and project plans) and LinkedIn, of course!
What were the most important lessons you learned while growing your business?
Hire an exceptional team. If they’re passionate about the company, the people and the future direction, they will be your company’s best assets and employer brand advocates.
What has been the most surprising part of your business journey?
The results GoDaddy is seeing in the Australian market in such a short space of time have been really encouraging. We’ve received a great deal of attention since GoDaddy’s launch and there’s been much excitement about how we’ll be helping the small business community locally.
What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?
Accelerated decision making and knowing when to drop an idea and move on.
What’s your sleep routine like?
I usually get around five to six hours of sleep but could always use more.
What advice would you offer to other businesses on how to succeed?
- Relationships are critical to your business’ success – take the right people with you along the way. It’s amazing what you can do with the best people working together and supporting each other.
- Continue to look to refine – both yourself and your business operations. Refinement and learning leads to personal and professional growth, it’s something we really value highly at GoDaddy.
- And finally, there’s always going to be peaks and valleys. The latter is inevitable, so keep walking through them.
Comments
4 responses to “How I Succeeded: GoDaddy’s Tara Commerford”
The way i became a godaddy customer was because of 3 key words put into google.
‘Australia domain hosting’
top result, checked them out, signed up and they lived happily ever after.
But your web designer just shuddered. Argh… I have to deal with a proprietary hosting platform?
lol, and why would a ‘web designer’ care? Domains are used for more than just web pages and godaddy are more than just a website host
Let’s say you’ve been using Microsoft Word. Word is good, everyone knows MS Word. But then your boss comes to you and says ‘Hey cesario, I need you to create a new document using this new application named Grekantark – go complete the document using the new system. After you finish you can go back to using the familiar Microsoft Word.
That’s why it’s annoying.