In this Business Blast Podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Chris Parker, the founder of whatismyipaddress.com, a site that now receives about six million monthly visitors. Parker shares a cautionary tale about being defrauded by a typo‑squatted advertiser, emphasizing the importance of due diligence. He then outlines three core digital‑security practices for entrepreneurs: automated off‑site backups, using a password manager and checking for compromised credentials via Have I Been Pwned, and enabling two‑factor authentication wherever possible. Parker recounts his entrepreneurial path, starting with a newspaper‑delivery job at age 12, experimenting with small web ventures, and unintentionally creating whatismyipaddress.com to solve a personal technical need, which later grew into a major online utility. He advises aspiring founders to hire a business coach early, cites the book “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff” for a happiness mindset, recommends Ryan Levesque’s “Ask” for audience insight, and shares a favorite quote about staying humble. Listeners are directed to the business site whatismyipaddress.com and Parker’s personal site cgparker.com for further connection.
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Welcome to the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by WagsMedia. WagsMedia provides you with everything you need to generate more customers and grow your brand. Head on over to wagsmedia.com, W-A-G-S-M-E-D-I-A dot com, to enter a contest where you can win a free, done-for-you custom website valued at $2,500 for a limited time only. Now let's jump into the episode.
Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Chris Parker with us. He is the founder of whatismyipaddress.com, which which has grown to a monthly audience of 6 million visitors. He now raises awareness of online safety and privacy issues for entrepreneurs. So welcome to the show, man.
Thank you for having me on, Tyler.
Of course, grateful to have you here, Chris. We'll dive right into the first one. The first question I have for you is what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
You know, I think if it's for entrepreneurs, probably the underlying story is, uh, there was one time that I had an advertiser approach me and I was really excited about the opportunity. It was a company name that I recognized and I went ahead and, uh, great, let's sign them up, let's get them into my platform. Started, uh, running ads on my site for them and, uh, things started getting squirrely about 2 weeks later. And, uh, about 2 weeks later I found out that it was not really the advertiser that I was dealing with. But someone who had typo squatted, got the.net instead of the.com.
Wow.
And had copied their site and it looked exactly like them. And I got defrauded out of a good chunk of ad revenue. And so the life lesson I learned is do your due diligence regardless of who you think you're talking to.
Yeah, man, that's wild. I'm sorry that happened to you, but I guess it, it, uh, from what you do now, I probably helped catapult that.
So absolutely.
Um, the next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
So I— there's probably like 3 things that everybody should be— all of your listeners should be doing. Um, Automated offsite backups. Backups aren't really backups unless they're not in your house. If your house burns down and your backup is right next to your computer that gets cooked, you don't really have a backup. And there's great cheap resources out there for that, like Carbonite and whatnot. Use a password manager. Assume— you basically have to assume that if you've created an account somewhere, that account will be compromised and that password will become public. So if you use the same password twice, you've just significantly increased the risk of a second account being compromised in conjunction with the first. Probably one of the— if you really want to scare yourself and see how big of an issue it is, there's a website called Have I Been Pwned, with a P instead of an O. You type in your email address and it will tell you everywhere your email address has been associated with a breach.
Wow.
And that will give you a clue of like, oh, it was compromised in this Adobe breach. It was available in this breach. And it'll, it'll, uh, it'll concern you how many times your, your email address has been associated with a breach where there was likely a password associated with it.
So wait, haveibeenowned.com, but where's the P at?
Instead of, instead of, instead of the O, it's a P. Oh, the hacker euphemism. German.
Got it. Got it. Okay. Well, I look forward to getting scared later. I'm going to look at that.
That means you should use, you know, Password1, LastPass, Dashlane, something out there that allows you to create basically random passwords that even you don't know that on your local machine you can use.
Got it.
Probably the third is like that one, Anywhere you can enable two-factor authentication, do it. So that means not only do you need a password, but they need to be able to prove that something is in your possession. Usually for most people, it's an SMS message sent to your cell phone. It's probably not ultimately the best mechanism for two-factor authentication. That can be cracked and misused, but it's at least, it's for most of us, It's better than nothing.
Yeah, I actually use for some of my stuff, I use Google Authenticator.
Yeah.
Which is also a two-factor authentic— excuse me, authentication thing. So the next one I have for you is what is your best piece of overall business advice? So I guess I'd like to dive in more to this. So I'm assuming from the thing that happened to you and the story you said is kind of what catapulted you to create all this? I could be wrong, but then, so how did you like start in the entrepreneurial world and like security like world?
So, I think I'd always wanted to run my own business and, you know, it started out when I was 12 and delivering newspapers to make an extra couple bucks a week or something like that. And had tried a number of businesses, put together a number of websites that made a little bit of money but just weren't really scalable. Kind of the one thing that worked out for me that was unintentional was whatismyipaddress.com. It was a solution I needed for a technical problem, a place that I was working. And so I put it together just to tell me what my IP address was wherever I— whatever internet connection I was on, I could quickly go there and see what the IP address was. Good way to work with technical support to resolve connectivity issues, stuff like that. And, uh, it turned out to be, uh, become really popular and started adding frequently asked questions. And, uh, it became the site that it is today with a tremendous amount of content. And, uh, that move towards security just because it's— and privacy, it's just early days of the internet, people didn't worry about that sort of thing. But these days, yeah, people are a lot more concerned about, you know, who knows where I'm going, what I'm doing, what websites I'm visiting. Building online profiles of my behavior, stuff like that. People start getting alarmed about that.
Totally. And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
From the entrepreneurial aspect, I think it would have been hire a business coach much earlier. Like about a year ago, I started working with a business coach and the insights that you don't have about your own business can be pretty incredible. Just having someone who can look at your business from the outside, who isn't stuck in kind of the industry mindset that you might be in, it has just been proven tremendously invaluable to me these days.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
The key to happiness, I think there's a book a long time ago called "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff." You know, you're gonna have problems with your business. You're going to have challenges in your life. I think if you expect that, you're setting yourself up for more success. And, and, you know, if it's not a game changer, just roll with the punches and don't worry about the stuff. Enjoy your family, your friends, your pets, things like that.
And what is the best book that you've read, and what was the number one thing you learned from that?
So there's a, um, A book that I just recently read by Ryan Levesque called "Ask," and it's a methodology for understanding your audience better and communicating with them in a much more effective way. It's something I'm in the process of implementing on my site and really being able to directly communicate with the different types of people that are using my website.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
So there's this quote, and I know I'm struggling to remember it. Oh, there it is. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And I don't know who originally said it, but I think it really, it's good to stay humble. And as soon as you start thinking you've got all the answers, you're in for a big surprise.
Yes, man. I love that quote as well. And thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?
Obviously, the best place for the business is whatismyipaddress.com. But if someone wants to get in touch with me personally, they can visit my own site at cgparker.com.
Perfect, man. Thanks again for hopping on.
Thank you. Have a great afternoon.
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