Melissa: 10 minutes.

I went to a party last year, which was a total dud. The only good thing to come out of it? My introduction to and friendship with Melissa. (Which made the event totally worth it.)

Melissa is a fierce, bold, action-oriented, passionate entrepreneur/idea girl/supermom/friend. She decided she wanted to make a film, so she did. She decided she wanted to start a company, so she did. She decided she wanted to interview Seth Godin, so she did. Why not.

I admire everything about her.

She joined me and a couple of girlfriends for lunch the other day. I think we were talking about website domains that she bought for fun. And she said, “If an idea is good enough to stick around for 10 minutes, then it’s definitely worth the $5 it costs to buy the domain for it.”

So basically, don’t waste time. Act.

I should do more of that, and less of what I’m good at: procrastinating.

Thanks, lovely – as always.

Ryan: Get linked.

Ryan Evans (@ryanevans) is the owner of Rand Media Group, an online marketing firm. Ryan ordered three dozen cupcakes; I delivered them so we could have a nice chat on his doorstep.

Fast forward 36 hours and we both ended up at the same coffee shop in Lincoln Park. And because both of us had work we wanted to procrastinate work for ourselves, we started talking business. Well, I let him do most of the talking, because I had all of the learning to do.

He ran through some of the basics of SEO and search engine ad placement. And although what he was sharing with me was really basic to anyone who has ever owned a web-based business, it was brand new to me. The stickiest?

“Get as many links to your site as possible.”

Links to your website boost its credibility among the algorithms Google uses to determine which sites are good and which sites are crap.  Good sites with high rankings get higher placement and more visits. Which, duh, lead to more sales.

I can’t wait to figure out how we’ll implement this strategy in 2010. It’ll be interesting to track and measure our efforts.

Thanks, Ryan, for sharing all two hours worth of conversation and information with me. I really do owe you more than just cupcakes.