September 29, 2025 • 29 mins
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I sat down with Peter Askew to dig into the story of how he accidentally ended up buying VidaliaOnions.com , and turned it into a direct-to-consumer onion business shipping over 100,000 pounds a year. Peter broke down how he built trust with farmers, set up fulfillment on a handshake deal, and eventually expanded the brand to include Onions.com as a premium domain.
We also talked about what makes farming partnerships so unique, the real power of type-in traffic to descriptive domain names, and why sometimes the best opportunities come from simply talking to the right person who “gets it.”
This is part two of a two-part episode. If you want to check out the first half, listen to episode #226.
If you want to learn more from Peter, check him out here:
- Twitter / X: @searchbound
- Blog: DeepSouthVentures.com
- Personal site: Askew.org
Here are some of the tools, resources, and sites Peter mentioned in our conversation:
Expired Domains tool: http://www.expireddomains.net
GoDaddy Auctions: http://auctions.godaddy.com
NameJet: http://www.namejet.com
SnapNames: http://www.snapnames.com
DropCatch: http://www.dropcatch.com
Namecheap Auctions: http://www.namecheap.com/domains/marketplace/buy-domains/auctions
Clicky Analytics: http://clicky.com
Shopify: http://www.shopify.com
ShipStation: http://www.shipstation.com
Enjoy!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
What I'm finding here with thesegreat domains is if I get a good
descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the
gate so I don't have to rely on paid search, Google ads, or
Facebook ads. Type in traffic's real.
No one really studies it that much, but it is real.
We've already had 100,000 LB shipped.
What are the? Tools in your tool belt that you
can't live without. Do you think directory
businesses are still viable today in the age of AI?
(00:22):
If you. Keep failing enough that Callus
is going to form and then the future failures.
It doesn't matter. It just flows off and you're
right on to the next project because it doesn't hurt anymore.
And that's what I kept doing. I still remember where I was in
2010 when I was surfing the Internet and I came across this
guy that was selling onions on the Internet.
(00:43):
I found his blog and I just started reading.
I fell in love with this guy. He just did things.
Every day he wakes up and he just trolls the Internet.
He just surfs. He just looks for expiring
domain names and he lets that expiring domain name tell him a
story of what business he shouldstart next.
Instead of thinking of a business idea and then finding a
domain name to go with that business idea, he does it the
(01:05):
other way around. And it served him very, very
well. Today, that guy Peter, who I
discovered 15 years ago is my friend.
And he has a whole portfolio of websites that he needed very
little money to buy and or buildand start.
And these things pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year and take him very, very little time to operate directory
sites, job boards, e-commerce sites.
(01:26):
He's selling onions. We talked about bobblehead
websites. This is so jam packed with
value, you're not going to know what to do with your brain when
it's over. I asked him how he finds all his
best deals, the tools that he uses to validate if these ideas
or websites or businesses are any good or not, how he built
these things. You're going to love it.
Please enjoy. OK, All right, so let's talk
onions. So yeah, so this one was an
(01:48):
accident. I monitor expiring domains
virtually every single day. It's just like my morning paper.
I just pull it up. I started doing it.
I just found I never stopped because they're so fun because
it's just like you and I were doing just looking through the
list like, Oh my gosh, Chris, crown molding you can do that is
a legit business. By the way, Sony wants to bid on
that. That is a legit you could go
from new or crown molding from ahistorical home.
(02:11):
I made sure that on Twitter herein the afternoon.
It only you should and it only has eight bids. 8 bids.
I mean look at the, the traffic isn't exact.
Scroll up to the top of the page.
I can't remember which column there's age.
Look how old it is. It's 27 years old and it's been
owned continually for 27 years. And these traffic stats, I think
20 caught the 20 row or column is reflective of the traffic
(02:35):
that it's receiving. GoDaddy is isn't it isn't exact,
but it gives you a little bit ofan idea if there is some natural
type in traffic of people just typing in looking for crown
molding. Crown molding out of historical
homes is a is a legit business. I think people can't comprehend
that, that people still just directly type in domain names.
Can you talk about that? But before we go into onions.
(02:57):
I got that from Warren Royal. He shares this on his Twitter
feed. He was sharing, listen, you
don't and no one quite understands how much type in
traffic. It's one of his largest traffic
sources and it's what allowed him to get the business off the
ground. So when he started it, I think
all, virtually all of his traffic was people typing in the
term bobbleheads into the browser bar, not going through a
(03:20):
search engine and adding.com at the end and coming direct to his
site. And when he started, he had
three bobbleheads that he was selling by third is drop
shipping him. And it was right before it was
before Obama, Hillary and someone else.
I can't remember. He had three Bob McCain.
He sold 3 bobbles. Yeah.
(03:41):
And he was selling him out of his basement and he started
selling him out, just selling him out.
He was like, holy cow, I got something here.
This is quite interesting. He started sharing the fact and
some of the old school demeanorsalways share this.
But it was neat to see it because he was sharing live and
are just actual screenshots fromhis Google Analytics on direct
traffic from a site that had never been developed.
(04:02):
No back story, no end links. And you can see it was just
direct traffic. SEO really hadn't gained any
traction yet, and so I was like,OK, this direct is real.
When I got Dude ranch right out of the gate, I was getting 30 to
50 visits a day from people typing in dude Ranch and typing.
Someone wanting a $5000 vacation?
Correct. So I was like, wow, OK, what I'm
(04:23):
finding here with these great domains is if I get a good
descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the
gate. So I don't have to fully rely on
paid search, Google ads or Facebook ads.
I can't if I want. But if I want to keep my spin
low, I can rely on just the typein traffic from this wonderful
domain and figure out and maybe ask the customers, what are you
(04:46):
looking for? Are they, maybe I'm providing a
product, they aren't purchasing it and I can say, well, maybe
they're looking for a service. Let me maybe offer a service out
here. So I got that from Dude Ranch
and I was started seeing it. I was like, wow, this is a
longer term. It's not even as good as Bobble
has when I'm still getting type in traffic from this domain.
I was like, OK, type in traffic's real.
No one really studies it that much, but it is real.
(05:09):
And when Vidalia came up, it's alonger term.
Vidalia is tougher to spell. It's like I realize it might get
a little bit of type in traffic,but again, I didn't intend to
buy it. So I was watching it just from I
was curious about it. It was up for auction.
I was working on probably working on dude ranch and I had
like a different browser tab open.
Looking at the auction, I thought the domain was going to
(05:30):
sell for like 5 to 6 grand at auction.
So the bid was around 2000 bucks.
So I was going in I was like I'll throw in 2100 bucks.
So it was like 19/20/2000. So I just threw in I think it
was 21122 thousand. Somebody else came in 2100.
I was like, I still think this is worth 5 grand if I, but I, I
posted in 22 and expecting to beoutbid and no one outbids me.
(05:51):
And I was like, Oh no. I was like, OK, I don't, I
really, I, I don't have 2000. I guess we're doing this.
But man, I'll be eating peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches for
the next month. I was like, oh, no.
And and so there's a timer in these auctions where it's just
counting down. I was like, oh God, are you
serious? Like nobody else is going to bid
on this and then it, it counts down and expires and I win it
(06:12):
and I and I was like crap. And I don't have, I don't want
to spend 2000 bucks. It may take five years for me to
sell this. Was this the most expensive one
that you had bought at the up tothis point?
Dude ranch was well, I bought itdirect.
So this was after dude ranch? Yeah, I bought Vidalia after
Dude Ranch. Yeah.
OK, OK, gotcha. Yeah.
So Dude Ranch was one of the most expensive travel Envoy I
(06:32):
bought for 10 grand, but it was a fully developed site with a
lot of traffic. Dude Ranch was a blank slate,
just the domain, and then I built the business around it.
But then I bought it and I was like, oh, I'm just going to
forget. I just throw it into My
Portfolio and keep working on. Maybe I'll let it sit and resell
it for a profit one day. Possibly, maybe I'll put it up
for a for sale page. I never oddly I never put it up
for. I just put it in just trying to
(06:54):
forget about it that I bought itand but it kept it did.
This is the only project I had that that just kept needling me.
It was in My Portfolio and I mentioned I go out for lunch
with some friends in Atlanta at the time.
I'm in Savannah now, but I was in Atlanta.
I'd meet a friend for lunch. He's an old, you know, startup
friend of mine in Atlanta. And I was like, oh, Alan, dude,
(07:14):
I bought the videliaonions.com. It ought and mean to, and I'd
get the response. So like, dude, that's a big
industry, right? That is legit.
It is like the yeah, you know, the caviar of sweet onions.
And I'd see people's responses with the domain.
And it was, you know, even before that I was like, there
may be something there, but I don't know, man.
So I had it and I was like, well, I was like, I don't know
(07:35):
what this is, but let me just put up a landing page and I'll
have just like an e-mail sign upand say, would you like, you
know, more information on Videlius?
It was something rough like that, I think.
And and then people started signing up saying, hey, and I
may have had something. Hey, if you are interested in
having Videlia onions delivered,you know, submit your e-mail.
I didn't have any promises. I was just like, hey, if you
(07:56):
have any interest in having themdelivered, submit your e-mail
below. And so people started submitting
their e-mail. I was like, well, OK, that's
kind of weird. It's like, but I'm not a Videlia
farmer. I don't I don't know how this
works, but I was lucky that Videlia is only about 3 hours
away from Atlanta. What year was this that you put
the landing page up? I think it was 2014 or 2015.
(08:17):
I don't know if it ever got indexed.
You may see the early version ofthe site.
Because it was short, I put it up and I started getting a few
nibbles and I was quick and thenI was like, well, Vidalia is
just three hours down the road. I'd love to go hang out in
Vidalia, GA, correct in the USA.So I was like, let me just go
down there for a day. So I just jumped in the car.
They have a committee that represents all the Vidalia
(08:39):
farmers. So I called them up and said,
hey, number one, I just want to make sure you know, you guys
know I'm I'm a good guy. I'm not trying to, I'm not
trying to hijack the name of your industry.
I'm a real person. That's around with Big Onion,
Peter, Yeah. And it's a trademark term by the
state. I almost needed their blessing
to use it. So I typically I thought it was
generic, but then I wound up finding out it's a trademark
(09:01):
term. And as I go, crap, I sort of
need their blessing. But like, let me just go talk to
them and if they get all huffinga puff, I'll just give them a
domain, you know, or you know, just give it to somebody.
But I went down to saying, hey, I happen to acquire this thing
at auction. My background is building web
projects and sometimes e-commerce, sometimes directory
(09:21):
marketplace information based stuff.
I'm trying to see if there's an,a business here for possibly
shipping, but I don't know any farmers.
Like could you can I can just come talk to you guys?
The, the committee, they were super just welcoming.
And so I went down and just met with the committee, met with
them, and then they when they realized I wasn't a huge weirdo,
(09:42):
they said, OK, let's drive around, we'll just introduce you
to a few Vidalia farmers. Yeah, this is an old WordPress
thing. For some strange reason, the CSS
isn't loading correctly with an archive.
But this was an early version ofthe site.
I think our second or third yearafter 2016, I think we were
shipping I think 2 years at thatpoint I acquired an O and 14 and
(10:02):
I believe the 15 crop is the first one that we started
shipping. Yeah, 'cause we just celebrated
our 10th year of shipping, our 10th or 11th.
But this was the fancy ish logo.I was still designing the site
at this point. I hadn't hired it, but I had
hired a logo and that was, that's the rough onion design
that I. Created.
Yeah, it's like it looks like they're planted.
Yeah, I kind of, I did that kindof that.
(10:24):
I like that design, but it's just rough, the rough design
that I included, and that's the front.
The old name of the site of the farm was M&T, and my partner
bought the farm out, so he changed the initials to A and
his name's Aries and Megan is his wife.
So they changed the farm to A&M farms.
So yeah, so they started taking me around, just introduced me to
(10:45):
farmers. I met the first farmer and you
know, they had some reps up front then just saying, oh,
well, they're like, oh, direct to consumer.
No, there's like it's the they told me quote.
It was like it's the biggest thorn in their side.
They did a little bit of it and they hated it.
To you, this is opportunity, right?
You're like, sweet, I can. Take that off your hand means
that they aren't really a competition because I know
(11:05):
they're going to treat their customer like garbage, but I can
see where they're coming from. After running Vidalia for 10
years, it's challenging. I mean, DC is challenging, but
so I go to second farm. They were standoffish.
And then I went to Aries, third one, and we met a few others,
but I went to the Aries. He got it immediately.
He was like, yeah, I get it. And he was the general manager
(11:25):
at that point. And he was like, yeah, I get it.
You want to ship. I was like, yeah, I got the
site. I haven't even built a really
full version of the site yet. And I was like, here's what I
can offer you. I have the name of the industry
and I can promote your name and M&T at the time.
I'll build you a website for free.
You don't have to pay me a penny.
And then let's just see if we can ship some onions.
And I was like, do you have boxes?
(11:47):
Do you have storage or I didn't even understand the concept of
because we have climate control storage, which allows us to ship
throughout the summer. I just had to ask, like, do you
have boxes already here? Do we have to order?
So we already had boxes, a packing shed and storage.
So he has a crew in the packing shed that can pack for us.
So I can just focus on front endand operations and marketing,
(12:09):
sales and social media. He had nothing to lose.
Yeah. So we did a handshake deal, do
we? And we operated off of a
handshake deal for 10 years. And then I had some silent
friends in that deal. We had just some fun money where
I used to buy and sell domain. So they were in on Videlia with
me in the early days. So Aries and I just bought them
out. I owned like 40% at that time.
(12:30):
They owned 60. So Aries and I came out and
bought 100% of it out about a year ago.
So Aries and I are now 100% on the deal, but we operate a
handshake deal. Whether that's the best idea, I
don't know. But yeah, it worked great for
us. And we just trusted it was, I
mean, I my job was, you know, a sales generation.
If I don't generate any sales, Idon't get paid.
And I wanted to be no risk to Aries and I wanted to be, and I
(12:55):
still kind of treat it this day.I want to be just some quiet
church mouse just doing my job in the background where he can
focus on growing this very special onion.
And I'm doing my job and he doesn't have to worry about me.
And I don't want to give him anydrama, but I give sometimes
feedback if the customers and hewants to know if the, if an
onion was damaged. Sometimes it's tough for us to
(13:16):
see if the an inner layer of theVidalia is, is rotten.
It's tough to see on the gradingline.
So it's feedback from like that from customers is always helpful
if we know it's a certain variety of Vidalia.
So always pass that information along.
Go ahead. How does the split between you
guys look as far as the revenue is concerned?
We're still working that out right now.
It's just we run the business, Ipay all the expenses and at the
(13:40):
end of the year we figure out what, how much cash he needs and
how much cash I need because I'mkind of the employee of the
business. And so we'll just figure out
some spread. I mean, we're, we hit, we've
already had 100,000 lbs versus anew record for us this year,
100,000 lbs shipped. And it's weird on the revenue
side because I know you're always good on jumping into
(14:01):
revenue numbers and stuff, but it's weird for farmers.
We, I rarely share like revenue numbers like that because it's,
it's interesting hanging around with farmers.
It's similar to the dude ranch industry.
It's, I don't want to call it tacky, but it's like farmers,
they, you, they don't think in that frame of mind.
This is their way of life. That's what makes it pure.
And it's such a humble and rewarding, you know, industry
(14:21):
and, and yes, revenue is very, very important.
So what I decided from an early point in that industry, I was
like, I'll just share how much we ship every year.
And that's, you can share it, doyour own math, you can figure it
out. We ship 100,000 lbs And we and
we we've done that just by hopefully we are not the
cheapest option around, but we try, we try our best to take
care of our customers and we ship UPS has done a great job
(14:45):
with us so. The farm manages all the
fulfillment and characteristics and stuff.
You're just on the website stuff.
Quick question, what if there were a private community out
there of people that were building businesses based on
this podcast? Well, I just made it and it's
only for business starters and business builders.
It's called TK Owners and it's basically like having me and 100
other business geniuses as your business partner.
(15:07):
Also, there's going to be exclusive new trends, growth
hacks, business ideas, and a database of everything I've ever
talked about. You'll find thousands of startup
case studies you'll have weekly Ask me anythings with me while
I'll answer your questions directly.
You can Join Now at tkowners.com.
Link in the show notes. I'm website, I have the UPS,
yeah. So I have yes, websites on
(15:27):
WordPress and then I have Shopify for the transaction ship
station to manage the boxes going in and out.
I have a bad tendency of puttingtoo much on my plate.
So next year we have a lot to doin our offseason.
I've we have a crew now in our packing Chevron.
I try to decks. I'm still doing customer
support, Chris, and it about broke my brain this year.
So I'm going to have to delegate, but I can step away
(15:50):
from the screen and go hang out with these farmers that have
such a wonder. They're so friendly.
Just have a wonderful perspective on on the world and
what what's important and not slowing down, but understanding.
No farming. You have to slow yourself down
and it slows my somewhat franticbrain.
It forces me to slow down. Like most people don't realize
(16:14):
that you can have both. Like business doesn't have to
just be business and money and profits and numbers and
spreadsheets. Like you can feel good about
what you do as well. And once you I'm hearing like 2
big unlocks in your brain. Number one was a 2 decades ago
when you're like, oh, I can makemoney for myself.
Interesting. And then it was kind of like,
oh, I can actually take pride inwhat I do and not just move
(16:34):
pixels around on a screen all day.
Oh, very interesting. And it just makes for a
fulfilling life, right? Yeah, and building kind of these
humble projects where I rarely set goals.
I'll just build a project that seems to have opportunity and
let it. It's very similar to that Bill
Walsh book. You know the score is going to
take care of itself. I don't have any goals I don't
(16:54):
have. I don't have some stretch goal
for Vidalia on. We need to hit £120,000 next
year. We just rinse and repeat and
start again next season to make sure the crop is taken care of
and see where it takes us. If we take care of our customers
and we have a fast site and easyway to order, and if we ship
quickly and we certainly give them a great onion, then they
(17:15):
should come back. I don't need to set some stupid
goal because some guru told me Ineed to set goals always
compared to almost like nature, like, you know, some big Redwood
isn't setting up some goal to be200 feet tall by this.
It's it just grows every single year.
And, and when it's done and it'stop, it stops.
(17:36):
Maybe then the branches start going out and so we may hit a
top for Vidalia and then maybe the branches are maybe some
interesting partnerships. That we you become more loyal
with your. Customers more loyal maybe there
is an interesting social aspect to it.
We could get some customers to the social channel or yeah, just
growing slow and treating my projects almost like kind of a
farming aspect of just slow growth.
(17:57):
Let them go as fast as they wantto go.
I'm just the the dork behind thescreen that is trying my best to
oversee everything and and lightly push it in the right
direction. And that seemed to work well
with me over the years. So I was like, I'm just going to
stick with it. I don't, there's no reason to
change. It works great for me.
I think people set goals becauseit makes them feel like they've
(18:18):
already accomplished something, right?
So if I set a goal, then I've done something.
Well, no, doing something is thegoal.
Like that's what you have to complete at the end of it, but
just writing something down, good.
But sometimes it gives us a false sense of accomplishment
and we're like, all right, now Ican move on.
And then we don't actually do the goal, which is the whole
point. Yeah, correct.
Or you put some unnecessary stress or pressure on yourself
(18:41):
and then, you know, let's just say your goal was 120.
You only delivered 115. I failed, failed to hit my 120.
It's like I don't care about these stupid goals or.
One thing I love about this story is you bought the domain
name, you spent more than you thought you should have, and you
just start talking to people. Guy #1 doesn't get it.
Guy #2 doesn't get it, guy #3 doesn't get it.
(19:02):
With this story, even more than my Texas snack story, it reminds
me of my Heartland bread story where I had a friend that had a
bread company that only sold bread to 200 stores within DFW.
People wanted to buy it online and I said, Keith, let me just
put an ad in your bread because 10,000 Texans buy it every day.
Wow. Let's give them an ad so that
they can tell their friend in Indiana who was there for
(19:23):
Thanksgiving and fell in love with your bread that they can
buy it online. Now let's just do it as an
experiment. Don't pay me anything.
If it fails, it's all on me. If it succeeds, we'll split it
some way that's fair. And it succeeded.
And that led into sandeats, which led into Texas snacks.
And it all started with a question.
And it was all possible because I found a guy that just got it
right. And so sometimes you just have
(19:45):
to keep talking to people until you don't have to try to
convince anyone because sometimes we think of sales as
convincing someone, but we just need to find the person that
just gets it. And that just gets us.
And they just basically say, shut up, I got it.
Let's let's try to do something here, right?
It's a magical thing. And then this another similarity
is his online sales from me werelike 3% of their overall sales,
(20:08):
but it was like 30% of their margins because it was direct to
consumer. I have to think in your sense,
you're probably a small percent of their total volume, but
they're not selling through a distributor and then a grocery
store. They're selling direct to
consumers, so they love you. And we have a direct
relationship with our buyers. So they lose the customer when
they sell through the chains andthey sell, I mean, they sell
millions of pounds and yeah, much higher margin.
(20:30):
And we have a direct relationship with them and
that's been tons of fun. But it is just, you know, trying
small things and and not beatingyourself up if something doesn't
work is what you learn early when you start doing this
iterative process and building projects.
I sometimes call it, you know, some failure, callous, it
doesn't hurt anymore. You keep doing it enough, You
(20:53):
keep failing enough that callus is going to form and then the
future failures. It doesn't matter.
It just flows off and you're right on to the next project
because it doesn't hurt anymore.And that's what I kept doing.
I kept building and and things would break or get burnt down or
where to get D indexed or, or just wouldn't work.
It wouldn't make any money and Iwouldn't necessarily beat myself
(21:13):
up. I was like, Oh, let me just try
another project, see where this one goes.
But then like slowly a pass started to emerge, but it took
years. I mean, it was oh fours when I
started. I got dude ranch in 09.
So that was five years of just tinkering and figuring out what
models might work well for me, and that I didn't buy Vaidelia
until 2014. What was the story of finally
(21:35):
buying onions.com? How much did that cost and did
it did it move the needle much on your traffic?
It was more of a vanity. So my friend Warren at
Bobbleheads, he at first it wentup for auction.
So I saw it. I'll try to get the short
version of this. So, and this was Vidalia had
already gotten some traction andI was tweeting about it saying
(21:57):
just sharing what these weird projects and sharing it on
Twitter just to share it. And the domain went up for
auction. Somebody had it and I think they
put it on Flippa and I saw it and I was like, I don't sell
onions. I sell Vidalia.
And it's a boutique product. You can only grow it and ship it
and sell it from here in Georgia.
I don't sell onions. I sell Vidalias.
(22:18):
It's I don't sell a commodity. I sell this, you know, boutique
product and I was like it went up for auction.
So I just didn't buy it. Somebody else bought it with the
idea that I wasn't washing the auction that they could get it
and flip it to me. So they buy it for I can't
remember. It was 17 or 18,000 maybe 18,000
(22:38):
bucks. It's in name bio on, but they
bought it for 18 like a day or two later they e-mail me.
Hey, Mr. Esky, we just happened to own this, this high end
domain name. And I was like, yeah, I was
watching that auction day. I'm not interested.
And then I'm Dang it. That was my whole business.
Plan they were like I'm sure they're like Dang I thought I
was going to be able to flip it to him for 50 or something yeah
(23:00):
so it sits on there and so aboutsix months later it goes back up
for sale on flipa the highest bid it gets is like 5 grand
doesn't even hit the reserve I see it and I'm like OK that's
interesting they put it up for sale I think on biz buy sell
almost no takers they put it back up again on.
Flippa. Flippa with a high reserve and
(23:23):
that's when my friend I was at adomain or conference and I
passed my born royal and and he was like, hey, you see that
onions.com and I was like, yeah,Warren, but I don't mean I'll
sell on just I so by dahlias. He was like, I get it.
He was like, I get it, But I understand there's one time in
our lifetime that domain is going to be for sale one time
that in this reasonable range ofprice right now.
(23:45):
The next time it's for sale is going to be 102 hundred
$500,000. If you have an interest in that
domain, this is your opportunityto get it.
And I was like, yeah, I guess I didn't think about that.
I was like, you're right. I was like, I don't have a
purpose for it right now. And that's what was holding me
back. And I was like, I don't have a
purpose for it. What do I do with it?
(24:06):
And and then my answer was I don't care.
I was like, who cares? Just just see if I can buy it.
Maybe I get it for a little bit less than 18.
He bought it. So he had reached out to me.
So I just emailed him direct. I was like, hey, I saw your
thing on Flippa. I'm interested, but I can't make
the numbers work. Can you do whatever like 10 or
12 on this? It was like, ah, I can do you
know what he did the negotiationthing.
(24:26):
He came down to 15. I was like, hey, if you could do
like 1514 or 15,000, I think we came to 15 and he paid escrow
fees which are 200 bucks. So it was 14,800 and so I bought
it for 14 and I didn't really have an idea what I was like,
let me just buy it see what happens.
I'm pretty sure it's going to have solid type in traffic, and
(24:47):
it does. It's 50 a day, maybe more of
people typing, but it's a littlebit of everything.
You get some from the satire website.
They own the onion, they own onion.com.
I own onions with a plural, so Iget a little bit of from them.
But honestly, the biggest purpose of that site, it may
have a further purpose two or three years from now because we
(25:09):
may branch out into organic Peruvian onions.
But honestly, the biggest thing it's served right now is Aries.
So Aries has his e-mail is aries@onions.com.
And I, that was the first thing I did.
I was like Aries, his first domain, the domain they had used
for their farm before they had awebsite was M&AND tfarms.net.
(25:31):
I was like, Aries, I hate your e-mail address.
Let's get you a place. Let's get you a better e-mail.
I'll get you Aries and onions.com.
And so we set them up a kind of account at Fast Mail and hooked
it up to onions.com. And then, you know, I'd go over
probably at least once a month in season, probably two or three
times a month. And he was like Peter, Peter, I
went to a conference and somebody farming conference,
(25:53):
somebody asked my e-mail and I said aries@onions.com.
And the other person, they didn't have an answer then.
Then they go, how did you get that domain?
And he was like, I got AI, got aweb guy, he's got me the domain.
He said 100% of the time it floors people that he as a
small, medium sized farmer, We have this gorilla.com domain
(26:17):
that allows him. We're not the biggest Videlia
farmers, but that domain allows us to look like the biggest,
strongest Videlia farm out there.
And we primarily use it for e-mail.
Right now, everybody at the packand shed has their own custom
e-mail, John at onions, peter@onions.com.
And we have our own custom, but right now it's like a landing
(26:38):
page. It just gives an overview of the
farm. I have a big thing for our
YouTube channel, like if they want to go subscribe to our
YouTube channel gives background, but we may
eventually build it out to sell other potentially other farming
project. We may go down the citrus path,
we may plant some citrus trees and we may just kind of take,
even though it's onions.com, we may just say, you know, we farm
(26:59):
everything under the sun, onionsincluded, just like monster.com
used to be, didn't have anythingto do with jobs.
It was just monster.com and onions is like as we so we do
everything farming, but it's primarily for e-mail right now
and we'll figure out another policy for it down the road.
It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but it's valuable.
Yeah, Yeah. It's fun to yeah, showcase and
put around. It's easier to put in my
(27:21):
Twitter, Twitter profile just put onions.com versus Vidalia
even like if I'm talking to a customer on the phone who is
trying to visit our website, if it's an elderly custom customer,
sometimes it's tough to type Vidalia.
Yeah. And sometimes they spoke with an
AVADSVIDALIA and I just don't goto onions.com.
I got a big button there. Just click the button to go to
(27:42):
Vidalia and they'll take you right to Vidalia.
And then you can play click the big green button on our
homepage. You can go place an order and
we'll get a We'll pack and ship tomorrow, the day after.
Well, one pattern I've seen withall your stuff is you always
work with partners, critical partners that you couldn't, you
know, you couldn't make this project work without.
And I didn't always give them that.
I don't want to interrupt you. But you're right, I didn't.
I always thought I was a solo builder.
(28:04):
I'm a solo girl. I'll do everything myself.
I'll put all this on my plate and then lo and behold, I did
dude ranch and then I wound up partnering with somebody.
I found Videlia, I partnered with somebody.
I only found ranch work because of my partner and I have found I
do look for that now if I I, it's more challenging.
I sorry to interrupt you, but you're, you're exactly right.
I was fooled into thinking I wasa solar builder and I'm not.
(28:25):
I work really well with a partner.
It's tough to find a really goodpartner though.
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Yeah, but what I was saying is you're like, you're much better
at sales than you might give yourself credit for because
you're selling your partners on this opportunity and you're
doing it in like a no brainer offer way, right.
Good salesman offer no brainer offers.
(28:47):
With Dude Ranch, it was I, I know they didn't go for the pay
per lead aspect, but that was one of your first offers.
It was like, don't take any risks.
I'll find you a lead and then you buy it from me, right.
And then that evolved over time,but that at least got your foot
in the door. And then with Vidalia, it was,
listen, like, let's just split this and I'll do all the online
stuff. I'll be the distribution, You be
(29:08):
the fulfillment. Yeah.
And then with ranch work, it was7525.
You take no risk. Keep your domain name.
I don't need it. Point it here, but keep it.
And let's just see if this works.
And you had to find the right people, but you also had to give
them the right offer. And you were able to do that.
So it worked. Yeah.
Yeah. This is accurate, Yeah.
All right, Peter. Well, thank you.
(29:28):
This was awesome. No, I appreciate the invite.
Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably
because you haven't had a chanceto take your air pods out,
You're still mowing the lawn, you're still driving, what have
you. If you're still here with me, I
would really, really love and appreciate a five star review on
Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast.
It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra
mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an
(29:51):
interest in starting a business.It would mean a ton.
Hope you have the best day of your life today.
What I'm finding here with thesegreat domains is if I get a good
descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the
gate so I don't have to rely on paid search, Google ads, or
Facebook ads. Type in traffic's real.
No one really studies it that much, but it is real.
We've already had 100,000 LB shipped.
What are the? Tools in your tool belt that you
can't live without. Do you think directory
businesses are still viable today in the age of AI?
(00:22):
If you. Keep failing enough that Callus
is going to form and then the future failures.
It doesn't matter. It just flows off and you're
right on to the next project because it doesn't hurt anymore.
And that's what I kept doing. I still remember where I was in
2010 when I was surfing the Internet and I came across this
guy that was selling onions on the Internet.
(00:43):
I found his blog and I just started reading.
I fell in love with this guy. He just did things.
Every day he wakes up and he just trolls the Internet.
He just surfs. He just looks for expiring
domain names and he lets that expiring domain name tell him a
story of what business he shouldstart next.
Instead of thinking of a business idea and then finding a
domain name to go with that business idea, he does it the
(01:05):
other way around. And it served him very, very
well. Today, that guy Peter, who I
discovered 15 years ago is my friend.
And he has a whole portfolio of websites that he needed very
little money to buy and or buildand start.
And these things pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars
a year and take him very, very little time to operate directory
sites, job boards, e-commerce sites.
(01:26):
He's selling onions. We talked about bobblehead
websites. This is so jam packed with
value, you're not going to know what to do with your brain when
it's over. I asked him how he finds all his
best deals, the tools that he uses to validate if these ideas
or websites or businesses are any good or not, how he built
these things. You're going to love it.
Please enjoy. OK, All right, so let's talk
onions. So yeah, so this one was an
(01:48):
accident. I monitor expiring domains
virtually every single day. It's just like my morning paper.
I just pull it up. I started doing it.
I just found I never stopped because they're so fun because
it's just like you and I were doing just looking through the
list like, Oh my gosh, Chris, crown molding you can do that is
a legit business. By the way, Sony wants to bid on
that. That is a legit you could go
from new or crown molding from ahistorical home.
(02:11):
I made sure that on Twitter herein the afternoon.
It only you should and it only has eight bids. 8 bids.
I mean look at the, the traffic isn't exact.
Scroll up to the top of the page.
I can't remember which column there's age.
Look how old it is. It's 27 years old and it's been
owned continually for 27 years. And these traffic stats, I think
20 caught the 20 row or column is reflective of the traffic
(02:35):
that it's receiving. GoDaddy is isn't it isn't exact,
but it gives you a little bit ofan idea if there is some natural
type in traffic of people just typing in looking for crown
molding. Crown molding out of historical
homes is a is a legit business. I think people can't comprehend
that, that people still just directly type in domain names.
Can you talk about that? But before we go into onions.
(02:57):
I got that from Warren Royal. He shares this on his Twitter
feed. He was sharing, listen, you
don't and no one quite understands how much type in
traffic. It's one of his largest traffic
sources and it's what allowed him to get the business off the
ground. So when he started it, I think
all, virtually all of his traffic was people typing in the
term bobbleheads into the browser bar, not going through a
(03:20):
search engine and adding.com at the end and coming direct to his
site. And when he started, he had
three bobbleheads that he was selling by third is drop
shipping him. And it was right before it was
before Obama, Hillary and someone else.
I can't remember. He had three Bob McCain.
He sold 3 bobbles. Yeah.
(03:41):
And he was selling him out of his basement and he started
selling him out, just selling him out.
He was like, holy cow, I got something here.
This is quite interesting. He started sharing the fact and
some of the old school demeanorsalways share this.
But it was neat to see it because he was sharing live and
are just actual screenshots fromhis Google Analytics on direct
traffic from a site that had never been developed.
(04:02):
No back story, no end links. And you can see it was just
direct traffic. SEO really hadn't gained any
traction yet, and so I was like,OK, this direct is real.
When I got Dude ranch right out of the gate, I was getting 30 to
50 visits a day from people typing in dude Ranch and typing.
Someone wanting a $5000 vacation?
Correct. So I was like, wow, OK, what I'm
(04:23):
finding here with these great domains is if I get a good
descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the
gate. So I don't have to fully rely on
paid search, Google ads or Facebook ads.
I can't if I want. But if I want to keep my spin
low, I can rely on just the typein traffic from this wonderful
domain and figure out and maybe ask the customers, what are you
(04:46):
looking for? Are they, maybe I'm providing a
product, they aren't purchasing it and I can say, well, maybe
they're looking for a service. Let me maybe offer a service out
here. So I got that from Dude Ranch
and I was started seeing it. I was like, wow, this is a
longer term. It's not even as good as Bobble
has when I'm still getting type in traffic from this domain.
I was like, OK, type in traffic's real.
No one really studies it that much, but it is real.
(05:09):
And when Vidalia came up, it's alonger term.
Vidalia is tougher to spell. It's like I realize it might get
a little bit of type in traffic,but again, I didn't intend to
buy it. So I was watching it just from I
was curious about it. It was up for auction.
I was working on probably working on dude ranch and I had
like a different browser tab open.
Looking at the auction, I thought the domain was going to
(05:30):
sell for like 5 to 6 grand at auction.
So the bid was around 2000 bucks.
So I was going in I was like I'll throw in 2100 bucks.
So it was like 19/20/2000. So I just threw in I think it
was 21122 thousand. Somebody else came in 2100.
I was like, I still think this is worth 5 grand if I, but I, I
posted in 22 and expecting to beoutbid and no one outbids me.
(05:51):
And I was like, Oh no. I was like, OK, I don't, I
really, I, I don't have 2000. I guess we're doing this.
But man, I'll be eating peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches for
the next month. I was like, oh, no.
And and so there's a timer in these auctions where it's just
counting down. I was like, oh God, are you
serious? Like nobody else is going to bid
on this and then it, it counts down and expires and I win it
(06:12):
and I and I was like crap. And I don't have, I don't want
to spend 2000 bucks. It may take five years for me to
sell this. Was this the most expensive one
that you had bought at the up tothis point?
Dude ranch was well, I bought itdirect.
So this was after dude ranch? Yeah, I bought Vidalia after
Dude Ranch. Yeah.
OK, OK, gotcha. Yeah.
So Dude Ranch was one of the most expensive travel Envoy I
(06:32):
bought for 10 grand, but it was a fully developed site with a
lot of traffic. Dude Ranch was a blank slate,
just the domain, and then I built the business around it.
But then I bought it and I was like, oh, I'm just going to
forget. I just throw it into My
Portfolio and keep working on. Maybe I'll let it sit and resell
it for a profit one day. Possibly, maybe I'll put it up
for a for sale page. I never oddly I never put it up
for. I just put it in just trying to
(06:54):
forget about it that I bought itand but it kept it did.
This is the only project I had that that just kept needling me.
It was in My Portfolio and I mentioned I go out for lunch
with some friends in Atlanta at the time.
I'm in Savannah now, but I was in Atlanta.
I'd meet a friend for lunch. He's an old, you know, startup
friend of mine in Atlanta. And I was like, oh, Alan, dude,
(07:14):
I bought the videliaonions.com. It ought and mean to, and I'd
get the response. So like, dude, that's a big
industry, right? That is legit.
It is like the yeah, you know, the caviar of sweet onions.
And I'd see people's responses with the domain.
And it was, you know, even before that I was like, there
may be something there, but I don't know, man.
So I had it and I was like, well, I was like, I don't know
(07:35):
what this is, but let me just put up a landing page and I'll
have just like an e-mail sign upand say, would you like, you
know, more information on Videlius?
It was something rough like that, I think.
And and then people started signing up saying, hey, and I
may have had something. Hey, if you are interested in
having Videlia onions delivered,you know, submit your e-mail.
I didn't have any promises. I was just like, hey, if you
(07:56):
have any interest in having themdelivered, submit your e-mail
below. And so people started submitting
their e-mail. I was like, well, OK, that's
kind of weird. It's like, but I'm not a Videlia
farmer. I don't I don't know how this
works, but I was lucky that Videlia is only about 3 hours
away from Atlanta. What year was this that you put
the landing page up? I think it was 2014 or 2015.
(08:17):
I don't know if it ever got indexed.
You may see the early version ofthe site.
Because it was short, I put it up and I started getting a few
nibbles and I was quick and thenI was like, well, Vidalia is
just three hours down the road. I'd love to go hang out in
Vidalia, GA, correct in the USA.So I was like, let me just go
down there for a day. So I just jumped in the car.
They have a committee that represents all the Vidalia
(08:39):
farmers. So I called them up and said,
hey, number one, I just want to make sure you know, you guys
know I'm I'm a good guy. I'm not trying to, I'm not
trying to hijack the name of your industry.
I'm a real person. That's around with Big Onion,
Peter, Yeah. And it's a trademark term by the
state. I almost needed their blessing
to use it. So I typically I thought it was
generic, but then I wound up finding out it's a trademark
(09:01):
term. And as I go, crap, I sort of
need their blessing. But like, let me just go talk to
them and if they get all huffinga puff, I'll just give them a
domain, you know, or you know, just give it to somebody.
But I went down to saying, hey, I happen to acquire this thing
at auction. My background is building web
projects and sometimes e-commerce, sometimes directory
(09:21):
marketplace information based stuff.
I'm trying to see if there's an,a business here for possibly
shipping, but I don't know any farmers.
Like could you can I can just come talk to you guys?
The, the committee, they were super just welcoming.
And so I went down and just met with the committee, met with
them, and then they when they realized I wasn't a huge weirdo,
(09:42):
they said, OK, let's drive around, we'll just introduce you
to a few Vidalia farmers. Yeah, this is an old WordPress
thing. For some strange reason, the CSS
isn't loading correctly with an archive.
But this was an early version ofthe site.
I think our second or third yearafter 2016, I think we were
shipping I think 2 years at thatpoint I acquired an O and 14 and
(10:02):
I believe the 15 crop is the first one that we started
shipping. Yeah, 'cause we just celebrated
our 10th year of shipping, our 10th or 11th.
But this was the fancy ish logo.I was still designing the site
at this point. I hadn't hired it, but I had
hired a logo and that was, that's the rough onion design
that I. Created.
Yeah, it's like it looks like they're planted.
Yeah, I kind of, I did that kindof that.
(10:24):
I like that design, but it's just rough, the rough design
that I included, and that's the front.
The old name of the site of the farm was M&T, and my partner
bought the farm out, so he changed the initials to A and
his name's Aries and Megan is his wife.
So they changed the farm to A&M farms.
So yeah, so they started taking me around, just introduced me to
(10:45):
farmers. I met the first farmer and you
know, they had some reps up front then just saying, oh,
well, they're like, oh, direct to consumer.
No, there's like it's the they told me quote.
It was like it's the biggest thorn in their side.
They did a little bit of it and they hated it.
To you, this is opportunity, right?
You're like, sweet, I can. Take that off your hand means
that they aren't really a competition because I know
(11:05):
they're going to treat their customer like garbage, but I can
see where they're coming from. After running Vidalia for 10
years, it's challenging. I mean, DC is challenging, but
so I go to second farm. They were standoffish.
And then I went to Aries, third one, and we met a few others,
but I went to the Aries. He got it immediately.
He was like, yeah, I get it. And he was the general manager
(11:25):
at that point. And he was like, yeah, I get it.
You want to ship. I was like, yeah, I got the
site. I haven't even built a really
full version of the site yet. And I was like, here's what I
can offer you. I have the name of the industry
and I can promote your name and M&T at the time.
I'll build you a website for free.
You don't have to pay me a penny.
And then let's just see if we can ship some onions.
And I was like, do you have boxes?
(11:47):
Do you have storage or I didn't even understand the concept of
because we have climate control storage, which allows us to ship
throughout the summer. I just had to ask, like, do you
have boxes already here? Do we have to order?
So we already had boxes, a packing shed and storage.
So he has a crew in the packing shed that can pack for us.
So I can just focus on front endand operations and marketing,
(12:09):
sales and social media. He had nothing to lose.
Yeah. So we did a handshake deal, do
we? And we operated off of a
handshake deal for 10 years. And then I had some silent
friends in that deal. We had just some fun money where
I used to buy and sell domain. So they were in on Videlia with
me in the early days. So Aries and I just bought them
out. I owned like 40% at that time.
(12:30):
They owned 60. So Aries and I came out and
bought 100% of it out about a year ago.
So Aries and I are now 100% on the deal, but we operate a
handshake deal. Whether that's the best idea, I
don't know. But yeah, it worked great for
us. And we just trusted it was, I
mean, I my job was, you know, a sales generation.
If I don't generate any sales, Idon't get paid.
And I wanted to be no risk to Aries and I wanted to be, and I
(12:55):
still kind of treat it this day.I want to be just some quiet
church mouse just doing my job in the background where he can
focus on growing this very special onion.
And I'm doing my job and he doesn't have to worry about me.
And I don't want to give him anydrama, but I give sometimes
feedback if the customers and hewants to know if the, if an
onion was damaged. Sometimes it's tough for us to
(13:16):
see if the an inner layer of theVidalia is, is rotten.
It's tough to see on the gradingline.
So it's feedback from like that from customers is always helpful
if we know it's a certain variety of Vidalia.
So always pass that information along.
Go ahead. How does the split between you
guys look as far as the revenue is concerned?
We're still working that out right now.
It's just we run the business, Ipay all the expenses and at the
(13:40):
end of the year we figure out what, how much cash he needs and
how much cash I need because I'mkind of the employee of the
business. And so we'll just figure out
some spread. I mean, we're, we hit, we've
already had 100,000 lbs versus anew record for us this year,
100,000 lbs shipped. And it's weird on the revenue
side because I know you're always good on jumping into
(14:01):
revenue numbers and stuff, but it's weird for farmers.
We, I rarely share like revenue numbers like that because it's,
it's interesting hanging around with farmers.
It's similar to the dude ranch industry.
It's, I don't want to call it tacky, but it's like farmers,
they, you, they don't think in that frame of mind.
This is their way of life. That's what makes it pure.
And it's such a humble and rewarding, you know, industry
(14:21):
and, and yes, revenue is very, very important.
So what I decided from an early point in that industry, I was
like, I'll just share how much we ship every year.
And that's, you can share it, doyour own math, you can figure it
out. We ship 100,000 lbs And we and
we we've done that just by hopefully we are not the
cheapest option around, but we try, we try our best to take
care of our customers and we ship UPS has done a great job
(14:45):
with us so. The farm manages all the
fulfillment and characteristics and stuff.
You're just on the website stuff.
Quick question, what if there were a private community out
there of people that were building businesses based on
this podcast? Well, I just made it and it's
only for business starters and business builders.
It's called TK Owners and it's basically like having me and 100
other business geniuses as your business partner.
(15:07):
Also, there's going to be exclusive new trends, growth
hacks, business ideas, and a database of everything I've ever
talked about. You'll find thousands of startup
case studies you'll have weekly Ask me anythings with me while
I'll answer your questions directly.
You can Join Now at tkowners.com.
Link in the show notes. I'm website, I have the UPS,
yeah. So I have yes, websites on
(15:27):
WordPress and then I have Shopify for the transaction ship
station to manage the boxes going in and out.
I have a bad tendency of puttingtoo much on my plate.
So next year we have a lot to doin our offseason.
I've we have a crew now in our packing Chevron.
I try to decks. I'm still doing customer
support, Chris, and it about broke my brain this year.
So I'm going to have to delegate, but I can step away
(15:50):
from the screen and go hang out with these farmers that have
such a wonder. They're so friendly.
Just have a wonderful perspective on on the world and
what what's important and not slowing down, but understanding.
No farming. You have to slow yourself down
and it slows my somewhat franticbrain.
It forces me to slow down. Like most people don't realize
(16:14):
that you can have both. Like business doesn't have to
just be business and money and profits and numbers and
spreadsheets. Like you can feel good about
what you do as well. And once you I'm hearing like 2
big unlocks in your brain. Number one was a 2 decades ago
when you're like, oh, I can makemoney for myself.
Interesting. And then it was kind of like,
oh, I can actually take pride inwhat I do and not just move
(16:34):
pixels around on a screen all day.
Oh, very interesting. And it just makes for a
fulfilling life, right? Yeah, and building kind of these
humble projects where I rarely set goals.
I'll just build a project that seems to have opportunity and
let it. It's very similar to that Bill
Walsh book. You know the score is going to
take care of itself. I don't have any goals I don't
(16:54):
have. I don't have some stretch goal
for Vidalia on. We need to hit £120,000 next
year. We just rinse and repeat and
start again next season to make sure the crop is taken care of
and see where it takes us. If we take care of our customers
and we have a fast site and easyway to order, and if we ship
quickly and we certainly give them a great onion, then they
(17:15):
should come back. I don't need to set some stupid
goal because some guru told me Ineed to set goals always
compared to almost like nature, like, you know, some big Redwood
isn't setting up some goal to be200 feet tall by this.
It's it just grows every single year.
And, and when it's done and it'stop, it stops.
(17:36):
Maybe then the branches start going out and so we may hit a
top for Vidalia and then maybe the branches are maybe some
interesting partnerships. That we you become more loyal
with your. Customers more loyal maybe there
is an interesting social aspect to it.
We could get some customers to the social channel or yeah, just
growing slow and treating my projects almost like kind of a
farming aspect of just slow growth.
(17:57):
Let them go as fast as they wantto go.
I'm just the the dork behind thescreen that is trying my best to
oversee everything and and lightly push it in the right
direction. And that seemed to work well
with me over the years. So I was like, I'm just going to
stick with it. I don't, there's no reason to
change. It works great for me.
I think people set goals becauseit makes them feel like they've
(18:18):
already accomplished something, right?
So if I set a goal, then I've done something.
Well, no, doing something is thegoal.
Like that's what you have to complete at the end of it, but
just writing something down, good.
But sometimes it gives us a false sense of accomplishment
and we're like, all right, now Ican move on.
And then we don't actually do the goal, which is the whole
point. Yeah, correct.
Or you put some unnecessary stress or pressure on yourself
(18:41):
and then, you know, let's just say your goal was 120.
You only delivered 115. I failed, failed to hit my 120.
It's like I don't care about these stupid goals or.
One thing I love about this story is you bought the domain
name, you spent more than you thought you should have, and you
just start talking to people. Guy #1 doesn't get it.
Guy #2 doesn't get it, guy #3 doesn't get it.
(19:02):
With this story, even more than my Texas snack story, it reminds
me of my Heartland bread story where I had a friend that had a
bread company that only sold bread to 200 stores within DFW.
People wanted to buy it online and I said, Keith, let me just
put an ad in your bread because 10,000 Texans buy it every day.
Wow. Let's give them an ad so that
they can tell their friend in Indiana who was there for
(19:23):
Thanksgiving and fell in love with your bread that they can
buy it online. Now let's just do it as an
experiment. Don't pay me anything.
If it fails, it's all on me. If it succeeds, we'll split it
some way that's fair. And it succeeded.
And that led into sandeats, which led into Texas snacks.
And it all started with a question.
And it was all possible because I found a guy that just got it
right. And so sometimes you just have
(19:45):
to keep talking to people until you don't have to try to
convince anyone because sometimes we think of sales as
convincing someone, but we just need to find the person that
just gets it. And that just gets us.
And they just basically say, shut up, I got it.
Let's let's try to do something here, right?
It's a magical thing. And then this another similarity
is his online sales from me werelike 3% of their overall sales,
(20:08):
but it was like 30% of their margins because it was direct to
consumer. I have to think in your sense,
you're probably a small percent of their total volume, but
they're not selling through a distributor and then a grocery
store. They're selling direct to
consumers, so they love you. And we have a direct
relationship with our buyers. So they lose the customer when
they sell through the chains andthey sell, I mean, they sell
millions of pounds and yeah, much higher margin.
(20:30):
And we have a direct relationship with them and
that's been tons of fun. But it is just, you know, trying
small things and and not beatingyourself up if something doesn't
work is what you learn early when you start doing this
iterative process and building projects.
I sometimes call it, you know, some failure, callous, it
doesn't hurt anymore. You keep doing it enough, You
(20:53):
keep failing enough that callus is going to form and then the
future failures. It doesn't matter.
It just flows off and you're right on to the next project
because it doesn't hurt anymore.And that's what I kept doing.
I kept building and and things would break or get burnt down or
where to get D indexed or, or just wouldn't work.
It wouldn't make any money and Iwouldn't necessarily beat myself
(21:13):
up. I was like, Oh, let me just try
another project, see where this one goes.
But then like slowly a pass started to emerge, but it took
years. I mean, it was oh fours when I
started. I got dude ranch in 09.
So that was five years of just tinkering and figuring out what
models might work well for me, and that I didn't buy Vaidelia
until 2014. What was the story of finally
(21:35):
buying onions.com? How much did that cost and did
it did it move the needle much on your traffic?
It was more of a vanity. So my friend Warren at
Bobbleheads, he at first it wentup for auction.
So I saw it. I'll try to get the short
version of this. So, and this was Vidalia had
already gotten some traction andI was tweeting about it saying
(21:57):
just sharing what these weird projects and sharing it on
Twitter just to share it. And the domain went up for
auction. Somebody had it and I think they
put it on Flippa and I saw it and I was like, I don't sell
onions. I sell Vidalia.
And it's a boutique product. You can only grow it and ship it
and sell it from here in Georgia.
I don't sell onions. I sell Vidalias.
(22:18):
It's I don't sell a commodity. I sell this, you know, boutique
product and I was like it went up for auction.
So I just didn't buy it. Somebody else bought it with the
idea that I wasn't washing the auction that they could get it
and flip it to me. So they buy it for I can't
remember. It was 17 or 18,000 maybe 18,000
(22:38):
bucks. It's in name bio on, but they
bought it for 18 like a day or two later they e-mail me.
Hey, Mr. Esky, we just happened to own this, this high end
domain name. And I was like, yeah, I was
watching that auction day. I'm not interested.
And then I'm Dang it. That was my whole business.
Plan they were like I'm sure they're like Dang I thought I
was going to be able to flip it to him for 50 or something yeah
(23:00):
so it sits on there and so aboutsix months later it goes back up
for sale on flipa the highest bid it gets is like 5 grand
doesn't even hit the reserve I see it and I'm like OK that's
interesting they put it up for sale I think on biz buy sell
almost no takers they put it back up again on.
Flippa. Flippa with a high reserve and
(23:23):
that's when my friend I was at adomain or conference and I
passed my born royal and and he was like, hey, you see that
onions.com and I was like, yeah,Warren, but I don't mean I'll
sell on just I so by dahlias. He was like, I get it.
He was like, I get it, But I understand there's one time in
our lifetime that domain is going to be for sale one time
that in this reasonable range ofprice right now.
(23:45):
The next time it's for sale is going to be 102 hundred
$500,000. If you have an interest in that
domain, this is your opportunityto get it.
And I was like, yeah, I guess I didn't think about that.
I was like, you're right. I was like, I don't have a
purpose for it right now. And that's what was holding me
back. And I was like, I don't have a
purpose for it. What do I do with it?
(24:06):
And and then my answer was I don't care.
I was like, who cares? Just just see if I can buy it.
Maybe I get it for a little bit less than 18.
He bought it. So he had reached out to me.
So I just emailed him direct. I was like, hey, I saw your
thing on Flippa. I'm interested, but I can't make
the numbers work. Can you do whatever like 10 or
12 on this? It was like, ah, I can do you
know what he did the negotiationthing.
(24:26):
He came down to 15. I was like, hey, if you could do
like 1514 or 15,000, I think we came to 15 and he paid escrow
fees which are 200 bucks. So it was 14,800 and so I bought
it for 14 and I didn't really have an idea what I was like,
let me just buy it see what happens.
I'm pretty sure it's going to have solid type in traffic, and
(24:47):
it does. It's 50 a day, maybe more of
people typing, but it's a littlebit of everything.
You get some from the satire website.
They own the onion, they own onion.com.
I own onions with a plural, so Iget a little bit of from them.
But honestly, the biggest purpose of that site, it may
have a further purpose two or three years from now because we
(25:09):
may branch out into organic Peruvian onions.
But honestly, the biggest thing it's served right now is Aries.
So Aries has his e-mail is aries@onions.com.
And I, that was the first thing I did.
I was like Aries, his first domain, the domain they had used
for their farm before they had awebsite was M&AND tfarms.net.
(25:31):
I was like, Aries, I hate your e-mail address.
Let's get you a place. Let's get you a better e-mail.
I'll get you Aries and onions.com.
And so we set them up a kind of account at Fast Mail and hooked
it up to onions.com. And then, you know, I'd go over
probably at least once a month in season, probably two or three
times a month. And he was like Peter, Peter, I
went to a conference and somebody farming conference,
(25:53):
somebody asked my e-mail and I said aries@onions.com.
And the other person, they didn't have an answer then.
Then they go, how did you get that domain?
And he was like, I got AI, got aweb guy, he's got me the domain.
He said 100% of the time it floors people that he as a
small, medium sized farmer, We have this gorilla.com domain
(26:17):
that allows him. We're not the biggest Videlia
farmers, but that domain allows us to look like the biggest,
strongest Videlia farm out there.
And we primarily use it for e-mail.
Right now, everybody at the packand shed has their own custom
e-mail, John at onions, peter@onions.com.
And we have our own custom, but right now it's like a landing
(26:38):
page. It just gives an overview of the
farm. I have a big thing for our
YouTube channel, like if they want to go subscribe to our
YouTube channel gives background, but we may
eventually build it out to sell other potentially other farming
project. We may go down the citrus path,
we may plant some citrus trees and we may just kind of take,
even though it's onions.com, we may just say, you know, we farm
(26:59):
everything under the sun, onionsincluded, just like monster.com
used to be, didn't have anythingto do with jobs.
It was just monster.com and onions is like as we so we do
everything farming, but it's primarily for e-mail right now
and we'll figure out another policy for it down the road.
It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but it's valuable.
Yeah, Yeah. It's fun to yeah, showcase and
put around. It's easier to put in my
(27:21):
Twitter, Twitter profile just put onions.com versus Vidalia
even like if I'm talking to a customer on the phone who is
trying to visit our website, if it's an elderly custom customer,
sometimes it's tough to type Vidalia.
Yeah. And sometimes they spoke with an
AVADSVIDALIA and I just don't goto onions.com.
I got a big button there. Just click the button to go to
(27:42):
Vidalia and they'll take you right to Vidalia.
And then you can play click the big green button on our
homepage. You can go place an order and
we'll get a We'll pack and ship tomorrow, the day after.
Well, one pattern I've seen withall your stuff is you always
work with partners, critical partners that you couldn't, you
know, you couldn't make this project work without.
And I didn't always give them that.
I don't want to interrupt you. But you're right, I didn't.
I always thought I was a solo builder.
(28:04):
I'm a solo girl. I'll do everything myself.
I'll put all this on my plate and then lo and behold, I did
dude ranch and then I wound up partnering with somebody.
I found Videlia, I partnered with somebody.
I only found ranch work because of my partner and I have found I
do look for that now if I I, it's more challenging.
I sorry to interrupt you, but you're, you're exactly right.
I was fooled into thinking I wasa solar builder and I'm not.
(28:25):
I work really well with a partner.
It's tough to find a really goodpartner though.
If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
Yeah, but what I was saying is you're like, you're much better
at sales than you might give yourself credit for because
you're selling your partners on this opportunity and you're
doing it in like a no brainer offer way, right.
Good salesman offer no brainer offers.
(28:47):
With Dude Ranch, it was I, I know they didn't go for the pay
per lead aspect, but that was one of your first offers.
It was like, don't take any risks.
I'll find you a lead and then you buy it from me, right.
And then that evolved over time,but that at least got your foot
in the door. And then with Vidalia, it was,
listen, like, let's just split this and I'll do all the online
stuff. I'll be the distribution, You be
(29:08):
the fulfillment. Yeah.
And then with ranch work, it was7525.
You take no risk. Keep your domain name.
I don't need it. Point it here, but keep it.
And let's just see if this works.
And you had to find the right people, but you also had to give
them the right offer. And you were able to do that.
So it worked. Yeah.
Yeah. This is accurate, Yeah.
All right, Peter. Well, thank you.
(29:28):
This was awesome. No, I appreciate the invite.
Hey guys, if you're still listening to this, it's probably
because you haven't had a chanceto take your air pods out,
You're still mowing the lawn, you're still driving, what have
you. If you're still here with me, I
would really, really love and appreciate a five star review on
Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast.
It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra
mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an
(29:51):
interest in starting a business.It would mean a ton.
Hope you have the best day of your life today.
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