May 15, 2024 • 43 mins
Join us on the podcast as we unravel the intriguing journey of Jeffrey Gabriel, a man whose career path was anything but ordinary. From a lackluster college graduate with no clear direction, Jeffrey ventured into the world of sales, starting out as a novice selling mortgages. He quickly ascended to become a top salesperson at his firm, before pivoting to a role that had him driving across New England, pitching to human resources professionals in his trusty 1997 Ford Ranger.
The economic crash of 2009 upended his career, leaving him jobless and uncertain of his next steps. It was during this tumultuous time that Jeffrey stumbled into the domain selling business. Within just two years, he had sold millions of dollars in domains, including the record-breaking $13 million sale of Sex.com, a feat that landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Jeffrey's story doesn’t stop there. He later moved to the Cayman Islands, where he built a formidable sales team and led an industry-leading domain brokerage, generating over $500 million in sales. Despite his monumental success, Jeffrey chose to leave it all behind to chase his own entrepreneurial dreams.
Tune in to hear how Jeffrey Gabriel navigated the highs and lows of his remarkable career journey. This episode promises to be a wild ride, packed with lessons on resilience, reinvention, and the relentless pursuit of one’s dreams.
About Jeffrey:
Jeffrey M. Gabriel is the founder of Saw.com, a boutique brokerage that specializes in acquiring, selling, and appraising domains. With over 14 years of experience in the domain industry, Jeffrey has a proven track record of closing multimillion-dollar deals and delivering exceptional value to his clients.
Jeffrey's core competencies include remote team management, online marketing, and strategy. He is passionate about helping businesses and individuals achieve their online goals and dreams. He has been involved in some of the most notable domain sales in history, such as Ai.com, Sex.com, and Poker.org. He is also a Guinness World Record holder and a frequent speaker and writer on domain-related topics.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sawcom/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/saw-com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sawsells
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast.
You got me as your guesttelling my story, my struggles
and a little bit of what I'velearned along the way Giddy up.
So I'm going to start kind oflike one of my guests in Mark
Huba, where we kind of go overhis life and kind of go through
the trials and tribulations andending up in the domain industry
and where I'm kind of sittingtoday and you know I'm going to
(00:34):
skip over some parts of my lifethat might not be relevant to
this show, but you know I'mgoing to start around the
college time.
I will say I was never a greatstudent.
I always found myself introuble but I was never like
fighting or rude to teachers.
It was just I couldn't keep mymouth shut.
(00:57):
I wasn't extremely focused allthe time and I think the
material that I learned in highschool mostly, and a big portion
at least to the first half ofcollege I always felt that it
had no meaning to me and itdidn't really matter.
Like I didn't really care thatmuch about physics.
I liked history because I foundit to be interesting and you
can always learn from the past.
Mathematics the basics, weren'tinteresting to me.
(01:20):
They got interesting when Istarted getting into finance and
learning what makes a stockprice change, learning about
money, learning about thingsthat mattered.
That's when my brain started toturn on and I got better as
school went on.
But as a high school student Iwas usually in trouble because
of my grades, because of talkingin class.
I was stuck sitting in thefront row.
(01:42):
But I did graduate and went tocollege.
I actually wanted to go tocollege to become kind of like a
radio DJ or a shock jock.
I used to love listening toHoward Stern and these other
guys on different radio stations.
I even was an intern at a radiostation when I was a senior in
high school, but anyways.
So I graduated college with adegree in finance and risk
(02:06):
management and, I believe, aminor in communications.
I get out of school I'm notsure exactly what I want to do
yet, but there certainly wasdiscussions in my family and I
grew up with a great childhoodwith a lot of friends, a lot of
fun times, supportive parents,supportive family.
I had all four grandparentsuntil after I graduated college,
(02:30):
who I was close to each of themand getting older you realize
how lucky I was to have that.
Most of my friends and even mykids don't have their
grandparents around as muchbecause we live far away.
But yeah, so I graduated collegeand I actually started working
at a warehouse because Icouldn't really find much work
(02:51):
or I wasn't really sure what Iwanted to do.
And it was a littledisappointing because I heard
like different friends had theseawesome jobs in New York or in
Boston or working at financialinstitutions like Fidelity.
I remember this guy, bill,who's a very good friend of mine
, and also Anthony were workingat Fidelity and I think Bill at
the time and this is 2002, wasmaking like $25 an hour and I
(03:14):
thought if I can make $25 anhour I would be set for life.
And that's when I was workingat the warehouse.
But there was know, there was alittle bit.
In my family are some lawyersand my dad's a lawyer and his
brother is a lawyer and his dadwas a lawyer and his dad's
brother was a lawyer.
(03:34):
So there was a little bit ofpressure on me to also go to law
school.
But you know there wasdiscussions of it and I took the
LSAT to get into law school.
I ended up getting into lawschool, but during that time I
actually also started sellingloans, mortgages, and when
you're 22, 23 years old, in yourfirst sales job, after leaving
(03:57):
the warehouse and you startmaking some good paychecks.
And then the summer is endingand you're supposed to be
starting law school in September.
I didn't want to go.
My dad said, well, you can goto law school at night and you
can work during the day.
And I was working during theday, making good money and going
out with my friends, and I justknew at the time in my life
(04:21):
that I probably wouldn't befocused on law school and that
to me seemed like another one ofthose situations that I was in
in high school where thematerial was not something that
was ultimately important, thatwould stick in my brain and I
would not be able to learn itthat easily.
I'd have to force myself, andto have to do that through, I
(04:43):
believe, three years of lawschool would probably end in
failure.
So I had the tough discussionwith my dad.
He said, well, what are yougoing to do?
And I said, well, I'm going tosell loans and see how it goes.
He was a real estate lawyer andhe actually got me into it.
He didn't get me the job, buthe said you should go sell
mortgages, and I got a job rightout of the newspaper working at
(05:04):
a mortgage company in WorcesterMass and did that and then
ended up working with working.
You kind of bounce around alittle bit more looking for
better splits and things of thatnature.
So I did that for a number ofyears.
What I loved about it and Irealized about sales in general
which there's certain parts ofsales that I enjoy and there's
different types of sales andwhat made me excel in mortgages
(05:29):
was I really like talking topeople and it's something
everybody says when they saythey like sales but I like
hearing their stories, just likeI'm doing on this podcast today
.
Hearing a doctor what kind ofdoctor?
Oh, why are you that kind ofdoctor?
Or a construction guy what doyou specialize in?
And then hearing about whatthey're trying to accomplish,
whether it's a refinance, totake money out to put on an
(05:51):
addition or pay for a kid'scollege or pay off debt or buy a
dream house or buy a secondhome, and you're learning about
also, what are they reallymaking, how much money are they
really making?
And it opened my eyes to theworld as to how much money
people made, how much they savedand what their situations were
credit-wise.
And then I learned also how doyou fix credit?
(06:12):
How do you approach theagencies if there's a mistake?
How do you approach theagencies even if there isn't a
mistake and you're hoping theydon't respond?
How do you approach theagencies if you owe money to a
defunct company and helpsomeone's credit?
There's a lot of things to dowith mortgages and working at a
few different places.
You get into this situationwhere the mortgage company will
(06:36):
always advertise the lowest ratepossible on a 30-year fix at
least where I lived, in thenewspaper or in other places
online, and then that gets thephone to ring and the moment you
pick up the phone, all it is iswhat's your interest rate and
what does it cost to get it?
And now what you're doingdoesn't really matter.
And I learned one of my firstthings in sales was it wasn't
always about the rate and itisn't always about the cost.
(06:58):
You can kind of twist things.
It's about payment.
What I sold based on paymentand I also sold based on other
value propositions, like I wouldgive everybody a free home
equity line who did a refinancewith me.
I even got to a point wherepeople would be referred to me
as the guy who would get thefree home equity line.
But everyone could sell or givea free home equity line.
(07:19):
It was a very simple thing todo.
I also learned that in salesthat if you want to be good at
what you do in sales and any jobin sales is you have to use the
resources around you to makeyou great.
And what does that mean?
Well, you know, when you talkto the old, grizzled guy who's
(07:39):
been doing it for 20 years, youshould probably listen to what
he has to say as to what he does, his process, how things should
work.
That's all very important, youknow.
There's also, on the other hand, understanding the guidelines
and the requirements thatdifferent banks have to approve
loans, and you start to figureout what banks like.
(08:00):
Different flavors of people,those with bad credit, those who
are self-employed, those thatjust started a new business All
of those different things canmake your life a lot easier.
And just understanding theprocess I've done the same in
domain names is understandingevery single facet and then
(08:20):
taking it a step further,meeting and knowing the vendors
and the players in the space.
So same with the demand spaceis that I know all the different
vendors.
I know the different peoplethat sell different domains that
sell, and understand howdifferent registrars work, how
the registries work.
I go to the ICANN conferences.
When I was selling mortgages Iwould read the guidelines.
(08:42):
I would actually call and talkto some of the underwriters.
I would get to know they hadaccount reps that used to come
into the office so you'd talk tothem about types of loans they
want and so whenever somebodycalls in and they have a
situation that's outside of thebox, you are prepared and a big
part of sales isn't necessarilyselling, it's about providing
solutions to a problem thatsomebody has.
(09:04):
So when they come to you andthey say, hey, I want this and
it's not normal like maybe it'sa mixed-use property, meaning
that they want to live on thetop floor and their store is on
the bottom floor, or they livein an earthquake zone or a flood
zone or they have some otherproblem with the property you
can immediately know without adoubt and saying and talking to
(09:26):
them intelligently about what'shappening.
This happens regularly in thedomain business and some people
think that being a domain brokeris very easy.
Being a loan officer can be veryeasy and same with.
Being a domain broker can be aneasy job if you wanna be really
bad at it, but if you challengeyourself to understand the
market, to understand what'shappening, to know all of the
(09:49):
vendors, to know what all ishappening, that's what I did as
a loan officer in my first job.
It took time I mean, it wasn'tlike minutes that I figured this
out, but that's what I didfigure out.
And after doing that for anumber of years I realized that
this might not be something thatI want to do my entire life.
And while I was doing this,while I was selling loans and
(10:15):
doing this, you know, I kind ofhad this entrepreneurial itch
and I remember buying some bookthat was talking about how to
start a business and making abusiness plan and doing all
these things.
I actually had these big posterboards on the wall in my room
that I had this idea for sellingmortgage leads online and
people would click on the adsand mortgage companies would pay
(10:38):
money for the clicks.
Brilliant idea.
That was already thought of.
I didn't realize that PPCadvertising was already
happening in the early 2000s.
But that was something that Ialready thought of.
I didn't realize that PPCadvertising was already
happening in the early 2000s,but that was something that I
was thinking about.
Anyways, I ended up leaving themortgage business and I joined a
company called JobFox.
Jobfox is similar to like amonstercom or career builder,
(10:59):
and what I would do is it'susually with a lot of these job
websites is they advertise tocandidates.
So if you look for a job, yougo and you put your resume on
there for free and then peoplelike me will sell access to the
database to companies.
And if you don't realize this,like a hospital for example,
they always need nurses and ifthey're going to pay a
(11:21):
headhunting firm to find aspecific nurse a lot of the
times a nurse the expense for anurse is one year's salary for a
headhunter to get a nurse foryou, which is a lot of money.
So when you walk into a companyand you say, hey, we have a
database of nurses of differentskills and abilities and they're
(11:44):
fresh, these are people thatput their resumes in recently,
you know all they had to do isget one or two placements off of
our product and that would payfor the service for a year.
So my job at JobFox was coldcalling all day into HR
departments, to small businesses, large businesses I mean from
Staples to a small nonprofit inWorcester, mass, and driving
(12:08):
around really New England, withmy projector in my 1997 Ford
Ranger.
And so I would cold call my wayin.
I would hit the road, go do apresentation, bring donuts,
coffee, beer, whatever if it wason a Friday, sandwiches go in
there, set up a projector and doa presentation, and you know
(12:32):
it's funny with over 100salespeople.
After being there a while andwhen I was hired, I was one of
the few people that didn't haveexperience in the job board
space, but I fought my way up tobeing number two and again I
applied the same logic.
I got to sit next to agentleman that was in the job
board space, who worked atMonster for a number of years,
(12:54):
and I picked his brain.
I try to understand calling inand institutional selling,
because institutional sellingand decision-making process is
much different than talking to aguy and his wife about buying
their first home and thedecision-making process and much
different than talking to a guyand his wife about buying their
first home and thedecision-making process and how
they go about it.
Right, yeah, and I becamenumber two out of about a
hundred salespeople.
(13:14):
I know I was beaten by someonewho worked in the New York city
area and all she had to do waseither take the subway or walk
to her appointments, wheresometimes I'd be in Rhode Island
in the morning and NewHampshire in the afternoon.
It would burn my whole day I'dbe on the road.
So, anyways, but again, as longas I could learn every aspect
(13:34):
of the sales process, theindustry and understanding
recruiting of these companieswanted and all these things, it
became a lot easier for me to goin there and just have frank
conversations.
And at first I had, oh, thecompany gave us this like 20
slide PowerPoint presentationand it was.
It was like it was nicely doneand it was professional, but it
(13:57):
was extremely long and I knewlike halfway through I'd be
losing the crowd.
I mean, I remember one time Iwas doing this presentation to a
college and I looked out intothe crowd.
And I mean, I remember one timeI was doing this presentation
to a college and I looked outinto the crowd and there was a
woman who was asleep and Irealized that I needed to make a
change and that thispresentation wasn't me and I cut
it down to like eight or nineslides and changed them quite a
bit.
And when I did that and made itmore of an interactive
(14:21):
presentation, my conversionswent up and through the roof.
And, strangely enough, one ofthe days, like so, I was doing
really well and it started tocatch attention of some of the
upper management and they'rebased in Washington DC and they
wanted to know, like you know,what I was doing and they talked
to me about it.
And one of the days I went withthe one of the C-level guys out
(14:41):
for a sales meeting and I wasworking so hard to get this
meeting for so long and I wasdebating should I do their
presentation or mine.
And because I worked so long toget the appointment, I knew
that their presentation wouldprobably be boring and I was on
practice with it at this point.
(15:03):
So I decided you know what,what the hell, I'm just going to
do mine.
And I did it anyway.
And um, needless to say, hewasn't impressed.
We had to talk about it, um andum.
But it worked out.
I got the deal, but in um.
So I went from being, uh, youknow, the top of the company in
(15:24):
March of, I would say, 2008.
Then, by the end of 2008,because we went down to Atlanta
for a sales meeting around thenand that's when I got the award.
And then, by the fall of 2008,the market crashed and I don't
know if some of you folksremember this, but Lehman
Brothers crashed.
(15:45):
Washington Mutual, who I usedto get my home equity lines from
, crashed.
We sell this other productcalled an option arm from
Washington Mutual.
That bank collapsed and Bank ofAmerica bought them.
Lehman Brothers went under.
I think Merrill Lynch ended upas part of Bank of America as
well, and it became very obviousthat when the market was
(16:05):
crashing, that my companyprobably wasn't going to last
either, and it went from being avery large company with VC
funding and everything lookinglike it was going in the right
direction to us going to workand nobody answering the phones.
And it turned into us actuallydriving around to these
technology parks that are in theBoston area and knocking on
(16:27):
doors and asking them if theywanted to buy our services or if
they're interested, and prettymuch getting laughed at.
And it ended up resulting in uspretty much calling early days
and going to the pub and havingsome drinks and really just
waiting for that time to happen.
And one day I got an email thatat it was like 10 or 11 o'clock
we were going to have a meetingand the CEO was going to talk
to happen.
And one day I got an email thatat it was like 10 or 11 o'clock
, we were going to have ameeting and the CEO was going to
(16:48):
talk to us.
And before the meeting I calledmy buddy, dave, and I said I
think I'm going to get laid offhere.
And he said well, I got twotickets to Celtics, knicks and
I'm like almost courtside theywere like one behind courtside.
He got them from a client orsomebody he goes.
So if you get laid off, let meknow why don't you come down to
(17:10):
New York?
So we sit in the meeting andthen the CEO his name was Rob
McGovern, was actually theperson who created CareerBuilder
.
It was a very intelligent,great CEO, very calculated,
polished, knew his space.
I would definitely do businesswith him again Gave us the bad
news that the company wasn'tdoing well.
(17:31):
They gave us a decent severanceand gave us as much as they
could and I went on my way.
So I left there.
I headed straight to New York.
I was there and things gotreally grim really fast.
I remember sitting at home andat the time my wife she was my
girlfriend was moved in with meand I remember sitting in my
(17:55):
bathrobe like really trying toget a job for hours every day.
Between that and playing ZeldaI started, you know, just really
working hard to apply for jobs.
I felt worthless.
I remember calling in and beingtold oh yeah, we have a great
outside sales job for you.
Then going in for the interviewand they're like oh, we changed
(18:16):
our mind.
We want you to do lead gen.
If you don't know what lead genis, it means you just bang the
phone all day and if you getsomeone who wants to bite then
you transfer the call to thereal salesperson.
And after what I've been able toaccomplish and what I've been
able to do, there was no way Iwas going to do that.
But that was really the onlything that was nibbling and that
went on for a number of monthsof just banging my head against
(18:37):
the wall, really just feelingnot very good.
I actually rototilled orcultivated some people's gardens
because it was the springtimeto make some money doing some
landscaping, trying to make ithappen.
But I knew that as hard as if Ijust kept trying hard that, no
matter what happens in themarket, great salespeople are
(19:06):
always needed, and you know itwas grim.
So, anyways, I went back and Ithought about it and I said to
myself I need to think morestrategically about how I'm
going to get this job or how amI going to get a new opportunity
.
I went back and went over a listof companies that when I was at
JobFox, that I tried to sellinto or I sold to, and then I
just started calling them andsaying hey, I came into your
(19:27):
office, I did a presentation youknow I cold called in.
You know I don't mind gettingon the phone.
I presented myself well, do youhave any sales jobs open?
And I got a lot of nibbles thatway, and one of them was Cito,
and Cito gave me a chance.
The problem with Cito was itwas over an hour and a half away
(19:48):
from my house.
I lived in Worcester,massachusetts.
Cito is based in Cambridge, butI was delighted to get it.
They gave me a waitress'ssalary I think it was about
$20,000 a year and a percentageof any sale I could get.
And in reality I even told themat the interview what you're
(20:10):
offering me is actually lessthan I'm making on unemployment,
but I want to.
I think I can do this.
I'm excited about this.
I read about domains and I waslike I'm doing this, I'm going
all in.
So I started there in May of2009.
After the long weekend, Ialways mix it up with Memorial
(20:30):
Day and Labor Day I think it'sMemorial Day and so June was
like my first full month there,but I was kind of training.
I did like a week in May andthen training.
In June.
I sold my first domain calledwork Zilla.
Looks like a developed companynow.
I sold it to a mark who wasbrother Funny enough, we also
share the same birthday and thenin July I sold 770.
(20:58):
I sold actually more than that.
I sold servercom for 770,000.
I sold omgcom to Yahoo and did asignificant amount of money.
I think I did over a millionbucks in sales my first month in
it.
The following month I sold someother names.
That equaled a few hundredthousand dollars and when I
(21:20):
spoke to my boss there she saidshe thought it was a fluke.
By the end of that year I soldthe highestorg sale ever
pokerorg for a million bucks.
And what I did again let's goback to the recipe is.
I got to sit with people likeMatt Rosebrook, who is now a
broker, at Afternoon Go Daddy.
(21:41):
He helped teach me a ton aboutthe business.
I picked his brain constantly.
There were others there, likeJay Finnan and Tessa Holcomb
obviously as well.
She was there just asking a lotof questions and then talking
to the customers, the sellers.
There were others there, likeJay Finnan and Tessa Holcomb
obviously as well.
She was there just asking a lotof questions and then talking
to the customers, the sellers,really getting to know them, and
then attending differentconferences.
And then, while I was there, Iwas given the opportunity to
(22:04):
take sexcom on to sell and thatwas a very huge challenge
because the expectations of theprice of the domain were
extremely high.
But back in, at this point intime, it was uh, 2000,.
Uh, it was July in 2010 when Iwas given the opportunity to
(22:27):
sell uh, sexcom and um, when Iwas given the opportunity to
sell sexcom.
And or was it 2000, july 2009.
I don't, I don't remember July.
I think it was July 2010.
I was given the opportunity tosell sexcom and people told me
in the industry I go to aconference, talk to people about
(22:49):
it Like good luck.
There's no way you're going tosell this for that price.
Might be worth three or fivemillion dollars or whatever it
is.
And it was additionallychallenging because people in
the adult business a lot of thetime say they work for
advertising companies.
And not only do they say theywork for advertising companies.
When you call into theseadvertising companies, a lot of
(23:10):
the time they don't use theirreal names, and it makes sense
that they do that.
But it was challenging getting ahold of people in the adult
business to try to sell thedomain to them and also got a
lot of hate email and stuff frompeople who were against it,
which was surprising.
But I stuck with it workedextremely hard.
(23:32):
I remember coming down to thewire and we actually had
somebody who offered more thanthe 13 million.
He, I believe, offered 15 or 16million for it, but it was over
a period of time and the courtwanted cash.
They want to pay off all thedebt when something's in,
(23:53):
because sexcom was in bankruptcy.
So when something is inbankruptcy, the job of the court
is to pay off all the peoplethat are owed money.
It's not to get necessarily thebest price, because the best
terms was the cash.
I think if I owned it outrightI would have taken the payment
plan, but anyways, at that pointin time the adult business was
still paying extremely well andthe tube sites hadn't killed the
(24:16):
revenue on it yet, so we wereable to get a good price for
that.
I made that sale and there's notmany companies that would give
a guy like me a chance just toget in the business and get that
job and then give me theopportunity to break a world
record.
And you know, ceto willobviously have a special place
in my heart.
But I also knew working therethat if I still work there today
(24:40):
I would have the exact same jobI had as when I started.
It just didn't seem like therewas much of a path for me to
grow as a professional and asalesperson and that
entrepreneurial spirit that hasalways itched me kind of
remained.
And it wasn't like theypromised me anything when I
started working there.
The job was to be a broker, andso I don't slight them for that
(25:03):
.
It's all positive things that Ican say about them and again
I'm very grateful for theopportunity.
But I decided to leave and Istarted Domain Advisors, which
became igloocom, with TessaHolcomb and Greg McNair.
Tessa has been a domain brokerprobably a year longer than me
in the domain industry.
We hit it off at CETO and she'sa great salesperson.
(25:24):
And then Greg we call himTriple G.
Greg McNair has been in thetraffic side of the business.
He's a serial entrepreneur.
When I met him he was growingtuna in a fish tank in Spain.
Last time I spoke to him.
(25:45):
He's been working on solar andhe's always been in real estate
Working with him and Tessa.
I got to say that I pretty muchgot a master's in business over
the time that I was with them.
Just the whole, starting fromabsolute zero, from not even
having email addresses togetting a website, going to
hiring people, having them workfor us, payroll, keeping the
(26:07):
books, doing those things,traveling as a business owner.
And you know from Greg beingreally I mean, he's an
entrepreneur, but I have to sayhe's one of the best business
development people I've ever metin my life.
He's very good at just walkinginto a room, meeting people,
being memorable, putting dealstogether, and I learned a lot
(26:31):
from him from there and at thetime with domain advisors, slash
Igloo.
We also had Brooke Hernandez,who's is working with me now at
Sauce.
She came along from thecommercial real estate business.
You can hear more of her story.
I interviewed her a couple ofmonths ago.
We had Amanda Waltz, who Istarted Sotarcom with, but her
(26:55):
and I kind of split up.
And Christina Auckland wasanother salesperson, and then
another person named Gina Aubreywho worked for us.
So we used to call themJeffrey's Angels because it was
me and a group of women thatwere selling and I learned a lot
from them.
And one of our customers at thecompany was Frank Schilling, and
(27:15):
Frank, if you don't know him,was one of the more famous
domain investors in our industryand he owns about 350,000 at
the time 350, 350 or 360,000domains and his right-hand man,
vern Jurevic.
They grew up together, theywere good friends and him and I
(27:37):
became friendly at the shows.
We spoke to them and theyactually hired Dan Adamson, who
I worked with at Uniregistry forseven years, but I'll get to
him in a few minutes.
So, anyways, they were a clientof ours and what they would do
was is that we were doingbrokerage, we would be selling
domain portfolios, we wereselling exclusive big names, we
(27:58):
would be have sales landers haveopportunities coming in.
We actually had a what the hellis it called A like an email
list where we do a newsletterwith domains on it and and
business was going well and Iwas pretty happy at the time.
I lived down the Cape, rightnear the beach on a beautiful
golf course in Cape Cod and NewSeabury.
(28:19):
Life was good.
The business was going in theright direction.
I really liked working withTessa and Greg and the other
women, and what would happen ona daily basis would be that
Frank hired Dan Adamson and awoman named Maureen, and Frank's
portfolio was generating about1,000 inquiries a day and they
(28:40):
couldn't really keep up withthem and at the time they didn't
really even have a CRM, and soVern would send us all of the
old leads that they wouldrespond to or they didn't go
anywhere and we would work onthose.
And we also got to put ourphone number on the landers, so
we would get a lot ofopportunities from there and
(29:11):
going to look for his own feedand he got his own and he
started internet traffic, but hehadn't launched domain name
sales yet.
So I ended up talking with Vernand Roy was one of the
developers and Dan and helpedthem design the beginnings of
domain name sales.
And then it kind of got to apoint where Frank is seeing
parking earnings going down andbecause there was a period of
time that he wasn't interestedin selling really any of his
(29:34):
names because the parkingpayouts were so high.
But now the parking payoutswere going down and he saw an
opportunity in making more sales.
And so he called me one day andhe said you know, I think you
and your team are doing a greatjob and you know, obviously I'm
a client of yours, but I thinkit would be better if we did
(29:59):
this together and it wasn't, youknow, just me as a client.
And he asked if I could flydown and came in and talk to him
and Dan Adamson was there atthe time, and so I flew down
there.
He asked me to go that day.
I think I was.
I remember I was shaving and heasked me if I could go down
that day and I said how abouttomorrow?
So I flew down the following day, looked around the island, went
(30:23):
in his office and we talked andhe said how would you like to
come down here and build up theteam and really ramp this up and
grab my portfolio by the hornsand really turn this into a
machine.
He had developers sitting therein the office.
He wanted me to hire brokers.
He wanted me to really use thetechnology to add my book of
(30:47):
business, of sellers anddomainers to the platform and
really turn up the heat.
And I remember calling my wifeat the time we were married at
this point, no kids though andsaid I'm torn I really love
working with Greg, I likeworking with Tessa and the girls
(31:09):
, and we've done a lot.
But I feel like if this doesn'twork out with Frank, I can go
back and I can start anotherbrokerage.
But I don't think anopportunity like this is ever
going to present itself again inmy life, especially getting to
live abroad, on a beautifulisland, you know, with a guy
(31:29):
that really is excited aboutaccomplishing goals.
He had plans for the registrar.
He was the GTLDs were.
You know the applicationprocess was going on.
You know he had it.
It was all happening over thereand there was just a lot of
action and he had the developersand he had the money and he had
the desire.
And, um, I said you know what,fuck it.
(31:52):
So I told Melissa I think youknow Frank and I made a deal.
I told Melissa, like you knowyou're going to, I think we got
to move, and she didn't even goto Cayman once, so, sight unseen
, uh, we packed everything upand um and move there.
So I was there likemid-December.
(32:12):
I was there January 3rd thefollowing year in 2013.
Working at Uniregistry when Igot there, it was domain name
sales and internet traffic atthe time was interesting.
You know, what I love about itis the startup feel, where it's
(32:35):
not as everything isn't soestablished, like we didn't have
an HR department, we didn'thave, you know, all these
different things and people.
It was more like a fleet, freeflowing ideas, with a person who
is truly passionate about thebusiness, and that is the kind
of environment that I reallylove and that we can try new
things and you know everybody'son board to achieve these goals
(32:56):
and trying new things and tryinglittle things and big things,
and if they bomb, it's okay, andit was a really exciting time.
And then getting to start tohire salespeople, putting
together trainings and shippingthem down there or hiring from
the island was great, you know,yeah, and my goal there, which
(33:19):
was extremely challenging, was Ihad to sell, no matter what, a
million dollars a month, comehell or high water.
And it wasn't just me,obviously, but it was myself,
dan Adamson, a group ofsalespeople.
There was about foursalespeople.
So really we had to hit thatnumber every single month, come
(33:40):
hell or high water.
We had to find a way, and thebest analogy that I can give you
is it's like putting on amassive like show, like a circus
, every month to just try to getit in down to the wire and then
it, you start at zero again andFrank is on you to hit that
number.
You know, and to get there weobviously tried to hire and
(34:04):
retain the best talent.
We tried to train them the bestwe could in just sales in
general in the industry, tryingto share my idea of like knowing
everything you possibly can.
We had to pay them well tostick around and to live in
Cayman.
It wasn't cheap, you know.
We needed to work on commissionstructures and different
strategies, and then we hadsellers, like other sellers,
(34:25):
joining us and then trying toseparate the work between
different brokers, like who'sgoing to work on Frank's stuff,
who's going to work on ourcustomers things?
Because you know, let's behonest here when Frank sold the
domain, he did pay into domainname sales and uniregistry to
make payroll, but he got 85% ofwhat he sold versus we would get
(34:47):
15% if we sold something for acustomer.
So just think of the differencein revenue.
Like you sell a million dollarsfor customers and a million
dollars for Frank, you know youget 150k from there and he gets
850 from himself and he alsoprofits from that because the
business was running at asurplus.
You know that makes the mostsense.
But as time went on, theportfolio remember we did this
(35:09):
for seven years got thinner andthinner and you know we weren't
replacing many names on aregular basis, you know.
So the job got a little harder.
Now we did add bettertechnology to do better with
following up.
You know we had a team thatwent over old leads.
We had a thing that pulledphone numbers and we called them
phone follow-up leads and theguys would call all the old
(35:31):
leads over and over and overagain.
You know we really just rinsedit out and got more and more
efficient with pricing andsharing the inventory all over
the world and really getting itgoing and sharing the inventory
all over the world and reallygetting it going and what I
really liked about working forFrank was that was different
than working with Greg is Frankreally loves new ideas.
(35:54):
He really has.
That's where he gets excited,you know, and it could be even
the littlest idea that changessomething in some way or gives
you a chance at making money.
And we would make calculateddecisions and talk about these
ideas and go through them anddesign them and they'd come true
and they would be released.
(36:14):
And some of them worked quitewell.
Others bombed and when theybombed, frank frank didn't care.
He'd want you to learn from it,because it might have cost him
thousands of dollars or tens ofthousands of dollars, like we
made an affiliate program whenhe won all the um, the 20 gtlds.
We made an affiliate program onparking that we thought would
(36:37):
get a lot of registrants.
It didn't get many, so we gotrid of it.
But that was.
Building the affiliate programwith the developers took a lot
of resources, time, energy andmoney and it bombed and we just
moved on from it where someother people can't let that go,
and I think working with Frankthat was a great thing that
allowed us to try new things.
(36:57):
He didn't want you to make thesame mistake twice.
God help you if you did, but hewas definitely supportive of
those things and that's what youknow.
I really loved about workingthere and we were able to roll
out some really great productssome different sales landers,
different sales strategies.
We built a payment plan product.
(37:18):
You know.
We did all kinds of differentstuff, which was always exciting
and there was always somethinggoing on at the company, built
the company up to on my side ofthe business, built the
brokerage and customer serviceto over 50.
Dan Adamson, who helped me dothis, and obviously there's you
(37:41):
can't do this stuff alone.
This isn't the Jeff Gabrielshow.
We did it with a lot of peoplewho are part of this.
Developers were a big part ofour business.
Obviously, frank was part ofthese conversations.
We had different projectmanagers and other people and
designers helping and thenobviously asking a lot of the
salespeople what do you need?
What do customers tell you theywant?
(38:02):
How can we build this better?
What can make your life easier?
How can you be more efficient?
You know, talking in that wayand then building the sales team
up and customer service to over50 people, which you know I
managed for a period of time andDan Adamson was at a point.
He was from England, that hemoved back, and so we opened an
office in England, and so Iwould go back and forth to the
(38:25):
English office and they wouldhandle most of our European
leads.
So we would really have, youknow, a 14 hour or 15 hours of
people sitting at their deskanswering the phones and the
business was rolling.
And you know, it was anexperience, um, that I'll never
forget, um, I think that my timethere taught me an immense
(38:48):
amount of about management,about myself, about sales, um,
about empathy.
I think having children makesyou realize it's not all about
you anymore either, and we hadboth of our children on the
island.
I made friends there that I'llhave for a lifetime.
I'm friends with Wade Smith,who works at GoDaddy, and Andrew
(39:12):
Mathias and Vinny we're stillfriends, I still talk to him all
the time Dan Kenny I'm friendswith this other family called
the Piers, who are there on theisland.
I made other friends with myfriend Simon.
I just go on and on and on.
These are people that I met inCayman that either I worked with
or I didn't work with, thatI've been friends with since and
they're like family to me, butit came a time where things
started to change at Uniregistryand in some ways the things
(39:37):
that we invested in or Frankinvested, in some ways the
things that we invested in orFrank invested in, like the
registrar and the GTLDs, didn'tgrow as much as was anticipated
and the expenses to carry thosethings was immense.
Looking at the books, you know,and, and honestly, having 50
salespeople and customer serviceand HR and all those different
(40:01):
things to snacks and coffee andfood and rent, you know, and
parties and travel andconferences and sponsorships and
marketing and all these otherthings, the weight of those
expenses throughout the companybecame quite heavy.
And you know, we did experiencea round of layoffs.
I had to let go a lot of peopleone day and that was a very
(40:24):
stressful, hard day in my life,in my business career.
But not just that, it's justthe business changed and got
much more corporate-y, whichhappens in the succession of a
business, and I knew that itkind of got to a point that I
did everything that I felt thatI could do and I just felt like
I was just going through themotions and it wasn't with the
(40:45):
same excitement and energy andagain I got that entrepreneurial
itch.
It hit me again.
And so I started talking to mywife about it in probably about
April that that was somethingthat I wanted to do it and
probably about April that thatwas something that I wanted to
(41:07):
do.
And around I got back from aconference in Portugal Cache
Cache, I think it's called and Isaid I think it's time that I
move on.
I told my wife I've made thedecision and so I called Frank.
It was in the beginning of July.
He didn't answer, he was onvacation.
And then I ended up speaking tohim.
(41:29):
It was July 4th that I resignedand I gave plenty of notice to
say that I was going to move onand do something else.
And the moment I hung up thephone I just said what the fuck
did I do to my wife?
We had a beautiful house inCayman, we had a life that
people potentially would justabsolutely love to have, and I
(41:54):
gave it all away.
And I said to my wife we mightend up on my parents' couch
eating a can of beans.
And she said I support you.
She said this is what you wantto do.
You know you want to go, doyour own thing.
You've always wanted to do yourown thing and I think the time
is now.
You're 40.
I just turned 40 in April.
Well, I really turned 39.
(42:16):
So sorry, I turned 39.
She's like this is this is thetime If you're going to do it in
your life, you got to do it.
So we sold the house.
Well, we put the house on themarket, we started selling all
of our items, our materials, ofpossessions, and then my wife
left the island to go, actuallymoved in with some friends back
(42:37):
in Boston and I stayed behind toclose up our affairs.
Tune in next week for part twoof my story, where I talk about
moving home, readjusting tonon-island life, launching
sawcom, the lockdowns,overcoming countless challenges
sleepless nights, self-doubt, afailing business, covid,
technical issues, two children,a partridge in a pear tree and
(42:58):
much more to find success on theother side of the rainbow.
Today on the Uncomfortable Podcast.
You got me as your guesttelling my story, my struggles
and a little bit of what I'velearned along the way Giddy up.
So I'm going to start kind oflike one of my guests in Mark
Huba, where we kind of go overhis life and kind of go through
the trials and tribulations andending up in the domain industry
and where I'm kind of sittingtoday and you know I'm going to
(00:34):
skip over some parts of my lifethat might not be relevant to
this show, but you know I'mgoing to start around the
college time.
I will say I was never a greatstudent.
I always found myself introuble but I was never like
fighting or rude to teachers.
It was just I couldn't keep mymouth shut.
(00:57):
I wasn't extremely focused allthe time and I think the
material that I learned in highschool mostly, and a big portion
at least to the first half ofcollege I always felt that it
had no meaning to me and itdidn't really matter.
Like I didn't really care thatmuch about physics.
I liked history because I foundit to be interesting and you
can always learn from the past.
Mathematics the basics, weren'tinteresting to me.
(01:20):
They got interesting when Istarted getting into finance and
learning what makes a stockprice change, learning about
money, learning about thingsthat mattered.
That's when my brain started toturn on and I got better as
school went on.
But as a high school student Iwas usually in trouble because
of my grades, because of talkingin class.
I was stuck sitting in thefront row.
(01:42):
But I did graduate and went tocollege.
I actually wanted to go tocollege to become kind of like a
radio DJ or a shock jock.
I used to love listening toHoward Stern and these other
guys on different radio stations.
I even was an intern at a radiostation when I was a senior in
high school, but anyways.
So I graduated college with adegree in finance and risk
(02:06):
management and, I believe, aminor in communications.
I get out of school I'm notsure exactly what I want to do
yet, but there certainly wasdiscussions in my family and I
grew up with a great childhoodwith a lot of friends, a lot of
fun times, supportive parents,supportive family.
I had all four grandparentsuntil after I graduated college,
(02:30):
who I was close to each of themand getting older you realize
how lucky I was to have that.
Most of my friends and even mykids don't have their
grandparents around as muchbecause we live far away.
But yeah, so I graduated collegeand I actually started working
at a warehouse because Icouldn't really find much work
(02:51):
or I wasn't really sure what Iwanted to do.
And it was a littledisappointing because I heard
like different friends had theseawesome jobs in New York or in
Boston or working at financialinstitutions like Fidelity.
I remember this guy, bill,who's a very good friend of mine
, and also Anthony were workingat Fidelity and I think Bill at
the time and this is 2002, wasmaking like $25 an hour and I
(03:14):
thought if I can make $25 anhour I would be set for life.
And that's when I was workingat the warehouse.
But there was know, there was alittle bit.
In my family are some lawyersand my dad's a lawyer and his
brother is a lawyer and his dadwas a lawyer and his dad's
brother was a lawyer.
(03:34):
So there was a little bit ofpressure on me to also go to law
school.
But you know there wasdiscussions of it and I took the
LSAT to get into law school.
I ended up getting into lawschool, but during that time I
actually also started sellingloans, mortgages, and when
you're 22, 23 years old, in yourfirst sales job, after leaving
(03:57):
the warehouse and you startmaking some good paychecks.
And then the summer is endingand you're supposed to be
starting law school in September.
I didn't want to go.
My dad said, well, you can goto law school at night and you
can work during the day.
And I was working during theday, making good money and going
out with my friends, and I justknew at the time in my life
(04:21):
that I probably wouldn't befocused on law school and that
to me seemed like another one ofthose situations that I was in
in high school where thematerial was not something that
was ultimately important, thatwould stick in my brain and I
would not be able to learn itthat easily.
I'd have to force myself, andto have to do that through, I
(04:43):
believe, three years of lawschool would probably end in
failure.
So I had the tough discussionwith my dad.
He said, well, what are yougoing to do?
And I said, well, I'm going tosell loans and see how it goes.
He was a real estate lawyer andhe actually got me into it.
He didn't get me the job, buthe said you should go sell
mortgages, and I got a job rightout of the newspaper working at
(05:04):
a mortgage company in WorcesterMass and did that and then
ended up working with working.
You kind of bounce around alittle bit more looking for
better splits and things of thatnature.
So I did that for a number ofyears.
What I loved about it and Irealized about sales in general
which there's certain parts ofsales that I enjoy and there's
different types of sales andwhat made me excel in mortgages
(05:29):
was I really like talking topeople and it's something
everybody says when they saythey like sales but I like
hearing their stories, just likeI'm doing on this podcast today
.
Hearing a doctor what kind ofdoctor?
Oh, why are you that kind ofdoctor?
Or a construction guy what doyou specialize in?
And then hearing about whatthey're trying to accomplish,
whether it's a refinance, totake money out to put on an
(05:51):
addition or pay for a kid'scollege or pay off debt or buy a
dream house or buy a secondhome, and you're learning about
also, what are they reallymaking, how much money are they
really making?
And it opened my eyes to theworld as to how much money
people made, how much they savedand what their situations were
credit-wise.
And then I learned also how doyou fix credit?
(06:12):
How do you approach theagencies if there's a mistake?
How do you approach theagencies even if there isn't a
mistake and you're hoping theydon't respond?
How do you approach theagencies if you owe money to a
defunct company and helpsomeone's credit?
There's a lot of things to dowith mortgages and working at a
few different places.
You get into this situationwhere the mortgage company will
(06:36):
always advertise the lowest ratepossible on a 30-year fix at
least where I lived, in thenewspaper or in other places
online, and then that gets thephone to ring and the moment you
pick up the phone, all it is iswhat's your interest rate and
what does it cost to get it?
And now what you're doingdoesn't really matter.
And I learned one of my firstthings in sales was it wasn't
always about the rate and itisn't always about the cost.
(06:58):
You can kind of twist things.
It's about payment.
What I sold based on paymentand I also sold based on other
value propositions, like I wouldgive everybody a free home
equity line who did a refinancewith me.
I even got to a point wherepeople would be referred to me
as the guy who would get thefree home equity line.
But everyone could sell or givea free home equity line.
(07:19):
It was a very simple thing todo.
I also learned that in salesthat if you want to be good at
what you do in sales and any jobin sales is you have to use the
resources around you to makeyou great.
And what does that mean?
Well, you know, when you talkto the old, grizzled guy who's
(07:39):
been doing it for 20 years, youshould probably listen to what
he has to say as to what he does, his process, how things should
work.
That's all very important, youknow.
There's also, on the other hand, understanding the guidelines
and the requirements thatdifferent banks have to approve
loans, and you start to figureout what banks like.
(08:00):
Different flavors of people,those with bad credit, those who
are self-employed, those thatjust started a new business All
of those different things canmake your life a lot easier.
And just understanding theprocess I've done the same in
domain names is understandingevery single facet and then
(08:20):
taking it a step further,meeting and knowing the vendors
and the players in the space.
So same with the demand spaceis that I know all the different
vendors.
I know the different peoplethat sell different domains that
sell, and understand howdifferent registrars work, how
the registries work.
I go to the ICANN conferences.
When I was selling mortgages Iwould read the guidelines.
(08:42):
I would actually call and talkto some of the underwriters.
I would get to know they hadaccount reps that used to come
into the office so you'd talk tothem about types of loans they
want and so whenever somebodycalls in and they have a
situation that's outside of thebox, you are prepared and a big
part of sales isn't necessarilyselling, it's about providing
solutions to a problem thatsomebody has.
(09:04):
So when they come to you andthey say, hey, I want this and
it's not normal like maybe it'sa mixed-use property, meaning
that they want to live on thetop floor and their store is on
the bottom floor, or they livein an earthquake zone or a flood
zone or they have some otherproblem with the property you
can immediately know without adoubt and saying and talking to
(09:26):
them intelligently about what'shappening.
This happens regularly in thedomain business and some people
think that being a domain brokeris very easy.
Being a loan officer can be veryeasy and same with.
Being a domain broker can be aneasy job if you wanna be really
bad at it, but if you challengeyourself to understand the
market, to understand what'shappening, to know all of the
(09:49):
vendors, to know what all ishappening, that's what I did as
a loan officer in my first job.
It took time I mean, it wasn'tlike minutes that I figured this
out, but that's what I didfigure out.
And after doing that for anumber of years I realized that
this might not be something thatI want to do my entire life.
And while I was doing this,while I was selling loans and
(10:15):
doing this, you know, I kind ofhad this entrepreneurial itch
and I remember buying some bookthat was talking about how to
start a business and making abusiness plan and doing all
these things.
I actually had these big posterboards on the wall in my room
that I had this idea for sellingmortgage leads online and
people would click on the adsand mortgage companies would pay
(10:38):
money for the clicks.
Brilliant idea.
That was already thought of.
I didn't realize that PPCadvertising was already
happening in the early 2000s.
But that was something that Ialready thought of.
I didn't realize that PPCadvertising was already
happening in the early 2000s,but that was something that I
was thinking about.
Anyways, I ended up leaving themortgage business and I joined a
company called JobFox.
Jobfox is similar to like amonstercom or career builder,
(10:59):
and what I would do is it'susually with a lot of these job
websites is they advertise tocandidates.
So if you look for a job, yougo and you put your resume on
there for free and then peoplelike me will sell access to the
database to companies.
And if you don't realize this,like a hospital for example,
they always need nurses and ifthey're going to pay a
(11:21):
headhunting firm to find aspecific nurse a lot of the
times a nurse the expense for anurse is one year's salary for a
headhunter to get a nurse foryou, which is a lot of money.
So when you walk into a companyand you say, hey, we have a
database of nurses of differentskills and abilities and they're
(11:44):
fresh, these are people thatput their resumes in recently,
you know all they had to do isget one or two placements off of
our product and that would payfor the service for a year.
So my job at JobFox was coldcalling all day into HR
departments, to small businesses, large businesses I mean from
Staples to a small nonprofit inWorcester, mass, and driving
(12:08):
around really New England, withmy projector in my 1997 Ford
Ranger.
And so I would cold call my wayin.
I would hit the road, go do apresentation, bring donuts,
coffee, beer, whatever if it wason a Friday, sandwiches go in
there, set up a projector and doa presentation, and you know
(12:32):
it's funny with over 100salespeople.
After being there a while andwhen I was hired, I was one of
the few people that didn't haveexperience in the job board
space, but I fought my way up tobeing number two and again I
applied the same logic.
I got to sit next to agentleman that was in the job
board space, who worked atMonster for a number of years,
(12:54):
and I picked his brain.
I try to understand calling inand institutional selling,
because institutional sellingand decision-making process is
much different than talking to aguy and his wife about buying
their first home and thedecision-making process and much
different than talking to a guyand his wife about buying their
first home and thedecision-making process and how
they go about it.
Right, yeah, and I becamenumber two out of about a
hundred salespeople.
(13:14):
I know I was beaten by someonewho worked in the New York city
area and all she had to do waseither take the subway or walk
to her appointments, wheresometimes I'd be in Rhode Island
in the morning and NewHampshire in the afternoon.
It would burn my whole day I'dbe on the road.
So, anyways, but again, as longas I could learn every aspect
(13:34):
of the sales process, theindustry and understanding
recruiting of these companieswanted and all these things, it
became a lot easier for me to goin there and just have frank
conversations.
And at first I had, oh, thecompany gave us this like 20
slide PowerPoint presentationand it was.
It was like it was nicely doneand it was professional, but it
(13:57):
was extremely long and I knewlike halfway through I'd be
losing the crowd.
I mean, I remember one time Iwas doing this presentation to a
college and I looked out intothe crowd.
And I mean, I remember one timeI was doing this presentation
to a college and I looked outinto the crowd and there was a
woman who was asleep and Irealized that I needed to make a
change and that thispresentation wasn't me and I cut
it down to like eight or nineslides and changed them quite a
bit.
And when I did that and made itmore of an interactive
(14:21):
presentation, my conversionswent up and through the roof.
And, strangely enough, one ofthe days, like so, I was doing
really well and it started tocatch attention of some of the
upper management and they'rebased in Washington DC and they
wanted to know, like you know,what I was doing and they talked
to me about it.
And one of the days I went withthe one of the C-level guys out
(14:41):
for a sales meeting and I wasworking so hard to get this
meeting for so long and I wasdebating should I do their
presentation or mine.
And because I worked so long toget the appointment, I knew
that their presentation wouldprobably be boring and I was on
practice with it at this point.
(15:03):
So I decided you know what,what the hell, I'm just going to
do mine.
And I did it anyway.
And um, needless to say, hewasn't impressed.
We had to talk about it, um andum.
But it worked out.
I got the deal, but in um.
So I went from being, uh, youknow, the top of the company in
(15:24):
March of, I would say, 2008.
Then, by the end of 2008,because we went down to Atlanta
for a sales meeting around thenand that's when I got the award.
And then, by the fall of 2008,the market crashed and I don't
know if some of you folksremember this, but Lehman
Brothers crashed.
(15:45):
Washington Mutual, who I usedto get my home equity lines from
, crashed.
We sell this other productcalled an option arm from
Washington Mutual.
That bank collapsed and Bank ofAmerica bought them.
Lehman Brothers went under.
I think Merrill Lynch ended upas part of Bank of America as
well, and it became very obviousthat when the market was
(16:05):
crashing, that my companyprobably wasn't going to last
either, and it went from being avery large company with VC
funding and everything lookinglike it was going in the right
direction to us going to workand nobody answering the phones.
And it turned into us actuallydriving around to these
technology parks that are in theBoston area and knocking on
(16:27):
doors and asking them if theywanted to buy our services or if
they're interested, and prettymuch getting laughed at.
And it ended up resulting in uspretty much calling early days
and going to the pub and havingsome drinks and really just
waiting for that time to happen.
And one day I got an email thatat it was like 10 or 11 o'clock
we were going to have a meetingand the CEO was going to talk
to happen.
And one day I got an email thatat it was like 10 or 11 o'clock
, we were going to have ameeting and the CEO was going to
(16:48):
talk to us.
And before the meeting I calledmy buddy, dave, and I said I
think I'm going to get laid offhere.
And he said well, I got twotickets to Celtics, knicks and
I'm like almost courtside theywere like one behind courtside.
He got them from a client orsomebody he goes.
So if you get laid off, let meknow why don't you come down to
(17:10):
New York?
So we sit in the meeting andthen the CEO his name was Rob
McGovern, was actually theperson who created CareerBuilder
.
It was a very intelligent,great CEO, very calculated,
polished, knew his space.
I would definitely do businesswith him again Gave us the bad
news that the company wasn'tdoing well.
(17:31):
They gave us a decent severanceand gave us as much as they
could and I went on my way.
So I left there.
I headed straight to New York.
I was there and things gotreally grim really fast.
I remember sitting at home andat the time my wife she was my
girlfriend was moved in with meand I remember sitting in my
(17:55):
bathrobe like really trying toget a job for hours every day.
Between that and playing ZeldaI started, you know, just really
working hard to apply for jobs.
I felt worthless.
I remember calling in and beingtold oh yeah, we have a great
outside sales job for you.
Then going in for the interviewand they're like oh, we changed
(18:16):
our mind.
We want you to do lead gen.
If you don't know what lead genis, it means you just bang the
phone all day and if you getsomeone who wants to bite then
you transfer the call to thereal salesperson.
And after what I've been able toaccomplish and what I've been
able to do, there was no way Iwas going to do that.
But that was really the onlything that was nibbling and that
went on for a number of monthsof just banging my head against
(18:37):
the wall, really just feelingnot very good.
I actually rototilled orcultivated some people's gardens
because it was the springtimeto make some money doing some
landscaping, trying to make ithappen.
But I knew that as hard as if Ijust kept trying hard that, no
matter what happens in themarket, great salespeople are
(19:06):
always needed, and you know itwas grim.
So, anyways, I went back and Ithought about it and I said to
myself I need to think morestrategically about how I'm
going to get this job or how amI going to get a new opportunity
.
I went back and went over a listof companies that when I was at
JobFox, that I tried to sellinto or I sold to, and then I
just started calling them andsaying hey, I came into your
(19:27):
office, I did a presentation youknow I cold called in.
You know I don't mind gettingon the phone.
I presented myself well, do youhave any sales jobs open?
And I got a lot of nibbles thatway, and one of them was Cito,
and Cito gave me a chance.
The problem with Cito was itwas over an hour and a half away
(19:48):
from my house.
I lived in Worcester,massachusetts.
Cito is based in Cambridge, butI was delighted to get it.
They gave me a waitress'ssalary I think it was about
$20,000 a year and a percentageof any sale I could get.
And in reality I even told themat the interview what you're
(20:10):
offering me is actually lessthan I'm making on unemployment,
but I want to.
I think I can do this.
I'm excited about this.
I read about domains and I waslike I'm doing this, I'm going
all in.
So I started there in May of2009.
After the long weekend, Ialways mix it up with Memorial
(20:30):
Day and Labor Day I think it'sMemorial Day and so June was
like my first full month there,but I was kind of training.
I did like a week in May andthen training.
In June.
I sold my first domain calledwork Zilla.
Looks like a developed companynow.
I sold it to a mark who wasbrother Funny enough, we also
share the same birthday and thenin July I sold 770.
(20:58):
I sold actually more than that.
I sold servercom for 770,000.
I sold omgcom to Yahoo and did asignificant amount of money.
I think I did over a millionbucks in sales my first month in
it.
The following month I sold someother names.
That equaled a few hundredthousand dollars and when I
(21:20):
spoke to my boss there she saidshe thought it was a fluke.
By the end of that year I soldthe highestorg sale ever
pokerorg for a million bucks.
And what I did again let's goback to the recipe is.
I got to sit with people likeMatt Rosebrook, who is now a
broker, at Afternoon Go Daddy.
(21:41):
He helped teach me a ton aboutthe business.
I picked his brain constantly.
There were others there, likeJay Finnan and Tessa Holcomb
obviously as well.
She was there just asking a lotof questions and then talking
to the customers, the sellers.
There were others there, likeJay Finnan and Tessa Holcomb
obviously as well.
She was there just asking a lotof questions and then talking
to the customers, the sellers,really getting to know them, and
then attending differentconferences.
And then, while I was there, Iwas given the opportunity to
(22:04):
take sexcom on to sell and thatwas a very huge challenge
because the expectations of theprice of the domain were
extremely high.
But back in, at this point intime, it was uh, 2000,.
Uh, it was July in 2010 when Iwas given the opportunity to
(22:27):
sell uh, sexcom and um, when Iwas given the opportunity to
sell sexcom.
And or was it 2000, july 2009.
I don't, I don't remember July.
I think it was July 2010.
I was given the opportunity tosell sexcom and people told me
in the industry I go to aconference, talk to people about
(22:49):
it Like good luck.
There's no way you're going tosell this for that price.
Might be worth three or fivemillion dollars or whatever it
is.
And it was additionallychallenging because people in
the adult business a lot of thetime say they work for
advertising companies.
And not only do they say theywork for advertising companies.
When you call into theseadvertising companies, a lot of
(23:10):
the time they don't use theirreal names, and it makes sense
that they do that.
But it was challenging getting ahold of people in the adult
business to try to sell thedomain to them and also got a
lot of hate email and stuff frompeople who were against it,
which was surprising.
But I stuck with it workedextremely hard.
(23:32):
I remember coming down to thewire and we actually had
somebody who offered more thanthe 13 million.
He, I believe, offered 15 or 16million for it, but it was over
a period of time and the courtwanted cash.
They want to pay off all thedebt when something's in,
(23:53):
because sexcom was in bankruptcy.
So when something is inbankruptcy, the job of the court
is to pay off all the peoplethat are owed money.
It's not to get necessarily thebest price, because the best
terms was the cash.
I think if I owned it outrightI would have taken the payment
plan, but anyways, at that pointin time the adult business was
still paying extremely well andthe tube sites hadn't killed the
(24:16):
revenue on it yet, so we wereable to get a good price for
that.
I made that sale and there's notmany companies that would give
a guy like me a chance just toget in the business and get that
job and then give me theopportunity to break a world
record.
And you know, ceto willobviously have a special place
in my heart.
But I also knew working therethat if I still work there today
(24:40):
I would have the exact same jobI had as when I started.
It just didn't seem like therewas much of a path for me to
grow as a professional and asalesperson and that
entrepreneurial spirit that hasalways itched me kind of
remained.
And it wasn't like theypromised me anything when I
started working there.
The job was to be a broker, andso I don't slight them for that
(25:03):
.
It's all positive things that Ican say about them and again
I'm very grateful for theopportunity.
But I decided to leave and Istarted Domain Advisors, which
became igloocom, with TessaHolcomb and Greg McNair.
Tessa has been a domain brokerprobably a year longer than me
in the domain industry.
We hit it off at CETO and she'sa great salesperson.
(25:24):
And then Greg we call himTriple G.
Greg McNair has been in thetraffic side of the business.
He's a serial entrepreneur.
When I met him he was growingtuna in a fish tank in Spain.
Last time I spoke to him.
(25:45):
He's been working on solar andhe's always been in real estate
Working with him and Tessa.
I got to say that I pretty muchgot a master's in business over
the time that I was with them.
Just the whole, starting fromabsolute zero, from not even
having email addresses togetting a website, going to
hiring people, having them workfor us, payroll, keeping the
(26:07):
books, doing those things,traveling as a business owner.
And you know from Greg beingreally I mean, he's an
entrepreneur, but I have to sayhe's one of the best business
development people I've ever metin my life.
He's very good at just walkinginto a room, meeting people,
being memorable, putting dealstogether, and I learned a lot
(26:31):
from him from there and at thetime with domain advisors, slash
Igloo.
We also had Brooke Hernandez,who's is working with me now at
Sauce.
She came along from thecommercial real estate business.
You can hear more of her story.
I interviewed her a couple ofmonths ago.
We had Amanda Waltz, who Istarted Sotarcom with, but her
(26:55):
and I kind of split up.
And Christina Auckland wasanother salesperson, and then
another person named Gina Aubreywho worked for us.
So we used to call themJeffrey's Angels because it was
me and a group of women thatwere selling and I learned a lot
from them.
And one of our customers at thecompany was Frank Schilling, and
(27:15):
Frank, if you don't know him,was one of the more famous
domain investors in our industryand he owns about 350,000 at
the time 350, 350 or 360,000domains and his right-hand man,
vern Jurevic.
They grew up together, theywere good friends and him and I
(27:37):
became friendly at the shows.
We spoke to them and theyactually hired Dan Adamson, who
I worked with at Uniregistry forseven years, but I'll get to
him in a few minutes.
So, anyways, they were a clientof ours and what they would do
was is that we were doingbrokerage, we would be selling
domain portfolios, we wereselling exclusive big names, we
(27:58):
would be have sales landers haveopportunities coming in.
We actually had a what the hellis it called A like an email
list where we do a newsletterwith domains on it and and
business was going well and Iwas pretty happy at the time.
I lived down the Cape, rightnear the beach on a beautiful
golf course in Cape Cod and NewSeabury.
(28:19):
Life was good.
The business was going in theright direction.
I really liked working withTessa and Greg and the other
women, and what would happen ona daily basis would be that
Frank hired Dan Adamson and awoman named Maureen, and Frank's
portfolio was generating about1,000 inquiries a day and they
(28:40):
couldn't really keep up withthem and at the time they didn't
really even have a CRM, and soVern would send us all of the
old leads that they wouldrespond to or they didn't go
anywhere and we would work onthose.
And we also got to put ourphone number on the landers, so
we would get a lot ofopportunities from there and
(29:11):
going to look for his own feedand he got his own and he
started internet traffic, but hehadn't launched domain name
sales yet.
So I ended up talking with Vernand Roy was one of the
developers and Dan and helpedthem design the beginnings of
domain name sales.
And then it kind of got to apoint where Frank is seeing
parking earnings going down andbecause there was a period of
time that he wasn't interestedin selling really any of his
(29:34):
names because the parkingpayouts were so high.
But now the parking payoutswere going down and he saw an
opportunity in making more sales.
And so he called me one day andhe said you know, I think you
and your team are doing a greatjob and you know, obviously I'm
a client of yours, but I thinkit would be better if we did
(29:59):
this together and it wasn't, youknow, just me as a client.
And he asked if I could flydown and came in and talk to him
and Dan Adamson was there atthe time, and so I flew down
there.
He asked me to go that day.
I think I was.
I remember I was shaving and heasked me if I could go down
that day and I said how abouttomorrow?
So I flew down the following day, looked around the island, went
(30:23):
in his office and we talked andhe said how would you like to
come down here and build up theteam and really ramp this up and
grab my portfolio by the hornsand really turn this into a
machine.
He had developers sitting therein the office.
He wanted me to hire brokers.
He wanted me to really use thetechnology to add my book of
(30:47):
business, of sellers anddomainers to the platform and
really turn up the heat.
And I remember calling my wifeat the time we were married at
this point, no kids though andsaid I'm torn I really love
working with Greg, I likeworking with Tessa and the girls
(31:09):
, and we've done a lot.
But I feel like if this doesn'twork out with Frank, I can go
back and I can start anotherbrokerage.
But I don't think anopportunity like this is ever
going to present itself again inmy life, especially getting to
live abroad, on a beautifulisland, you know, with a guy
(31:29):
that really is excited aboutaccomplishing goals.
He had plans for the registrar.
He was the GTLDs were.
You know the applicationprocess was going on.
You know he had it.
It was all happening over thereand there was just a lot of
action and he had the developersand he had the money and he had
the desire.
And, um, I said you know what,fuck it.
(31:52):
So I told Melissa I think youknow Frank and I made a deal.
I told Melissa, like you knowyou're going to, I think we got
to move, and she didn't even goto Cayman once, so, sight unseen
, uh, we packed everything upand um and move there.
So I was there likemid-December.
(32:12):
I was there January 3rd thefollowing year in 2013.
Working at Uniregistry when Igot there, it was domain name
sales and internet traffic atthe time was interesting.
You know, what I love about itis the startup feel, where it's
(32:35):
not as everything isn't soestablished, like we didn't have
an HR department, we didn'thave, you know, all these
different things and people.
It was more like a fleet, freeflowing ideas, with a person who
is truly passionate about thebusiness, and that is the kind
of environment that I reallylove and that we can try new
things and you know everybody'son board to achieve these goals
(32:56):
and trying new things and tryinglittle things and big things,
and if they bomb, it's okay, andit was a really exciting time.
And then getting to start tohire salespeople, putting
together trainings and shippingthem down there or hiring from
the island was great, you know,yeah, and my goal there, which
(33:19):
was extremely challenging, was Ihad to sell, no matter what, a
million dollars a month, comehell or high water.
And it wasn't just me,obviously, but it was myself,
dan Adamson, a group ofsalespeople.
There was about foursalespeople.
So really we had to hit thatnumber every single month, come
(33:40):
hell or high water.
We had to find a way, and thebest analogy that I can give you
is it's like putting on amassive like show, like a circus
, every month to just try to getit in down to the wire and then
it, you start at zero again andFrank is on you to hit that
number.
You know, and to get there weobviously tried to hire and
(34:04):
retain the best talent.
We tried to train them the bestwe could in just sales in
general in the industry, tryingto share my idea of like knowing
everything you possibly can.
We had to pay them well tostick around and to live in
Cayman.
It wasn't cheap, you know.
We needed to work on commissionstructures and different
strategies, and then we hadsellers, like other sellers,
(34:25):
joining us and then trying toseparate the work between
different brokers, like who'sgoing to work on Frank's stuff,
who's going to work on ourcustomers things?
Because you know, let's behonest here when Frank sold the
domain, he did pay into domainname sales and uniregistry to
make payroll, but he got 85% ofwhat he sold versus we would get
(34:47):
15% if we sold something for acustomer.
So just think of the differencein revenue.
Like you sell a million dollarsfor customers and a million
dollars for Frank, you know youget 150k from there and he gets
850 from himself and he alsoprofits from that because the
business was running at asurplus.
You know that makes the mostsense.
But as time went on, theportfolio remember we did this
(35:09):
for seven years got thinner andthinner and you know we weren't
replacing many names on aregular basis, you know.
So the job got a little harder.
Now we did add bettertechnology to do better with
following up.
You know we had a team thatwent over old leads.
We had a thing that pulledphone numbers and we called them
phone follow-up leads and theguys would call all the old
(35:31):
leads over and over and overagain.
You know we really just rinsedit out and got more and more
efficient with pricing andsharing the inventory all over
the world and really getting itgoing and sharing the inventory
all over the world and reallygetting it going and what I
really liked about working forFrank was that was different
than working with Greg is Frankreally loves new ideas.
(35:54):
He really has.
That's where he gets excited,you know, and it could be even
the littlest idea that changessomething in some way or gives
you a chance at making money.
And we would make calculateddecisions and talk about these
ideas and go through them anddesign them and they'd come true
and they would be released.
(36:14):
And some of them worked quitewell.
Others bombed and when theybombed, frank frank didn't care.
He'd want you to learn from it,because it might have cost him
thousands of dollars or tens ofthousands of dollars, like we
made an affiliate program whenhe won all the um, the 20 gtlds.
We made an affiliate program onparking that we thought would
(36:37):
get a lot of registrants.
It didn't get many, so we gotrid of it.
But that was.
Building the affiliate programwith the developers took a lot
of resources, time, energy andmoney and it bombed and we just
moved on from it where someother people can't let that go,
and I think working with Frankthat was a great thing that
allowed us to try new things.
(36:57):
He didn't want you to make thesame mistake twice.
God help you if you did, but hewas definitely supportive of
those things and that's what youknow.
I really loved about workingthere and we were able to roll
out some really great productssome different sales landers,
different sales strategies.
We built a payment plan product.
(37:18):
You know.
We did all kinds of differentstuff, which was always exciting
and there was always somethinggoing on at the company, built
the company up to on my side ofthe business, built the
brokerage and customer serviceto over 50.
Dan Adamson, who helped me dothis, and obviously there's you
(37:41):
can't do this stuff alone.
This isn't the Jeff Gabrielshow.
We did it with a lot of peoplewho are part of this.
Developers were a big part ofour business.
Obviously, frank was part ofthese conversations.
We had different projectmanagers and other people and
designers helping and thenobviously asking a lot of the
salespeople what do you need?
What do customers tell you theywant?
(38:02):
How can we build this better?
What can make your life easier?
How can you be more efficient?
You know, talking in that wayand then building the sales team
up and customer service to over50 people, which you know I
managed for a period of time andDan Adamson was at a point.
He was from England, that hemoved back, and so we opened an
office in England, and so Iwould go back and forth to the
(38:25):
English office and they wouldhandle most of our European
leads.
So we would really have, youknow, a 14 hour or 15 hours of
people sitting at their deskanswering the phones and the
business was rolling.
And you know, it was anexperience, um, that I'll never
forget, um, I think that my timethere taught me an immense
(38:48):
amount of about management,about myself, about sales, um,
about empathy.
I think having children makesyou realize it's not all about
you anymore either, and we hadboth of our children on the
island.
I made friends there that I'llhave for a lifetime.
I'm friends with Wade Smith,who works at GoDaddy, and Andrew
(39:12):
Mathias and Vinny we're stillfriends, I still talk to him all
the time Dan Kenny I'm friendswith this other family called
the Piers, who are there on theisland.
I made other friends with myfriend Simon.
I just go on and on and on.
These are people that I met inCayman that either I worked with
or I didn't work with, thatI've been friends with since and
they're like family to me, butit came a time where things
started to change at Uniregistryand in some ways the things
(39:37):
that we invested in or Frankinvested, in some ways the
things that we invested in orFrank invested in, like the
registrar and the GTLDs, didn'tgrow as much as was anticipated
and the expenses to carry thosethings was immense.
Looking at the books, you know,and, and honestly, having 50
salespeople and customer serviceand HR and all those different
(40:01):
things to snacks and coffee andfood and rent, you know, and
parties and travel andconferences and sponsorships and
marketing and all these otherthings, the weight of those
expenses throughout the companybecame quite heavy.
And you know, we did experiencea round of layoffs.
I had to let go a lot of peopleone day and that was a very
(40:24):
stressful, hard day in my life,in my business career.
But not just that, it's justthe business changed and got
much more corporate-y, whichhappens in the succession of a
business, and I knew that itkind of got to a point that I
did everything that I felt thatI could do and I just felt like
I was just going through themotions and it wasn't with the
(40:45):
same excitement and energy andagain I got that entrepreneurial
itch.
It hit me again.
And so I started talking to mywife about it in probably about
April that that was somethingthat I wanted to do it and
probably about April that thatwas something that I wanted to
(41:07):
do.
And around I got back from aconference in Portugal Cache
Cache, I think it's called and Isaid I think it's time that I
move on.
I told my wife I've made thedecision and so I called Frank.
It was in the beginning of July.
He didn't answer, he was onvacation.
And then I ended up speaking tohim.
(41:29):
It was July 4th that I resignedand I gave plenty of notice to
say that I was going to move onand do something else.
And the moment I hung up thephone I just said what the fuck
did I do to my wife?
We had a beautiful house inCayman, we had a life that
people potentially would justabsolutely love to have, and I
(41:54):
gave it all away.
And I said to my wife we mightend up on my parents' couch
eating a can of beans.
And she said I support you.
She said this is what you wantto do.
You know you want to go, doyour own thing.
You've always wanted to do yourown thing and I think the time
is now.
You're 40.
I just turned 40 in April.
Well, I really turned 39.
(42:16):
So sorry, I turned 39.
She's like this is this is thetime If you're going to do it in
your life, you got to do it.
So we sold the house.
Well, we put the house on themarket, we started selling all
of our items, our materials, ofpossessions, and then my wife
left the island to go, actuallymoved in with some friends back
(42:37):
in Boston and I stayed behind toclose up our affairs.
Tune in next week for part twoof my story, where I talk about
moving home, readjusting tonon-island life, launching
sawcom, the lockdowns,overcoming countless challenges
sleepless nights, self-doubt, afailing business, covid,
technical issues, two children,a partridge in a pear tree and
(42:58):
much more to find success on theother side of the rainbow.
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com