Mike Mann: The Evolution from BuyDomains to Sex.com to DomainMarket | Saw.com - Uncomfortable with Jeffrey Gabriel

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Our guest stay on the uncomfortable podcast with
Jeffrey Gabriel is Mike Mann.
Mike has been part of thedomain industry since the mid to
late 90s and created, founded,sold or is part of many of the
major brands that are leaders inour space today.
Mike has founded BiDomains,purchased and sold.
Sexcom was an investor, slashadvisor, toco domain extension.

(00:25):
He's founded the domain domainmarketcom, seocom, which he grew
into over 100 employee company,and he's recently sold phonecom
and is even the creator of thetechnology behind domain search,
something that we all benefitfrom on every domain registrar
and domain marketplace today.
Oh yeah, and he's a publishedauthor as well.

(00:50):
But you know, in the tumultuousworld of entrepreneurship, there
was always one constant withMike.
Mike always took the time tohelp others with his non profits
, grassrootsorg and make change.
And, like I said when Ilaunched this podcast, people
see the success in entrepreneursor business people, but they do

(01:12):
not always see the struggle inone success that they had to get
there.
And Mike comes from humblebeginnings and is entirely self
made and, as we know, life isnot always roses.
So today you get to hear hisstory, his journey and hopefully
some nuggets of informationthat will help you on yours and
I know I did so today.

(01:32):
I give you Mike the man and youcan contact him by visiting
Mike man with two endscom.
You can always listen to us onall the major outlets like
Spotify, youtube, apple andcountless others.
If you'd like to be a guest orhave some feedback, send me a
message at buzz at sawcom.
Buzeezy at SAWcom.

(01:54):
Thank you.
So, mike, going through yourbio and your, in your history as
a business person, you've hadyour fingers in a lot of

(02:16):
different deals andopportunities.
But one that I really want tofocus on is in the beginning of
your bio that I read was in 1994, you sold internet real estate
to a company called very oh, andmy question is in it and
obviously that was a really bigdeal in your life and a big
opportunity and startedeverything off.
But the first question of themall like to ask people like you
is how the heck did you get intodomain?

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Sure, Internet interstate, yeah, internet real
estate is a different operation.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, it's fine.
Well, what happened is I was asmall time entrepreneur and I
studied business a lot.
I read a lot of business booksand I just, you know, I wanted
to become, I wanted to make alot of money, mostly to support

(03:00):
my charity work, but I wanted tokeep some of it.
And so, you know, back then Iliterally just spent tons of
time in the library readingbusiness periodicals and
checking out business books andstudying around the library.
I had a job already in a smallbusiness already, but I was
trying to figure out how to dosomething bigger.

(03:22):
And there was you know again,this is a 1992 93.
There was these hints andcertain publications.
You know, Business Week, Inc.
Magazine, whatever, thebusiness periodical, fortune
magazine especially.
You would see these articles bythese really smart people.

(03:43):
They would talk about thisabstract thing called the
internet that was being used atuniversities and with the
military and medical center.
They said you know, one daythis is going to be
commercialized and when it'scommercialized, people are going
to conduct billions of dollarsworth of business on it and all
the platforms are going tocollapse on top of this thing

(04:04):
called the internet.
All the private networks weregoing to be connected to the
internet.
Aol wasn't going to be relevantor necessary anymore.
And this pattern kept repeatingby the smartest scholars in
these business publications andscientific publications.
So I just decided you know, I'mnot technically skilled, hardly

(04:25):
at all like zero.
So I just decided, hey, I'mgoing into the internet business
.
You know, before it was a bigdeal.
So I was like, hey, I'll catchthe wave, I'm going to get in on
this thing early and ride thiswave.
It's being predicted out.
And so, you know, I started atiny company called Internet
Interstate whose job was toconnect small businesses onto

(04:49):
the internet and to train them.
So the vast majority of mycustomers either never heard of
the internet, they had no ideahow to connect to it, they
didn't know what email was, theydidn't know what was going on.
So I hired some super smartyoung technical guys.
Some of them were workingpart-time, government employees
working on the government'snetworks and internet, because

(05:10):
I'm from Washington DC.
And so, in any case, I hiredthese really smart young guys
and we started connecting smallcompanies to the internet,
basically.
And then Mark Andreesseninvented the World Wide Web, or
the graphical World Wide Web.
The actual World Wide Web wasinvented, but it was a
text-based enterprise and thenit was basically, you know, only

(05:35):
geeks were using it and therewas very little content on it.
Yahoo actually existed as atext-based thing.
There was this thing calledYanoff's List, which was like a
directory of the few thousandthings that were available on
the web.
It was one iteration of theinternet.
So, in any event, we startedthis company, internet
Interstate.

(05:55):
We grew it up over a few years,and then this group called
Vario was consolidating all thetiny internet companies like my
own, and so we sold out to them.
Ultimately, that's a simplifiedversion.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Got it and throughout that it sounds like you're
working more on helping peoplebuild websites, set up email,
things like that.
When did you kind of click thatdomains were going to be worth
the money they are today?

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Sure.
Well, again, my clients were inthe Washington DC area, so I
started collecting domains thatwere relevant to the type of
clientele I had.
I was trying to encourage them,not really to sell it to them,
but just hey, you should usethis website.
I was actually trying to end inreverse.
I was buying the domain namesand then approaching the
businesses to become my customer.
So, like, okay, I ownedrealtorsorg and I was trying to

(06:44):
get the National Association ofrealtors to become my client,
which they never did.
I bought menuscom and I triedto get the National Restaurant
Association to be my client.
I bought governmentnet, Ibought congressionalnet Some of
these I still own, like, but inany event.

(07:07):
So I was just collecting, youknow, a few dozen of these
contextual domain names for myclients intended to be my
clients.
Few of them ended up being myclients, but most of them I
ended up keeping.
I gave one for free to myfriends, young and associates.
I gave them YAcom.

(07:28):
And then YAHU bought that fromthem for like a hundred thousand
bucks or something, which nowit'd be worth a couple million
probably.
But back then, you know, I waslike they just got a hundred
thousand bucks for something Igave them for free and they just
changed their own domain fortheir own company.
So in any event, you know, thetheoretical value was presenting

(07:49):
itself of the domainsthemselves.
So after I sold InternetInterstate, I still owned a
couple dozen of these greatdomain names, one of which was
menuscom, and so somebodyapproached me about buying
menuscom for twenty fivethousand bucks.
I was like this is great, youknow, cost me thirty five
dollars a year to renew this.

(08:10):
I'm going to make fifty, I'mgoing to make twenty five
thousand dollars.
Literally, the next daysomebody offered me fifty
thousand dollars for the exactsame name and I ended up selling
it to the twenty five thousanddollar guy because I had a
verbal agreement with him.

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Wow, and in early, well late, nineties, money
that's probably three times thatit is now, or at least two
times that what it is now.
So that's, and you didn't haveas much money as you have now as
well, right, definitely not, soI'm sure that was a hard picker
.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
And then again, the other point is, you know, twenty
five or fifty thousand.
Now that domain is worth morethan a million bucks.
So another case of where I wishI'd kept it.
So the main story is that Iwish I kept all the great
domains I've sold, because thenI'd be worth, you know, ten
times more than I am, because Iown all these great things that

(09:02):
and I I wouldn't have sold.
You know a lot of the big onesI've sold had I kept them each.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
You know the best ones keep going way up in value,
so those yeah Well, I mean, oneof the best ones is a sale that
I got to be a part of becauseof you and we didn't even know
each other at the time.
I mean, I spoke to an attorney,brian Taft, who brought the
opportunity to CEDO, which I gotthe.
As a broker, I got to sellsexcom.

(09:28):
How did you get yourselfinvolved with buying that?
I know there was a multipleparties involved in that, in
that domain.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Yeah, well, first of all, brian Taft is still one of
my best friends and one of thebest deal makers and we still do
a lot of business together.
So we've been working togetherfor like 20 years.
So he's a super attorney anddeal maker.
I think I don't know if he'sstill an attorney, but he has
attorney training and he's donelots of mergers and acquisitions
.
He's a super smart guy.

(09:57):
Still work.
As far as that deal itself, ifyou remember the story, gary
Kremmann used to own that and itwas part of this huge drama.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Like people, should read it a drug problem, right?
And there were some otherissues with him going on and
someone stole it.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
He stole the domain and there was literally like a
global manhunt to find theperson and there was like guns
involved and it's actually likea true life drama.
It was really crazy.
Which I absolutely nothing todo with any of it whatsoever.
The only thing I know that is Ibought the domain from Gary
Kremmann after all this, so youknow, we just negotiated a

(10:39):
little bit and eventuallyfigured out a deal.
So at the time it was the mostexpensive domain ever purchased
and then at the time you sold it, for us it was again.
It set the record twice.
When I bought it it set therecord, and when it was sold, it
set another record.
And now there's other ones.
Some of them are we didn't hearthe price, but there's, you

(11:00):
know, at least a dozen that havesold for higher prices at this
point.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, but I think I think the thing is looking back
at it with sexcom and the wayadult has gone on the Internet.
I don't see an adult nameselling for that kind of money
for a very long time, unless youwould see a business attached
to it.
But just a, just an adult name,I don't.
I don't see that there's asmuch money as it was when I got
in the industry, but maybe I'mwrong.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Well, from what I understand, the guy who bought
it from us I guess some Canadianguy has already sold it for 25
million is what I heard.
And then, if I understandcorrectly, the guy he sold it to
sold it again.
So it's possible it sold for.
I mean, I can just guess, Ihave no idea, but it sounds like
it's already sold multipletimes and now it's probably sold

(11:49):
for more than 25 million.
So you know, back then I saidyou know, this thing should be
worth 50 million.
I didn't want to sell it.
I got under pressure to sell it, but I was trying to wait until
it was worth 50 million to sellit.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
You didn't have any plans to build it out.
You just bought it as aninvestment.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Well, we discussed some things, but we never
accomplished any of it, so itwas too controversial to build
it out as the bottom line.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
So I came into the picture with sexcom and we sold
in 2013.
But from when you sold, youcreated another business, which
ended up you founding Vitamate,which is still a business it's
still a major brand in theindustry which sold to, which is
now owned by Newfold Digital,which used to be called Webcom,

(12:38):
for those, if you want to knowwho owns it.
But how did you get startedwith creating Vitamate?
What happened?

Speaker 2 (12:43):
there.
It's also endurance before that, yeah that's true as well.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Endurance yeah, I got them therecom.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
I acquired endurancecom for them when they
changed their company name.
Sure, you're asking how thatthing evolved.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
How did you end up founding Vitamates and then they
owned Afternic for a period oftime Were you part of that too?
And then it kind of got splitoff.
How did that happen?

Speaker 2 (13:07):
Well, I had a tail on my deal so I owned a small
percentage of it, but I didn'treally have anything to do with
the business.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
With Vitamates.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Yeah, after I sold it I still owned a tiny bit of it,
but myself and my partners haveowned some Got it so well, the
basic thing is that after I soldthat domain menuscom like this
is crazy you know I just got$25,000 for this thing.

(13:37):
That costs 35 bucks a year andI still yeah, my friends are
still these great programmers tothis day.
You know, I still have greatprogrammers I work with.
So you know, we wrote softwareand we patented it called who Is
Plus.
So it was a way of searchingfor great domain names.
So we did it to build our ownportfolio of great domain names

(14:01):
and then we put it out into thepublic and we had a patent on
this thing who Is Plus and thenwe changed the name to NameFind.
So if you follow the trajectorywhen Bydomains was sold, half
of it was sold to Endurance andthe other half the intellectual
property after Nick, was sold toGoDaddy.

(14:23):
So GoDaddy is actually the ownerof the patent name find for the
domain search that everybody inthe world uses.
That concatenates you knowparts of the words together.
Like you know, if you put inyou know money, it'll do money
online, money central, e-moneyI'm yeah, it'll search for it
and it'll allow you to registerit.

(14:43):
So every domain register on theworld uses that technology.
It's actually a patent ofGoDaddy.
Since they bought, they boughtthe rights to it.
But I don't know if they knowthey own the patent, and I know
they certainly don't carebecause they're definitely not
enforcing it.
So everybody just uses it.
As you know, open technology,but technically speaking I don't

(15:06):
mean, I'm not a lawyer butpresumably they could try to
enforce the patent and makeeverybody pay them for that.
But the second point is thatthey use name find the word the
trademark for a totallydifferent service that has
absolutely nothing to do withthat service, but they still use
the name find for their ownprivate domain portfolio, which

(15:26):
is millions of domains.
So you know, that was my brand,my patent, from way way back.
So they use that.
And the new fold, webcom usesbydomainscom.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
That's wild, so I never knew that and that's
that's really interesting stuff.
It is interesting that they'rewere you surprised when they
came out with their ownportfolio and they named it name
find.
Were you like, oh really, didyou know?

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Well, that's when it just occurred to me that they
might not even know they own thepatent and know what name find
is.
Like they don't know, theydon't care.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
I'm just.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
I don't know, maybe they do know.
They definitely don't carebecause they haven't made
anybody pay them for thelicensing rights to the, the
idea.
I mean it's a very simple idea,but it's still a legal patent.
I invented it, they bought.
They bought the patent, notagain the venture capitalists
bought my company.
Highland venture capital,summit venture partners bought

(16:21):
my company, and then endurance,which again was well.
Endurance, which is now newfold, bought all the domain
names by domainscom.
Go daddy bought all theseintellectual property rights.
So again, like I don't I don'tknow how much of it that they I

(16:42):
don't know like they bought awhole package of intellectual
property.
I'm not sure if they knoweverything that they bought
necessarily.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Or perhaps you know, a lot of other people invented
the same or similar thing thatyou did and they could compare
it to what Google does forsearch or some other search
engines.
It's really a keyword search atthat point, Right.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
Well, they didn't invent it, they copied it.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Yeah, well, that's true.
So you in essence created thefirst name, spinner, in so many
words and patented, got it Wow.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Which is very difficult and expensive to
patent it.
But you know we had the proofthat we invented it and all the
technical drawings and stuff.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
And what year was that that you patented name?
Find in this, in thistechnology.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
I don't even know so long ago I can't remember.
Could have been like 2000 orsomething.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah, and then I got, you know, I got in the business
14 years ago and right in 2009,2010, in that vicinity and I
remember a couple of years Imean sexcom came and went and
then I remember, like a fewmonths after I sold it, I heard
the story that you registeredthe last like 2000 or 5000 four

(18:04):
lettercoms that were availablein the for registration.
And then you're also.
You registered a lot of namesof generic named companies in
the phone book, like that wassomething that you used to do,
right?
Is that how you built a lot ofyour current portfolio, or is it
other ways?

Speaker 2 (18:20):
The current portfolio I have now, the by domains
portfolio that I sold, was a lotbuilt like that, by, by, you
know, taking these databases,turning them into domain names.
You know whether, again,databases of people names,
databases from the phone book,databases of four letter, you
know expressions.

(18:40):
So we just we took all sorts ofdatabases, plus we used, again
our own name find technology tocreate words.
So we would just createdatabases of words and then we
checked to see which ones areavailable and then we'd buy the
best ones of those that wereavailable.
That was my old.

(19:01):
My new technology is actuallyeven better and more
sophisticated and we have moreexperience and you know it's
works much better.
It's, you know, very evolvedquality of technology that we
use currently.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
So you're constantly buying names to this day.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
I'm not doing very many right now, but I'm getting
ready to start up again.
Got it, I had to just wipe outthis debt load that I had before
I went back into buying again.
Plus, we're just working on abunch of other stuff, so we're
just too distracted.
Basically.

Speaker 1 (19:36):
I hear you.
I mean buying names can becometedious and very time consuming
and it's a big investment.
You know it's very difficult.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
You know it's hard work to run domain auctions and
then the domain auctionsthemselves have a lot of issues
and flaws that you know can befrustrating.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Well, if you're not using bots, you're going to
spend a lot of time just sittingthere staring at auctions
hoping that you win it and orjust setting a lot of bids and
seeing if they come through ornot.
Yeah, but yeah, I mean, it canget very, very tedious.
You know, it's interesting tohear about how you built your
portfolio around, you know, forby domain, in the by domains

(20:15):
time, which I'm guessing wasaround 2000, 2002, 2003.
And that is was it in that timezone.

Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, that was the main thrust of it, the middle of
it.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yeah, and so when I worked for Frank he built the
majority of his portfolio fromto like 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
and going up a few more years,and the way he built his
portfolio was they were runningscripts and guessing on what the
traffic would be on names andthey were allowed to taste.

(20:49):
Back then and people who mightnot know what tasting is you
could win a name in an auction.
You could hold the name, Ibelieve was what for seven days,
or am I wrong about that amount?

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I think that's about it.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
So if you win the expiry auction, you can own the
name for seven days and if youdidn't like the name for
whatever reason, you could giveit back.
And so what Frank was doingwith his team of well Ryan was
the developer and some otherfolks as time went on, and then
Vern Jervik helping him theywould, they would win the
auction, they would taste thename.
If the name made itself inregistration or made more money

(21:25):
than what in tracking forparking in a calendar year, they
would keep the name.
If they didn't, they would justthrow it back.
And they said that they won alot of one wordcoms that they
just threw back because itdidn't have any traffic, it
didn't make any money, but theybought a lot of like two
wordcoms and a lot of theserandom names that don't mean
anything because for some reasonthey got traffic and they made.

(21:45):
They made money in parking andthis is why and how Frank ended
up amassing a portfolio.
When I started working for himwas about 360,000 names.
And we started to drop, you know, some of the real crap that
didn't perform anymore, thatreally had no value.
But by doing this as asecondary thing, which he was

(22:06):
buying, really mainly forparking, I mean, he bought a lot
of generic great names anyway,because he appreciates the value
of names, but most of it wasbased on parking and then, as
parking started to declinesignificantly, he wanted to ramp
up sales to keep his you knowthe money the same.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
So were you?
Were you, did you take asimilar strategy to that and do
a lot of tasting at the time?
Or were you really more focusedat looking at you know your own
data and and just kind of Ididn't do?

Speaker 2 (22:33):
any domain tasting.
It was just we didn't find thatto be a reasonable process.
But you know the the the mainpoint, though, is that at that
time, when he was doing that,the cost per click advertising
values were much inflated.
So you know, now you'd get likemaybe one fifth of the amount

(22:56):
of money for the landing pages,for domain advertising in
general or just internetadvertising in general.
The value of the click throughis dramatically lower now, so it
doesn't really make a lot ofsense to buy domains for their
traffic value, whereas when hewas doing it that tasting thing
you could see the traffic, youcould look at the cost per click

(23:17):
coming from Google or from theparking companies or whomever,
and you could tell if it wasworth the registration
investment.
But we actually never did any ofthe parking at all and any
advertising or any tasting.
We're all about the branditself, whether it's a
meaningful brand, long termbrand for a corporation.
So we run a lot of software, alot of statistics, a lot of

(23:42):
different things, but at the endof the day, somebody's looking
at it and studying and reviewingto what extent it makes sense
as a global, long term brandname for a corporation.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
And so me clicking around on a domain market over
the years, and even before wetalk today, I noticed that even
some of the nicer names just gostraight to the landing page
when you go to those, so you'renot doing much parking, or any
parking now, right.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah, it's just 100% our landing page.
There's no advertising, noparking, it's just us.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
It's really interesting because Frank was
able to build an extremelyvaluable, extremely profitable
portfolio around the same exacttime that you were, and you
built it in a totally differentway than he did and you sold by
domains for millions of dollarsand built how many names and by

(24:36):
domains end up with or have whenyou sold it.
Yeah, so you've.
You've amassed 500,000 in a fewyears.
Frank amassed 360,000.
I mean, that's almost a millionnames right off the out of the
market, or sure?
99% of those werecoms at thetime.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
Pretty much.
Well, yeah, we did morenetandorg sales then than we did
now, so probably 95% orsomething.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
Okay, so I'd probably say Frank's is a mirror of that
as well.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
But we sold it with 500,000, but again, we have a
process at at both companiesthat company and my current
company for deleting domainsalso, so we've actually bought
more than 500,000.
We probably bought 700,000 andthen deleted 200,000 over a few
year period, so we ended up with500,000 after we finished

(25:26):
deleting.
So that's the same strategy Iuse currently basically.
I mean also keeping in mind, inorder to buy 500,000, I had to
look at five or 10 million andthen and then I lost 50% of the
auctions or more.
Frank bought more than me.

(25:47):
So you know I probably had todo over a million auctions to
get 500,000 or a million names.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
And you're probably not winning 50% of the auctions.
You're participating eitherbecause you're going against
Kevin Ham and some of theseother massive players as well,
and little guys, you know you.
Just there's no way we're in inhalf.
So it's probably more than that.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, well, we didn't buy them all from auction
either, though yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
Well, you hand registered a lot like we were
talking about with the fourletters and you did that late in
the game when I got in.
You know, 2013 or 14 somewherein there, yeah, so a lot of
different stuff.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
So now I'm like much more focused and targeted.
I understand better about thevalue of the names and in the
software we have now is just outof this world.
It's like a thousand times moresophisticated than what anybody
else has, so I can leverage.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, so you have about 215,000 names right now,
right?

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Yep, and we had 300, but we've deleted and sold a lot
.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
You've culled the portfolio a bit and I mean, if
you're doing the math you'relooking at, you know, with
200,000 domains you're lookingat about two million and change
in renewals.
So that's almost $200,000 amonth in renewals.
That's a pretty big nut tocrack every month, especially if
the sales aren't coming in asquickly.

(27:08):
So those domains better performor you're going to be in
trouble.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Yeah, you know pretty fast, it's super to keep it
together.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
So looking at, like you know, when you look at the
250,000, 15,000 names, you have300,000 names prior to that give
or take and you're saying thatyou looked at all you know
different data points.
And looking at those things,when you have your saying
yourself we need to, you know,save some money here, cut back
on some of our investments andsome of these names, let them go
to pasture.
What is it that tells you, whenyou're looking at two different

(27:44):
, two wordcoms that the searchvolume on both of them probably
wasn't great, but they were bothpretty brandable or they were a
very specific product, that youkind of say, I'm going to keep
this one and let that one go.
And that's actually when a lotof the data doesn't really
change from year to year thatdrastically.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:01):
You know how do you kind of make those choices?

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Well, part of its objective, in the sense that
we're looking at these datacategories and then then, at the
end of the day, we get theshortlist, whether we're buying,
deleting, selling, whatever.
We get the shortlist and thenit's subjective of where myself
or somebody's personallystudying it and looking at it
and seeing if the data isn't.

(28:24):
The data may be perfect, but itdoesn't always tell you.
It doesn't tell you everything.
So I just have to make a finalsubjective opinion as to the
value.
If the value is zero or closeto zero, we delete it.
So you know there can be twonames.
If they have the exact samedata fingerprint profile, you

(28:50):
know we can look at them.
They both might be great, wekeep them.
They both might suck, we deletethem.
One might be great, one mightsuck.
You just got to look at themsubjectively at the end of the
day, yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
I mean, I think and one of the things I've done with
portfolios is maderecommendations on what people
should keep and what they shoulddrop, and it's very easy to
look at the best and say, okay,you're obviously going to keep
those and these obviously suck.
But then you kind of get inthis gray area where you have
you know 20,000 names that allalmost are similar in statistics

(29:26):
and you're selling names out ofthat pile every week or every
day or every month, but you knowthat's when it gets into, like
you know you could own some ofthese names that you think are
the best and keep renewing themand they'll never sell in 100
years, and others that you knowyou could buy today and you'll
have a buyer a week from nowpaying top dollar and that's.
You know.
What do you do to, kind of whenyou're on the fence about those

(29:49):
?
Is it really?

Speaker 2 (29:50):
just comes down to your gut Pretty much.
I mean, you know, again we havethe data system, but then we
can do some manual research toconfirm our gut feeling about it
, and you know, the majority ofthe time you can figure it out.
But sometimes you know they'rejust taking a risk, either
keeping the leading or whateverthe case may be.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
Yeah, One of the one of the main metrics say really
successful domain or looks at inhis portfolio, is the number of
inquiries the name gets on aregular basis or over the period
of the year before he decideswhether to renew it, if it's
those ones in the gray area.
And when I look at, when I lookat, domain market, one of the

(30:34):
things and it's a different, youtake a different strategy than
we did when I worked atUniregistry and we ran the
marketplace with Frank's nameswas we would either do a make
offer on all his names or buy itnow.
Make offer and our goal wasalways to capture the buyer's
details and see who this personis and understand them.

(30:55):
And if we needed to sell abunch of names in a month, we
had the people to do it or wewould use that as a metric to
tell us if the name has demand.
I mean, a really shitty namesometimes gets an inkly every
couple of months, but it seemslike on your site you don't
really collect the data as much.
Mostly everything's by now.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
I know.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
You know, being in the business so long, why did
you decide to go that way?

Speaker 2 (31:17):
What's a big problem?
Actually, literally justyesterday we took the prices off
everything over 500,000.
So we could could collect theinput data.
But there's a couple pointshere.
We're trying to give them ananchor frame in their minds what
the price is going to beapproximately, if not exactly,

(31:41):
so they can understand the value.
Because something is worth$300,000 and it just says
request price.
The guy's starting in his mindat $500, working his way up to
5,000, 10,000, 20,000, but henever gets to 300,000 because of
the way the psychologicaleffect of framing goes.
So the flip side of it is youknow, the best way to sell a

(32:05):
name is to capture theinformation and do long-term
retargeting of ads that they seeonline, drip campaigns, phone
calls, locking them into yourSalesforce database, keeping
notes and personal information,birthdays, whatever.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
So it goes against my sales framing.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
It goes against my sales training in a lot of ways
that you're supposed to drivethrough the messaging over a
long period of time and a lot ofexposure in order to get them
to buy.
But again, the idea of framingit's a psychological thing.
That's a very anchoring.

(32:44):
Framing is a really big deal toget in their mind the
conceptual value of the domain.
And you know we don't reallymess around.
There's a legitimate reason whywe think the actual price.
First of all, I've done moreappraisals and more purchases
than anybody in the world andsecond of all, there's a reason
why we're motivated to get theexact right price on there and

(33:07):
the reason is they're alreadyvery expensive on average
because that's the type of nameswe deal in.
If I put them too high I cannever sell them.
So that's like selling them for$0.
I get no money at all if Iprice them too high.
I price them too low, I getless than I'm supposed to get,
less than they're worth.
So we put the actual, realappraised price on every single

(33:28):
domain to the best of ourability.
Sometimes we give peoplediscounts because we just feel
this pressure to make money allthe time.
But you know, to illustrate whymy method works.
We just sold RevaClubcomRIVAClubcom, which doesn't sound
very exciting, but we got$300,000 for it last week.

(33:51):
You're kidding me.
And the reason is it's our datasystem.
Nobody else has a data systemlike this and our data system
identified that domain and gaveus this huge amount of
information so we could see howincredibly valuable it was.
And again, then we do thesubjective confirmation, where

(34:15):
we review that data and wereview that name and the
branding and look in Google etcetera.
That confirms what our datasystem told us.
So again, you know, godaddy,newfold, huge domains that have
these enormous collections,don't actually know the value of
their domains.
I want to help them and letthem figure out the value of

(34:38):
their domains, but you knowthey're too stubborn,
essentially, and they think theyknow the value, but again, they
would have sold that name for$10,000 and they probably would
have negotiated it down to$5,000 because they don't know
what it's worth, because theydon't have a data system like
ours.
They have some data points,lots of people have some data
points, but first of all, wehave every data point that the

(35:00):
public has.
We have a whole bunch of datapoints that nobody even knows
about.
We created our own uniquealgorithms to uncover all this
extra data that nobody can see.
And we have this user interfacethat is unbelievably efficient
and effective at pricing andrepricing domains and constantly
changing them based on themarket conditions.

(35:21):
And now we're adding all theseAI components into it, which is
going to bring it again to thenext level.
Beyond that, so in my datasystem is worth more than all my
domains put together, becauseif somebody has five million
domains, they have to pay $50million a year to maintain it,

(35:41):
so they can't really deletestuff because they'll throw out
the baby with the bathwater.
They don't know what to delete.
They don't have a system that'sgood enough, so they
accidentally delete good stuffor they're accidentally renewing
garbage, because people thathave five million domains, they
should be deleting probably 50or 60% of them.
Then the rest of them, theyneed to figure out the price.

(36:02):
Whether they're going to putthe price on the website or not
is irrelevant.
They need to know it for theirown broker.
So when somebody says, hey,what's the price?
They need an appraisal, or theycould do the same thing I do
and just put a buy now anchoringprice, and the other point is
just, you know, it's this hugeamount of overhead.
If I wanted to put requestprice on everything, I'd have to

(36:23):
hire five salespeople to followup on all these people that are
offering $500 for a $500,000domain name.
So again, I could.
You know, those people withmillions of domains could
dramatically improve theircompanies, save many millions of

(36:43):
dollars a year, make many moremillions of dollars a year by
employing my data system, ourstrategies, our user interface.
But they haven't got there yet.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
So I can understand.
You know and it's funny becauseI've heard, with the pricing
and sales of this size right, Ilistened to at NamesCon a little
bit Rick Schwartz did a thingabout negotiating in domains,
and he's known to get somepretty high prices as well, and
one of the things that I wasthinking of, though, is GoDaddy,

(37:17):
and then later on with Frank,where we had a lot of overhead
with the registrar and theregistry and growing the
business and things we needed todo.
We were using Frank's sales topay for it.
We kind of found ourselves in aposition like GoDaddy, with
stockholders or shareholdersthey have to meet certain
numbers every quarter, come hellor high water, but with you and

(37:38):
somebody like Rick, of courseyou have your overhead, but for
you to just say no is a loteasier than if they have to do
something, and I think you're inan easier position to do that,
and you're absolutely right.
They are going to missopportunities like this one.
I would have probably missed it,because when you search

(37:59):
RevaClub USA right, or RevaClub,the very top one is
RevaClubUSAcom, and when youclick on it, this website looks
like it's from 1992.
Is this one of the originals?
It looks like one of theoriginals you made and you go
down and you say okay, yeah,well, you have Reva Yachts.
It looks like something like aChris.

(38:22):
Is it like a Chriscraft or aMastercraft?
Is that what a Reva boat is?

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Well, again, that's one of the points here is that
Reva Yachts.
How much do you think one Revayacht sells for?

Speaker 1 (38:35):
At least 100K for a shitty one.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
A lot more than that, that's the type of stuff that
my system is going to uncover.
And there's again, whetheryou're doing the analytical
approach with data or you'redoing your subjective, personal
approach, there's sort of twoaspects overriding the whole
thing it's the breadth and thedepth.

(38:59):
So the breadth is how manyindividual potential buyers are
there for RevaClub, which, again, we know the answer to that.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Well, there might be one.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Well, again, there might be more than you can see
in a cursory evaluation, but thequestion is how many potential
buyers are there?
And then what's the depth ofmost?
Usually you're just looking atthe top buyer how wealthy are
they, how badly do they need it?
And then you go down the chain.
Let's pretend there's 10potential buyers.
If two or three of those arebillionaires, that's something

(39:33):
that my system's going torecognize and the competitor
systems aren't going torecognize, which is why I got
$300,000 for that domain.
We knew the breadth and thedepth of that name and all the
data points, and we had done asubjective appraisal of it, so
we knew exactly what we weredoing before we went to the
table.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
So what would it cost for somebody?
Because I know, like Name Finehas millions of names at this
point and BiDomain has hundredsof thousands, if not millions,
of names at this point as well.
But what if you're a smallerdomainer with 3,000, 5,000,
10,000 names?
What would you charge them?
To run their names through yourtool and you give them their
pricing.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, we have a separate service, which is
actually somewhat different,called AccurateAppraisalscom.
That's actually a manualappraisal service and where
three experts, including myself,appraise the name independently
and then we create acertificate of authenticity that
says here's the currentappraisal for this domain, but

(40:31):
it's the average of the three.
So myself and two other expertsare going to appraise the
domain manually.
Give you the average.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
But I'm talking about you're saying you did it for
your portfolio.
How can somebody because Ithink this is one of the bigger
problems with domainers is, ingeneral, the smaller ones, of
course have trouble pricingtheir names?
And a lot of them will come tome and say will you help me
price my portfolio?
And I say, sure, but you got topay me hourly to do this.
I'm not just going to sit herefor a week straight going

(40:59):
through all your names andpricing each individual name for
you and then you just take themand just put them up for buy it
now as all on afternoon and saythanks, jeff, have a good day,
see you later.
That doesn't happen with me,and other brokers are going to
do it either.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
But there's an appraisal that I do.
I have a complex system and abunch of employees.
The whole thing is veryexpensive to operate.
So but just to back you knowthis, this goes together with
accurate appraisalscom.
So, again, three experts willappraise the domain for only 88
bucks.
So that's for excellent domains.

(41:33):
And then there's a bulkdiscount, so there's a bulk
written on the website and ifsomebody really has a huge
number, we could even reduce iteven greater.
But just for example, somebodywe both know very well, you know
, one of the top domain brokersin the world emailed me
yesterday, or actually called meon the phone yesterday.
It's like hey, we have thisdomain we need appraised.

(41:54):
It's a one word domain you know, worth well over a million
dollars.
And you know I was like hey,just put it in my system, it's
only 88 bucks.
He's like you talking about.
you know you should be charging$5,000 for this, which is
actually true, but we're tryingto create a consumer brand that
everybody can get their domainsappraised for cheap.

(42:15):
So get accurate.
Appraisals is the bestappraisal company in the world
because three world experts aregoing to appraise your domain.
So, aside from the fact thatit's the best appraisal company
in the world, it's also thecheapest one.
It's $88 per appraisal, so wecharge a lot more Right.

(42:36):
So you're not going to havenothing personal, but you can't
give a better appraisal for alot more.
This is going to be a greatappraisal with a certificate for
only 88 bucks.
So again, as far as using mysystem for bulk things, you know
it's, it's negotiableEssentially.
I haven't done it yet.
I mean we've done small bulkthings, like 50 or 100 names,

(42:58):
but we haven't done like amillion or a hundred thousand
domains or whatever.
But really, you know there'sonly three people in the world
that have a big enoughcollection, which again is huge
domains, new fold and go daddy.
Those people need me and mysystem extremely badly, whether
they realize it or not, as theirown issue.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
But I feel like huge domains.
The guys over at the Ray Berrybrothers over there it seems to
me they kind of put their thenames into buckets, Right, and
then those buckets were like thespecific price.
But again, I don't thinkthere's a lot of much variation.
I haven't looked at their nameslately but I'm saying like in
the last few months ago I'vealways noticed there's a.
It's like three, nine, nine,five, five, nine, nine, five,
two, nine, nine nine, nine, yeah, absolutely, and then that's

(43:40):
what all three of those?

Speaker 2 (43:40):
that's what they all do.
But the point is is they'remissing all these exceptional
domain prices.
Like again, they would havesold Reba Club for five, 10,
20,000 bucks If they had givenit to me in my system.
I would have told them it'sactually worth 300,000.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
So did you wake up one morning and it was sold for
that much money, or did theyinquire to you and you
negotiated for it Like?

Speaker 2 (44:02):
well, right after Christmas, the girl who works
for me is like not one sold.
We got the money.
I was like hallelujah.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Cause we needed to get to the end of the season.

Speaker 2 (44:12):
but you know it, just you know, I'm just using that
one it just says an example ofyou know domain versus just
guessing, you know.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, and compared to last year, in the year before,
how do you see your sales going?
They're ticking upwards.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
They're ticking upwards.
You did better last year thanyou did the year before.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, well, yeah, definitely Just a little bit.
I mean, I don't have the exactnumbers in front of me, but
probably 10 or 20% better.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
And are you talking about number of sales or are you
talking about revenue?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
Revenue.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, and revenue, did you have a couple of big
sales that kind of tilted thescales, or or did you have, or
was it just more of just betterpricing and higher price sales?

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Well, my big sale wasn't part of domain market.
My big sale was SEOcom.
Okay, you didn't, you didn'tcount that.
Okay, that that was part of aseparate enterprise with
separate shareholders, whatever,even though I owned most of it.
But there's some both of thosecompanies I own in the 90
something percent, but they eachhave some minority shareholders

(45:23):
in there, so they're separatebusiness operations basically.
So that was the biggest sale.
If that one had shown up on thedomain market books, it would
have you know, doubled domainmarkets revenue.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Got it All right, and so right now you and I have a
name that I inquired to you onand bro cronand, as is a broker
for me who works at sawcom withme he's working me for a decade
has a buyer for continentalsupplycom and we offered you

(46:03):
$10,000 for it.
I believe the list price for itis 2988.
If we bought it today with acredit card we would get a 20%
discount for 23910.
I offered you $10,000 and yousaid not enough, it's not enough

(46:23):
.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
Right, well, so again I mean that thing was properly
appraised.
The full price is a fair priceand the discount 20% discount
makes it a 20% discount from afair price.
So that's a great price.
And again it goes back to themain points here is we have a
complex data system thatanalyzed that name and a person

(46:47):
subjectively confirmed theanalysis and the valuation.
So that's a spot on value.
And the reason again is becauseof the breadth and the depth.
So in this case I did a tinybit of research.
I don't have all the research,but there's at least five, if
not 10, companies that use thatname, multi-million dollar

(47:07):
companies.
So again, the breadth is atleast five potential buyers and
the depth is some of them aremillionaires.
So there's really no reason tosell it for any less because
somebody will buy it.
They can buy it next year, butit'll be 40,000 instead of
30,000.

Speaker 1 (47:25):
So I mean that and you think your algorithm is
going to tell you that it'sworth almost double than what it
is now, or you just raise itonce you get somebody who's
interested in it.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Well, the algorithm first of all goes with the
economy, so the best domains arekeep going up in value every
year and the appraisals go upevery year as a result of that.
But also we do it based ondemand.
So if you don't buy it, I'mjust going to raise it for the
next guy who comes.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
And then when, if you were to start to collect more
buyers from your inquiry pages,would you then?
Would you then account thatinto your appraisal tool to say,
okay, well, we got this.
Many people eyeballed the names.
Are you tracking the traffic ofpeople looking at the name?
Yeah, well, it's all in there.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
The traffic is certainly a key component, but
the number of quotes is this onecomponent.
We actually have the number ofquotes in there, but it's all
ancient because we don't collectquotes anymore, because we have
a price on there, so but we useto have a request price.
So then we have one of our datacolumn says how many people
requested a price and againthat's a heavy objective weight

(48:37):
into the valuation.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Got it, I got it.
And what do you think it wouldbe a fair price for this name if
we were to get someone to payfor it today?
I mean.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
That's my point is it is a fair price.
The full price is a fair price.
The 20% off is a very fairprice and anything less than
that is an incredible price.
And since we're friends andyou're a top broker, you know
I'll give you a little bit less,but I don't really have any
motivation.
I'm going to sell this thinganyway and again, I'll probably
sell it for 40,000 next year.

(49:08):
So if I don't get 25 this year,I'll get 40 next year.
Names at this level keep goingup in value.
So, like my retirement fund isnot selling them, you know,
again, my main regret in lifeare not in life but in business
is selling domains for too cheapthat I could still own today
that are worth, you know, manytimes more than they were worth,

(49:31):
like menuscom was my earlierexample.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
Yeah, that's a good name, I really like it.
Easy to spell, easy to remember.
You know that's what you'relooking for when you're looking
at order out.
Where are the menus, honey.
You know right off the bat, Ilike this one.
Continental is was an airline,it's a tire company name.
There's many different brandsin business to consumer name

(49:56):
this, you know, business tobusiness.
There's others, other suppliers, other companies, and if you
take any kind of like abrandable name in the word
supply, I'm that's pretty strong, you know.
I think that it's a solid nameand it's a good to wordcom and
these are the kinds of namesthat really made up Frank's

(50:17):
portfolio.
Yeah, you didn't have a lot ofpeople think that he just had
countless one wordcoms, that wewould just sell tons of them
every month, and he didn't.
He didn't actually have like alot of like SEOcom style domains
or sexcom style domains.
He had a lot of.
This is this was Frank's breadand butter.
Yeah, continental supplycomwould be one that we would sell

(50:40):
and we would sell them.
We would sell a name like thisand I'm not saying this because
we made you the $10,000 offerbut we would sell names like
this for 10.
We would sell them for 15 andwe would sell them for 20.
And sometimes we'd sell five.
You know there were somemetrics here and there, but
there was also market conditionsthat we were going through that
affected the price.

Speaker 2 (51:01):
Five years ago it was probably worth 10.
But the point is, is the valueof these things keep going up,
you know.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
I agree and I think it's more important for these
companies like the.
When I do the search I seecontinental supply companycom.
I mean continental supplycom isa long domain to begin with
it's not totally easy to spell.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
How could you spell it wrong?

Speaker 1 (51:28):
No, I mean it just has the two P's in the L?
Y, like you got someone hereover here, over here plural.
You know you're looking atsingular supply.
You know there's like rightbelow continental supply.
You see continental drillingtools and supplies.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
That's why it's not a hundred thousand.
If it was shorter and therewasn't a plural for it, it would
be a hundred thousand.
But the fact that it's a littlebit long and there's a
potential plural, that reducedthe value of it.
And again, you know, it saysthirty twenty nine thousand,
whatever.
But again, if you put in acredit card, it's actually, like

(52:03):
you said, twenty three,whatever.
So it's really a twenty threethousand dollar name, which is a
bargain, considering there's abunch of multimillion dollar
corporations that use that name.
So the one that buys it is theonly smart one.
The rest of them are stupid fornot buying it.
Well, there's a two prong thingis it holds its investment
value forever, so it'll be worththat much or more till the end

(52:25):
of time.
And secondly, they can use itto bring new customers in.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
So yeah, without a doubt, etching emails and do all
kinds of things with it without, without a doubt.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
I'd say that aren't well educated on the situation
on the value of domains.
They just know they want itcheap.
They don't know what it's worth.
They don't care what it's worth, they know, they just want to
get it for as cheap as they cando a hustle for.
So that's one of the mainreasons why we do the anchor
pricing so they understand whatthey're getting into before they
start bothering us.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Well, I mean I, you know, I was explaining this to
somebody where I golf, becausewhen I told him what I do, he
said, well, do you compete withGoDaddy?
And I said yeah, and he said,well, how do you make any money
when, when everything you sellis like 10 bucks?
And I was like, yeah, it's notreally that way, you know.
But but the thing is it'sinteresting that you have a lot
of companies like my own thataren't paying rent.

(53:21):
You know, all the people thatwork with me work from their
homes, but you need a storefrontand you need a good address.
And now it's become, instead ofwhen I first got in the
business world, people would paya lot of money just to have a
mailbox on Park Avenue toimpress people.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Right, and that was back into the 80s and before.
Now you need a nice domain nameto create that presence and
earn that trust and thatcredibility, and paying 20 grand
or 10 grand or five grand forit isn't really a lot of money,
you know, and it looks like youalso are offering companies to

(53:55):
pay it off for 24 months.
Yeah, that's the other pointfor your customer.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
If they literally can't afford it for the actual,
correct, fair, appraised price,they can pay it over 24 months
without any interest at all,just broken down at the normal
price and 24 payments.
And so again it's this brandingexcellence.
They suddenly have an excellentbrand, the domain retains its

(54:20):
value, it makes their companylook better and it improves
their sales.
So again, there's five or 10companies that use that name in
commerce and the only smart oneis the, or at least the smartest
one is the one that buys thename.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, and they put it on their credit card and forget
about it, and you know that'sit.
So I have a couple of questionsfor you that I got asked this
yesterday actually, by somebodyoutside of our industry as an
entrepreneur.
So now this is the beginning ofthe year as an entrepreneur,

(54:58):
what is something about yourselfyou feel like you need to work
on?

Speaker 2 (55:05):
As an entrepreneur or as a person.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
I'll tell you my answer as well.
I mean, I don't mind sharing it.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Well, you can tell me , Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
I think my problem as an entrepreneur and a business
person is I'm not.
My brain is going pretty fastwith ideas, especially when it
comes to developing products andservices.
Sometimes, when I would explainit to a project manager or a
developer, I go a little toofast, or someone else on my team
.
Then, when the outcome doesn'tcome out the way that it's

(55:40):
supposed to, I get angry thatit's not what I was envisioning
or what I wanted.
But when I go back and I lookat why it didn't turn out that
way, a lot of the times theproblem is me and that I didn't
really fill in all of theanswers and all the questions

(56:00):
and really do the best job thatI probably could have to explain
it.
Yeah, I think I can do betterwith that?

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Sure?
Well, I guess for me there'splenty of things, but I'd say
the main thing is I don't likeairplanes, I don't like hotels,
I don't like being away from mykids, so I've missed all these
opportunities to spend time inNew York, silicon Valley.
I went to that one conferencethat I saw you at a few months

(56:25):
back.
But I practically never go toany conferences and I'm doing
what I do here.
I do Zoom, I do email, I dophone calls and I'm not getting
the face time I need.
So I own a company calledphonecom.
It's an awesome company, it'sextremely successful.
But if I was spending everyweek in Silicon Valley, I'd be

(56:51):
able to do all these great dealsand partnerships.
I speak to a lot of thesepeople and the president of the
company speaks to all thesepeople, but I don't have any
physical presence there.
I never go to conferences inSilicon Valley.
I try to avoid New York likethe plague, but that's my
biggest weakness, because that'swhere all the money is, that's
where all the deals are, that'swhere all the partners are.

(57:12):
So again, if I had thatexposure, I'd probably make a
lot more money.
But I envision myself turningstuff over to other people,
selling off most of my companiesand most of my assets and
spending my time at the beachwith my kids.
So I'm just not as engaged inthe day to day and the travel as

(57:33):
I should be.
Basically.
So it makes me less profitablethan I could be otherwise.

Speaker 1 (57:41):
Well, I think that kind of goes into your personal.
As you're saying, you're makinga conscious decision to spend
more time with your family andbe a great father, and there's
nothing wrong with that either,right?

Speaker 2 (57:52):
Absolutely.
And again, it's just I have anaversion to airplanes, hotels
and that whole lifestyle.
I guess I know a lot of otherpeople that live like that.
Most of them like it, but it'sjust not my thing.

Speaker 1 (58:06):
Well, when you came to Namescon, you had your wife
with you and she was pregnant atthe time.
That's when I realized that youhad one on the way.
And then you had the baby likea month later, and I was
surprised.
You could even fly at thatpoint.

Speaker 2 (58:19):
I know it was the end of the time.
We asked the doctor.
He said, yeah, this is the lastone, you can fly.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
This is your last date that you can do it.
Yeah, but so you know.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
So, a guy like you, what are your goals for 2024?
Other than maybe flying moreand going a few more meetings?
What are your business goalsfor domain market?

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Well, I own several other companies that I need to
build up, aside from domainmarket, and I do a ton of
charity work and I have acharitable fund.
So I'm constantly talking tomeeting with and researching
different charities that I helpand support.
I used to run charities myselfone you might remember called
grassrootsorg and so I'm alwaysdoing a lot of work in that

(59:04):
space and trying to improve,trying to focus on the groups
that deserve the money.
If anybody is interested inthis stuff, my organization is
called Make Change Trust, so youcan go to makechangecom, or
there's also a link at micmancomthat explains all my businesses
, my charity.
My book can be downloaded forfree.

(59:26):
There's a link to charity stuffagain at micmancom.
There's also a link to allthese other podcasts that I did,
live streams that I did, soI've interviewed tons of the top
domain people and tons of otherreally smart business people,
so there's all sorts of videosout there.
There's a video of my speechfrom NamesCon that I gave, which

(59:49):
I thought was pretty good, withAmanda.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
What year was that?
What year did you give thespeech at NamesCon?

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Last year you were sleeping through it.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
When we just went to.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
Amanda interviewed me there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Oh god, yeah, I didn't realize you were the
keynote for it.
I remember watching you do aninterview at NamesCon when you
were on video, but I must havehad a meeting during your speech
at NamesCon.

Speaker 2 (01:00:16):
It's all good, but that video is online, so I think
that's a pretty solid video.
It explains a lot of stuff alot of tricks about domain names
and some of the history that Iglossed over today.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
I think a lot of people that they see you on
Twitter.
You write the sales that youwrite.
You have pretty strong opinionsabout crypto, politics, other
things.
I think some people would liketo get to understand your
background a little bit more.
So, before we wrap this up, onemore question and then I think
we'll end it With AI.

(01:00:50):
I know you're embracing it, Iknow you're using it and you're
going to probably put it intoyour algorithm and help yourself
and your businesses with it.
I've been doing it myself.
I'm finding myself using I'mpaying for chat GBT-4.
I'm finding myself using it alot for work, whether it's
writing a sentence and asking torewrite it or analyzing

(01:01:13):
information.
I'm finding myself using thatmore to a point than using
Google Search, because I'mfinding with Google Search, the
results aren't very good anymore, and that's because a lot of
the questions you're looking foranswers for on Google Search,
the answers you're getting arefrom affiliates Just trying to.
If I have plantar fasciitis inmy foot, well then it's just a

(01:01:35):
guy writing what are the topfive sneakers and then there's a
link to the Amazon ad and mostof the time those sneakers don't
even help your feet, it's justgetting paid the most.

Speaker 2 (01:01:46):
It's basically savage .

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
Yeah, and it's like if you search for the domain
broker now Neil Patel, who's anSEO guy, he comes up as the top
10 brokers and you have to payhim to get on that list.
He wanted thousands of dollarsfor me to get on that list and
there's companies on there thataren't even in business anymore,
and so it's ruining Search.

(01:02:10):
And I'm finding myself usingChatGVT I call my guy, Ronnie,
Ronnie the Robot and he gives mebetter answers to the things I
want to find.
But what I'm realizing is thathe's making suggestions,
sometimes of services or goods,and I think that as time goes on

(01:02:30):
, if this becomes part of ourcell phones which it's going to
big time and it becomes a muchbigger part of Search, do you
think that we're even going toget results in the future, or is
it really just going to besuggestions from a bot that
really starts to get to know youand if you say to him I'm

(01:02:50):
hungry and we want to go to arestaurant we haven't been to
before, it might know, byknowing navigation, where you've
been.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
And it would say well , you haven't been to these
restaurants in the area.
What do you think of these?
And your other friend, yourfriend Tony, rated it five stars
two weeks ago.
Here's his review of it, andthen he points you in that
direction.
Or you want to buy a higherquality domain.
Instead of paying for GoogleAdWords, we might pay for
Headspace in AI, and thequestion is that direct question

(01:03:21):
where do you think domains aregoing to fall into this?
If AI is in essence, if myfuture, I'm telling you, becomes
true, where AI is really justsuggesting everything and you're
not really giving the userlegitimate results, what's going
to happen?

Speaker 2 (01:03:39):
Well, first of all, chatgpt has some APIs such that
thousands and thousands ofprivate people can build their
own systems on top of it, sothey can improve it, filter it,
change it, customize it, focusit.
So people will create all sortsof services and apps that will

(01:04:03):
refine the experience to get itthe way you want it, if that
makes sense.
Plus, chatgpt itself canimprove their basic
functionality.
And ChatGPT is just oneexperience.
There's already a dozen otherpopular big services and 100
other smaller services.
There's an insane amount ofinvestment in this space.

(01:04:25):
Right now, the vast majority ofthose companies are going to
fail.
But, I'd say the point is it'sjust the super beginning of this
thing.
There's going to be just amassive amount of innovation on
top of ChatGPT and thenthousands and thousands of other
companies that use ChatGPT.
It's almost like Play Store.

(01:04:45):
Like Play Store is really cool.
Then there's thousands andthousands of people that connect
it or they create a Windowsapplication, for example.
They're not a Microsoft-ownedcompany, but they created
Windows applications.
So it's the same sort of thingYou're not owned by ChatGPT, but
you can have a ChatGPTcompatible experience through

(01:05:09):
your APIs.
So again, it's already insanelycool.
It's already evolving at anincredible rate.
So you're just going to see somuch new stuff.
So I wouldn't put yourself in abox or your mind in a box where
you think it's just going insuch and such direction, because
there's just too muchinnovation to really predict
what's going to happen with allthe ancillary companies or even

(01:05:31):
with ChatGPT itself.
But in the domain space, we havea lot of plans here.
We keep uncovering all thesenew ideas for everything we're
doing for landing pages, forappraisals, all sorts of
different types of research.
Again, we have this enormousnumber of data columns that we

(01:05:52):
use, that we analyze, and abunch of them you know about.
A bunch of them are proprietaryand you can use AI on like 75%
of that stuff to improve whatwe're already doing.
And then the landing pages.
There's all sorts of things.
Plus, with search optimization,there's all these crazy tricks
that I think my people are goingto be uniquely qualified to

(01:06:12):
leverage.
Remember I used to own SEOcomfor 15 years.
Well, just the domain.
It was.
A corporation at one time hadover 100 employees.
So I think domain market plusphonecom and some of my other
assets are going to get thisenormous leverage from AI, some
of where we already know thedirection we're going and what

(01:06:34):
we need to do, and a bunch ofstuff that hasn't even been
invented yet or we don't evenknow the basic idea of what's
going to come next.
So it's going to be a hugeamount of our time and money and
thrust the next few years forall my companies.
It's going to be surrounding AI.
I don't own any AI company.
It's companies that leverage AI.

(01:06:54):
So all these people trying tosellai domain names they seem to
be missing the fact that allthe people using AI don't make
them an AI company.
There are thousands andthousands of AI companies.
Most of them are going tousecom and most of them are
going to fail.
So whileai is probably cool fora few thousand companies and
some of the very best domains,it's not a competitive

(01:07:17):
experience, tocom, and it'snever going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
I think if you're a B2C company, you definitely need
thecom.
If you're a B2B in the AI space, you can get away with it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
We can go down that road.
That's my point, that's a wholenumber of companies.

Speaker 1 (01:07:36):
So you're going to use AI in the short term to
further support your businesses,leverage your businesses, but
you're not thinking about reallygetting into the AI space these
days.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
No, I don't have very many employees anymore.
Again, phonecom has over 100employees, but I don't actually
work there on a day-to-day basisand it doesn't work on any of
my domain products.
It's a separate, totallyseparate experience.
They're going to use AI in alot of respects, but not be an
AI company Again.
So I just don't have that manyemployees at the moment and I'm

(01:08:09):
just enjoying having like I'mout.
I have a group that does agreat job that I'm outsourcing a
lot of stuff to, but my ownpersonal employees are like the
least I've ever had in my life,which makes things a lot easier
to deal with on a day-to-daybasis.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Do you miss it?

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Having a lot of employees.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
Yeah, like the social aspect.
Did you ever have like when youhad SEOcom?
I saw pictures of your you knowyour company of everybody
together in an office.
Do you miss going to an officeand social?

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
aspect of things.
First of all, I hardly wentinto the office.
But the other, well, I thinkpeople should be in an office
and I think companies are muchmore successful when everybody's
in the office together.
I was like the first remoteuser and you know from way back,
I'd go in to visit people, mycompanies, but they always had a
president and operations that Iwas separated from.

(01:08:59):
I was always the CEO, chairmanof the board, so I rarely went
into any office.
Seocom is from Salt Lake Citywhere all my employees were.
I went to visit sometimes, butI think people should be in an
office in general.
Me personally, no, I don't missit.
I like being with my kids andgoing to the beach and having a

(01:09:20):
long lunch and you know again,I'm usually working my ass off
on the auction selling domainnames and I usually have a lot
more employees.
So I'm on conference calls allthe time.
But you know I have, I have abunch of employees now, a lot of
its outsource and it's morethan enough to keep me busy.
So I don't miss it.
I was totally overwhelmed withhaving too many employees, too

(01:09:43):
many businesses, too much.
I never get any sleep.

Speaker 1 (01:09:49):
And last question.
And well, two more questions.
The first is what advice wouldyou give to a budding
entrepreneur today?

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
from what you know, Entrepreneur, but not
necessarily with domains andanything.
Well, I wrote a book that hasall the advice in it Make
millionscom, make millions andmake change.
There's a hard copy available,also from Amazon.
But the basic thing is a hardwork ethic, just working all the

(01:10:17):
time, having a well.
Before that, you have a succinctplan.
It's a written plan.
It addresses somethingmeaningful in the growing
economy.
It's well explained what you'redoing.
It's not so much for theoutside world, it's for yourself
.
But if you need investors andemployees, they need it too.
But you need a plan in anemerging market space that

(01:10:39):
you're committed to.
And that plan has an Excel fileof your assumptions, of your pro
forma, that has realisticnumbers as to what you can
expect to achieve.
And again, you just work hardon a plan.
And the people you associateyourself with are equally as
important Getting the very bestpeople, the hardest working

(01:11:02):
people, most honest people, thebest connected people to be part
of your team, either as youremployees, your business
partners, people you outsourceto.
So it's really having a plan,having a work ethic and having a
team.
Then you can build everythingoff of that experience and get a
great domain name and a brandname that you can leverage

(01:11:23):
forever on top of that plan andpay it off over two years with
zero interest.
Exactly, get it from domainmarket.
We're from thoughtcom.

Speaker 1 (01:11:33):
There you go.
And then last question how canpeople contact you?

Speaker 2 (01:11:39):
Well, I'm all over social media, as you mentioned,
or they can just email me micmanat micmancom.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
Awesome.
Well, thank you very much foryour time today.
I appreciate it.
I think this is a great call.
I said in the beginning we wantto try to keep it short.
People say, make your show is alittle shorter, but this was
like really interesting and Ihope people are listening, feel
the same way.
So I think they're going to getanother one hour one whether
they like it or not.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
I appreciate it.
Next time I won't have coffeebefore my call, so I'll shorten
my sentences.
Well have, two.

Speaker 1 (01:12:10):
I mean I think this is great.
And are you going to go tonamescon this year?
We're going to pull you out andunlikely.
No, no ICA for you in about 12days.
I like those things.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
But in part of my speech when I was on there was
about spirit airlines that Iwent on.
If I go next time I won't gospirit airlines, but I just
don't like traveling.
Basically, I like all thepeople, but I'm just not a
traveler.

Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
I can fly spirit.
I can see why you don't liketravel.

Speaker 2 (01:12:38):
I didn't know.
You know, I found out after thefact because I travel so
infrequently, but it was adisaster.
I had a good time at theconference, but I don't see
myself going very frequently.

Speaker 1 (01:12:52):
I hear you.
I was going to say you live inMiami now right, I live in Boca,
near Miami.
How far are you from where inMiami?
I'm thinking that we would bothknow how far are you from the
heat stadium.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
Like 20 minutes or so .

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
Oh, that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
Maybe 30.
Something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Okay, one of the investors in my business lives
down there and I come down toMiami from time to time, so the
next time I come I'll let youknow we'll go out and have a
drink or some lunch.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
Yeah, man, if you're around, let's meet up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Cool.
Well, you know.
Thanks again.
I like this a lot.
I got to know you better overthe last year, but I think this
really helps things and we'llsee about hopefully getting you
better off and kicking this yearoff right together.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
Absolutely.
Thanks a lot, Jeff.
Appreciate your time andinterview.

Speaker 1 (01:13:49):
And no problem.
Have a great weekend.
Hope you do something fun.
Thanks everybody.

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