Shane Kultra's Insights on Domain Flipping and Nurturing Business Growth

Speaker 1: 0:00

Next on the uncomfortable podcast with Jeffrey Gabriel, we have domain name Shane Kultra. Come hear Shane's stories touching on being a stock trader, bartender, botanist, tv personality for a national TV show, demeanor, marathon runner, a father and maybe, just maybe even a domain broker. Here, shane and I talk about managing employees, motivating employees, selling domains, email deliverability, bad domain investments, the state of the domain industry, taking the big leap to do your own thing, and we both agreeing that the number one secret to both of our success is our support system at home, starting with our wives, our families and then our friends and our colleagues. If you want to be a guest on the uncomfortable podcast, have an idea for an episode or have some feedback, send us an email to buzzbuzz at SODcom. If you're listening on Spotify, apple, youtube or anywhere else, please at the very least, give us a like. It helps our rankings immensely and, as always, thanks for listening.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Today on the uncomfortable podcast, you have Shane Kultra, better known as Domain Shane in the domain investing world. Shane is one of the founders of DSAD that puts out a daily list of domains at auction from auction houses from around the world. He has put out a list every single day since 2009 and has missed less than 10 in that period. Shane owned and ran a nursery and garden center for 28 years while he pursued his domain investing on the side. Shane started running at 40 years old and has run 35 plus marathons, two iron man's, and is now pursuing 100 mile races. We're definitely going to talk about that. Shane is the original. Get uncomfortable. I guess I'm the plagiarizer and as that has been his motto for over 30 years and I can agree as mine as well, shane retired from the nursery business in 2023 and is now pursuing domain investing, domain and brokerage and his other hobbies full time. Welcome to the show, shane. How are you doing today, hey?

Speaker 2: 2:20

Jeff, great I'm glad you had me on. I've been watching it and I was hoping someday I'd have the honor of coming on, so I appreciate you bringing me here today.

Speaker 1: 2:30

Yeah, I'm honored to have you here. I put on my Red Sox hat because I want to forget about the NFL season of 2023. I'm a Patriots fan, so pictures and catchers for the Red Sox report in two days, so I thought I'd put this on as some lucky juju. This is my lucky Red Sox hat. I actually was wearing it. It looks a little weathered. I was wearing it when I sold sexcom, so I had some and a little when I used to make a call.

Speaker 2: 3:03

It looks like a multi-million dollar hat.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I'd be like doodling on the insides and hoping for the best you know when these are happening. So hopefully there's some positive juju here.

Speaker 2: 3:15

Yeah, anyways, I have my lucky swag too.

Speaker 1: 3:19

So there you go. So you know, I like to start with pretty much everybody on the show and find out about their business or their personal lives and things like that. So let's quickly go over you know, you and the planting business, and then how you found domains, got in the domain business and then how it kind of brought you here, and then we can kind of start talking about the industry and things like that.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Yeah, I mean a lot of people in the industry know my story but I can say quickly, I didn't know what I wanted to do out of high school. You know my family has a nursery business since 1865. And I worked doing that through high school and you know my whole life that's how I earned. Money is working for my dad doing that. But for five generations everybody's done something else and then come back to it. We all do it, we all hate it. We go and go to college or go to war. I was actually the first generation not to go to war, which I'm very thankful of, okay, but I definitely didn't want to go back in the nursery business, like I had unloaded enough trucks and know how hard of work it was. I wanted to do something quote better. So I went to college University of Alabama, where my dad went to school, and I ended up doing really well at the USA Today. You remember USA Today paper, that a stockpicking contest that we did in a class and I think it was top 10 in the country and my professor said, hey, you're pretty good with numbers and got me a job at the board of trade Actually the Chicago options exchange in Chicago. So I left school and was a trader. I moved up from runner to pit to kind of doing the whole thing, until I was one of those people in the pits with the hand signals doing that and I thought, okay, I'm going to do this rest of my life.

Speaker 2: 4:55

And long story short, during a Federal Reserve meeting I held a position that my backer so a guy gave me a million dollars. I had to pay him 80% of the profit. I kept 20% of the profits and I had a couple rules. So I weren't very many rules, but one of them was no big trades during big meetings. Well, I made a big trade during a meeting and I did very well. I think I remember making a couple hundred thousand. But he walked out there and took his money away from me and said there's rules here. I don't care if you make money or lose money, there's rules and if you don't follow them, I'm take, I can't have you. As you know, I can't put my money in you. So it was a big lesson to me, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:34

What year was the start asking?

Speaker 2: 5:36

I was in the early 90s, so this is in 1994. Yeah, 1994. And it was a lot of tears, you know a grown man crying because getting someone to back you was took a long time to get. I was being risky, you know. It kind of set the stage of how I was going to act in life. I wasn't scared of risk, I was aggressive. I loved money, I love action, I loved buying and selling. I love buying low, selling high. I was doing 50 million dollars in trades a week as a young 20 year old and so it kind of set up early that I love those kind of things. But fast forward, my dad noticed I was kind of hurt and said I have an idea.

Speaker 2: 6:22

Come to the nursery, yeah, he said, I'm thinking of leaving my dad's nursery and forming my own thing in a college town, in Champaign Urbana, and I didn't want to go to the small one in the family Like there's no way I'm moving to the small town, but Champaign Urbana seemed like a nice college town. I love college towns. There's youth and sports and all kinds of things. So I had met my wife at the time. She wasn't opposed to it and we moved here and my dad and I started with like three employees. I always I told the story a million times I did more on a Friday my last year than I did the whole year in retail sales. So we did more in one day than we did the entire year. So we're doing five or six million dollars of stuff we grow ourselves and I had a great life.

Speaker 2: 7:11

That's a beautiful life Growing plants. You know you're going to hear me tell all these analogies of plants, but life is like plants it's patience, it's growing, it's trimming, it's culling out the bad ones, it's just life is all about growing plants and it taught me so much about that. And then you know not speaking too much, but it kind of led me also to realize a business owner puts all their money back in the business. Your best investment is yourself, and so when you make money you don't go invest it really in the stock market. You take it and reinvest it in your own company because you know what you can do with that money. So that's well and good. But what it turns out is, when it's all said and done, all your money is in your company, which is a great company and a very profitable company, but every bit of profits goes back into expansion because we kind of talked before the show.

Speaker 2: 8:03

You learn when you have a lot of employees and children that it's not about you. Your decisions affect everybody. My goal didn't be. My goal started to be a good business, but your goal. Eventually you have 48 employees and 48 families and 48 people with children. I have to provide for them. Every dime I have has to go back in there, because they want to make more money, they want more opportunity, they want to move up in their lives and the only way to do that is for me to create that. They're not going to create that. They're going to be good employees and learn, but they're not going to create that opportunity.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Yeah, they have their own hopes and dreams and goals of their own and they're working with you, like. One of the things I think people forget when they have employees who work for them is that those people are working for you voluntarily, they're not required to come to work tomorrow and they're not required to do anything for you and they can quit at any time they want. And so I try to remember that some days I'm mad and I make mistakes and say things I didn't mean or whatever, but like going back to that is providing a place. You're right, they're 40 families, they're 80 kids if they all have two kids and their wives or husbands or other, their own plans and their own hobbies and their own vacations.

Speaker 2: 9:17

And I agree, you're 100% right and they should want more. But the problem is they want to take a step up, but it's my job to make the step. It's my job to create the step that they can step up at and so or step it up somewhere else. If I don't do a good job, they're going to step up, but they're going to go step up to a competitor or to another business. So I would love to keep them around.

Speaker 2: 9:39

So that became my responsibility and, as you know, with 48, you know there's hierarchies but you talk to everybody different. There's some people that a loud voice inspires them. There's other people were maybe an arm around the shoulder. There you have to talk to every single person differently to inspire them and get them to go, and that becomes brutal. So I have my wife I talked to away. My daughter I talked away and then probably 22 other people I interact with daily that I have to remember how to interact with them and as you become older, that becomes harder. It really does. As you become a middle-aged man, it's hard to talk to a 22 year old woman in a way that drives them to become better. So I acknowledge all that and I became probably worse at my job after 50, because it was such a diversity of employees and how, and so you start stacking people in middle to talk to them and people don't think about that.

Speaker 2: 10:34

I think about that I thought it was more difficult, maybe because I had more people to talk to.

Speaker 1: 10:44

I was managing at one point over 50 people at Uniregistry and I feel like in the beginning of it I think I had a harder time, maybe because of the years of doing it, but now that I'm getting older I find it easier to manage people because I think I might have a little less testosterone and more understanding and patience with people than I did before, and I think that comes to the age, but I think, talking to a 22 year old and relating to them whether it's a guy or a girl, I don't care I think that, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1: 11:19

I'm 20 years removed from that now, so she's having challenges I've never had when I was in my 20s, or he had. But I think, personally, having that patience is something I have that I didn't have before. Sometimes I write an email and I won't send it and I'll let it sit overnight where, when I was younger, I'd be like fuck you and I'd send it and you can't take it back.

Speaker 2: 11:41

No, that's the rule. On emails. Yeah, there's nothing going out at night. No text that's the other thing is all text. We'll get copied and pasted and put on social media. I can don't send anything.

Speaker 2: 11:54

I'm only on the phone just because of that. But I agree with you, it's just everybody that's. The other thing is, motivating people is so individual, Like what motivates one person versus another and again, I do become better at that. But I do have to learn that John really likes his time off. Like I can't motivate him with overtime and money and time and a half.

Speaker 2: 12:17

Yeah, he actually refers he, he, that doesn't matter to him, he would rather have the time off. So, okay, well, I'm going to manage his schedule and the other person's. Like I don't ever want to leave, I want to make as much money as I can, so if I don't give him overtime they're pissed. So, anyway, that's kind of where I was and I, you know, I think I did a really good job and I definitely grew. Like you said, it just became so, so diverse and so big and so many responsibilities that I people will say, on micromanage, what I did is I laid out the hierarchy too flat. I was so sick of 80s middle management I hated how many levels there were in the 80s and businesses that six people had to report to each other that I flattened it out and it became a little too flat, so I had too many people reporting to me once I got really large.

Speaker 1: 13:02

So you also end up with way too many chiefs and not enough Indians right At that point.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Yeah, and I had. I think I had the opposite. I had a lot of Indians and I was the chief of all of them and I couldn't. It was just too much yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:14

And it's too overwhelming. Yeah, and delegating is hard sometimes. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 13:19

Yeah, but it's a good lesson. I'm better and I'm a better business person and so you know. Getting back to domains, when I talk to someone, no matter how big their company, I kind of understand what they're going through. It may have more zeros, it may have more employees, but business is business, it's all the same. It's product, it's service, it's employees. And so I can, when I talk to somebody about domains, if they want to go into the business side of it, I got you, Like I get where you're coming from.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Yeah, yeah, let's go back real quick. I want to ask you a quick question about when you risked this guy's million dollars and then he fired you over it. Do you think 20, you know, 30 years later, right, you're in his shoes and you had a kid with you, gave a million dollars to, and he did that, and it was you. Do you think you would have fired yourself or do you think what he did was harsh or over the line?

Speaker 2: 14:13

No, he's right. I don't know about firing because I didn't really have any warnings, but yeah, yeah, so it's not like if you do it again, but I do feel like I should have known that those were his rules and was that the cardinal rule?

Speaker 2: 14:30

Like that's the one thing you don't do at the time I didn't know as the cardinal, but I do know he was pretty set in his way. He was literally one of the first people to ever trade Black Scholes model and options. He opened the Chicago Stock or Chicago Options Exchange. He was a legend so it was honored to have his money. I went to dinner at his house but you know, I know I don't doubt I it was. It was dumb to do. The funny thing is, to this day when I hold trades through the, the Fed meetings, I still get nervous like I do it now. I still trade during Fed meetings and I all I can think about is like this this cost me. This cost me millions of dollars before because that same trading group. The next year Nobody made under a million dollars like nobody crushed it.

Speaker 1: 15:22

Yeah and I was, but at the same time real, yeah, but that's a real burnout job and you just don't know where that could have taken you. You could have made millions had a horrible healthy lifestyle and on your third heart attack right now.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Like you, just yeah, no, I had a definitely a drinking problem, like everybody else in the pit. We all had gambling problems. It is, it's an, it's like a fraternity with billions of dollars. Like yeah, it's the crazy. And my wife's just said she was already at the time. She was my girlfriend, she was already giving me Signs that that's lifestyle was not gonna last long, because I took a job at a bar too, just for extra money and to meet people. I didn't even need it, but I would go. This is how hard I I worked. I would get to the office at 5 am, trade till 2, close out my books from 3 to 5 or lax. I'd go to the bar at 6 and I work from 6 6 pm To 4 am At the bar and then get up and do that again like days on end, one hour asleep. How can you do that? I don't know.

Speaker 1: 16:26

It wasn't great extracurricular inhibitors, maybe to keep you in here and there.

Speaker 2: 16:31

But the money was so good I won't bore the podcast, but what the thing is. I would work the back door of the this barn is most popular bar in Chicago and the Line every night would wrap around the whole building. And so the line would go around the building to this door and everybody would knock on the door Can I come in? And I started realizing I could charge them 20 to $50 to let him in that door and avoid the line. So I would make an extra thousand dollars a night cash by letting people in that back door and so I kept the job like I didn't really need the job. But when it was so lucrative and finally owners came up to me to do that, I take.

Speaker 2: 17:11

Are you taking cash to let people in the back door? And I said, yeah, and they're like that's brilliant, split it with me. So they let me continue to do that. And then I split the money. But every night my wife will tell you the story. I'd come home exhausted and I would just lay all the cash out on the counter, just All the money, and when I would come home from work my wife would have it all, almost like ironed and laid out, and I knew I had a good woman because she had that money, perfectly managed, stacked, hidden. She was my money manager and she's been my money manager for for 30 years, ever since.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Wow. So how did you end up? So you did, you did the nursery for a long time and then, and then you started.

Speaker 2: 17:52

How did you find out about domains and that opportunity, it seems yeah, so, yeah, so it sounds like it, but a serial entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, right. So I've always been doing things on the side as a as a business owner. You know that money goes back into the business and you're only gonna get a certain amount of salary. So I always wanted to do something on the side and I'd always. The internet came around and you know I've been on the bullets and boards doing auctions since I'm not exaggerating since 1984. The old Modem would go on to the, the phone would fit onto the modem and there was a bulletin boards and you would do it. You would do an auction like it would say I have a Star Wars, boba Fett, condition 9, hi bitters, then 64, and then somebody else would make a bid and I would just keep doing that auction, a Visual auction, and whoever one would mail me a check and I would mail out the toy and they would give me a rating. I did not since high school with Star Wars toys and toys. So the internet came around and so on the side, even in the 90s, I started buying domain names, buying plant names, because I figured maybe we're gonna sell plants on the the side. So I bought. You know, shilling was way ahead of me because he was literally just going through the plant dictionary and registering names, but names that he didn't get. I would register those plant names, like boxwood, calm, any plant I saw in the nursery, anything related to the nursery that I thought was an item I would buy. So I did that on the side.

Speaker 2: 19:25

But my real moneymaker was this story that we just had about the trading. I Wrote a blog called Wall Street Fighter and everybody wanted to hear my trading stories. They just wanted to hear what I did, what I spent money on working at the bar, the women, the alcohol. They love those stories. So I'm like I'm gonna blog that because you know, these other blogs are writing about things that are, I think, boring.

Speaker 2: 19:47

So I wrote this blog and I built it up to a million readers a month and, wow, so it got bought out by Lionsgate films and break media for a good amount of money and I realized, okay, I can write a blog, I can, I know how to monetize the internet, so I'm gonna buy more domains. That's when I decided like that was in 2007, 2008. That's when I realized, okay, now I have enough money to start buying good domains and buying and selling domains. So I bought that money and I put them into domains that actually made me money. So I've been doing it since the 90s, never really made much money, but when that Wall Street Fighter sale came through and I got that big check, then I went, had the experience that we all talk about, like not just jumping into domains. I had the experience with domains, but now I had a little bankroll. So that's when it all started to me.

Speaker 1: 20:39

And then what was the first domain other than that blog that you sold for a profit, because I call that more of a website? The first big one was Boxwoodcom I sold it to.

Speaker 2: 20:49

I saw that it doesn't resonate. But I sold it to a British or a UK based Computer company for ten thousand dollars. Yeah, that's a great name, good brand.

Speaker 1: 21:02

It is a good name.

Speaker 2: 21:03

I just hand-registered boxwoodai just trying to bring it all back together. I was like if I can sell it once, I can do AI in my second go around.

Speaker 1: 21:12

But yeah, so that was a big one. Yeah, that's a good one, and what was like your very first? When you're like, holy shit, someone's offering me some money for this.

Speaker 2: 21:24

That's the first one that somebody actually paid five figures. The rest of them were More parking. Like everybody else, right, like I wasn't as concerned with you know, I wasn't concerned with selling the domain as I was trying to get to get revenue in. Like I didn't. I didn't think about the big sale like at the time. When I first got started. I was thinking the big sale was a name that was generating good revenue. I wasn't looking at it like we do now. I was looking at as an asset, that gen that yields, not as an asset that multiplies the yield. So Mm-hmm, that was a change for me.

Speaker 2: 22:01

Once I started doing that a lot of people that know in 2000, 2000, 2007, I became the four number calm King, like I. That's what I first started with. As I said, new numbers are universal and I couldn't afford three numbers at a time. So I was buying every four number I could for $500 to $1,000 and I just bought them and bought them, and bought them and I flipped them a little early when they became 20,000. But I did very, very well, I mean.

Speaker 1: 22:29

So in like 2015,. How did you do? 2014 is when the Chinese market I was mostly out of it.

Speaker 2: 22:38

I did. I did well there because I had some portfolio but I had sold before the big rush. So I definitely Lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential. But but I had already moved on to other names that have done fine for me. So no.

Speaker 2: 22:52

I didn't kill it in the Chinese, I mean I did fine. I think all of us did pretty well because of the four letter comms, remember the four letter comms if they didn't have a vowel became just money. So yeah, yeah, it was, it was good. Um, but you know we also were doing Six numbers. Like we got a little crazy during that period of time.

Speaker 1: 23:12

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:15

Yeah, no, that's, and I did. I'm famously on dot w s. I tried doing and I still own some like two letter dot w s's and you know I look at a lot of things is why not like, just like the people did, the dot ai four years ago and spending that amount of money To renew for four years and some people, thousands of domains that weren't selling for three and four years at 50 plus a pop? Um, I did that with some other tlds that didn't quite work out like. I still don't understand what dot cc hasn't become Crypto, but it is what it is yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:50

So what are your feelings about dot w s? Because I remember when you were, when you were pushing it and then a group of people bought some and I think I own. I didn't invest in a lot of domains, but I think I own like five or six of those right now.

Speaker 2: 24:02

So and I'll have one for the rest of my life, because I bought Christmas. Dot w s had had a 99 year renewal. Remember when they did those.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Yeah, have you sold any of those or have any action on them? I have sold.

Speaker 2: 24:15

I have sold some two letters For two thousand a piece. I have them all priced at two grand and I've sold two of them.

Speaker 1: 24:22

Has it covered me?

Speaker 2: 24:24

I highly doubt it, but I'm down to like five, two letters and five, two numbers Um yeah, that's about right it is what it is and you know.

Speaker 2: 24:34

You know where we went back. We got here through risk. We all came in here doing things that people didn't think had potential and I've never, ever told anybody to do what I've done my entire time. Anybody that knows me, this industry, I share everything. It's only to show my journey into journal and you can follow along if you want. You can learn from my mistakes, you can learn from what I've done. Well, I just talk about it because I don't think I'm doing anything to hide like there's. There's nothing that I do that I feel uncomfortable about doing. If I can't tell you about it, I shouldn't have been doing it right, like if it's something that I can't put on Twitter, that I shouldn't do it. Now, personal, I get as far as it. Personal is different, but I'm talking about, like you know, if I'm doing something that's proprietary, I get all that part of it, but I mean as far as just our journey and what we're doing is where I'm headed with that.

Speaker 1: 25:24

I agree. Well, it leads me to a question I wanted to ask you about. Was with d sad, where you put the list of auctions and then you point out names that you like On those lists on a daily basis and as an investor yourself, why are you drawing attention To names that you probably want to bid on and that it ends up costing you money in the end, if you're?

Speaker 2: 25:44

I've never felt I've never felt that I put anything up there that wasn't going to get discovered. Domain investors are way too smart. To nothing gets passed. I I talk to these guys daily. They have way more tools and they're gonna find everything. Nothing's getting through these auctions that they're not gonna see. Mine is only a reminder to May and, yes, maybe there's some newer investors. I just feel like it's not costing me that much. I really don't think so, because the person that I'm bidding at the final and going bitter 17, 18, 17, 18, 17, 18.

Speaker 2: 26:21

Yeah that that person was gonna be there, regardless of my list.

Speaker 1: 26:25

They're. That's how you feel.

Speaker 2: 26:26

That's how I feel about it. I I really don't. I don't feel that I'm that special. I don't feel that my list is changing. I think it's getting some eyeballs on some names that they wouldn't have seen. I think I really and I'm not just selling myself. I think for the auction houses it does help. It only takes one more bidder to run it up first. So for that side, that is true. But I'm not buying that many domains, right? I'm buying domains that we're probably gonna get there anyway. I was concentrating on the higher end names. I wasn't going through closeouts. So when I just I show a closeout, that I think is good, it's really not costing me anything. I'm starting to do more closeouts, so it's probably costing me a little now, but I just yeah, I'm just not worried about it. Like I, I'm going through the list, I'm doing it anyway. Why not write out a list? Why not chronicle what I'm looking at every single day anyway and Making a little money doing that? That's kind of I've looked at yeah, I don't disagree.

Speaker 1: 27:24

I mean so like today, speech bubble was one of your top ones, right, and I feel like an investor who sees that it would have been on their radar anyway, because my tools tell me that that term is searched 33 000 times a month on google.

Speaker 2: 27:37

Yeah, so that is.

Speaker 1: 27:40

Every invested radar. But at the bottom of the list or in the middle of the list is like a random three word calm, and it doesn't have a lot of search. But you can see that it's a term that might be up and coming, but it's going to take a little bit of work To find it and I think that you might bring those to the top. And uh, and what people know about those that, compared to the other 5000 that look exactly the same, that's exactly the same. But you're saying look at this, and then I would spend the time, and then that's when it probably could cost you.

Speaker 2: 28:12

Yeah, it's probably more in the lower end names that, like the closeout ones that I put out there, um and I. I do think I've built up enough reputation so I don't. There are some paid listings on there, right, there's some people that ask me to um put names on the list, but they're all paid listings because all Everybody up there pays me to list. There's name jet. I work with name jet. I work with dyna. I work with d D and w e. I work with all those companies to provide visibility to their company. So I say that right up front. I always make that very clear.

Speaker 1: 28:47

I saw it on your, I saw it on the on the side. It tells you I.

Speaker 2: 28:50

I want people to know that like, but at the same time I can, I have freedom, put anything I want. They're not telling me to put any one name. They're at, you know they're, it's just for visibility.

Speaker 1: 29:01

Yeah, but I mean, if you were making all bad picks and it was all trash like, You're not going to read it or it's pointless. You know they're looking at the clicks and things.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, we track everything. We, we track every name. Uh, to see who like it helps me build a better list, right, so I can see what names get clicked on the most and that lets me know what names people are looking for. Like, if I put like a dot net, just making it up, if I put on a net and it's the number one clicked one, I'm like, well, people are looking for more dot nets than I assumed. So I can learn from the clicks on what which one people are going through. So it's been great for me to learn more about the names to go through every day and I have Josh and Travis helping me now write the list because it's it does take me a couple hours. People like Josh and Travis, they don't put out the, the words and the words are stupid a lot of times. My comments Generally make no sense and I'm having fun.

Speaker 1: 29:58

I don't know the value, but to me that's just how I've always.

Speaker 2: 30:01

That's how I've always done it. I've always. That's just me and so I'll do it the way I want and I enjoy doing it and um, but it does take Over an hour, hour and a half, two hours, depending on the thing every single day and I have a life. I was already working 60 hours at the nursery doing my own domain thing for 10 hours. I do lots of activity, so my week was 80 hundred hours. Every for 28 straight years I got up at 4 30 and went to bed at 9 30, with no tv or stopping in between between kids and family. I, I did that for 28 years. Nobody could keep up me for those 28 years.

Speaker 1: 30:38

You're a machine. It was a bit much Once I retired.

Speaker 2: 30:42

I look back and like I don't know how I did it, I once I stopped. I don't know if I could do it that. But you know again, we talked before um Working. You know, putting in the time is not the problem. Like 40 hours a week is vacation, now 40 hours a week, over seven days or my goodness, I can do anything.

Speaker 1: 31:02

But it sounds like you're channeling that energy now into running. Right, I've always ran, I've always.

Speaker 2: 31:07

I've always run 50 miles a week. I just did it at 4 30, now I can do it at 6 30, like.

Speaker 1: 31:13

That's when I ran this morning and go for a yeah, that's a difference.

Speaker 2: 31:17

Is now I get eight hour sleep. I didn't have and I'm not exaggerating this, I didn't have 30 minutes of REM sleep. That means dream sleep. For 20 years for 20 years I never had a dream. I did not remember a dream. For 20 years I never had a dream and I'm not exaggerating, ask my wife never had a dream. Once I Retired and started sleeping. I have these vivid dreams. I've never had those before.

Speaker 1: 31:41

No, I mean I had them is it.

Speaker 2: 31:43

I never drink.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Yeah, I mean, I didn't say never, but it's uh-uh. I just because when I drink, I use a lot of dreams. Yeah, when I drink, I don't get you're not getting your REM sleep. Yeah, yeah, exactly I. Yeah, I dialed it back a bit and now I'm getting very vivid, memorable dreams again.

Speaker 2: 32:01

Yeah, I get them now. Now I have to wake up and decipher what's real and what's not. Like I literally have to sit up and think, okay, what, what is true and what isn't, because the dreams are so real. But before that, I'm sure I had them, but I could, I never, nothing. I never remembered them and my latency. You know the time between Getting in bed and going to sleep Never over two minutes. It was under two minutes. I was asleep. That's how that's annoying.

Speaker 1: 32:29

That'd make me angry if you're next to me, because it takes me a while.

Speaker 2: 32:32

My wife would. Just that's the running joke. She's like I was like she'll go brush her teeth and I'll say I'll wait up for you. And she just laughed because she knows, by the time my teeth are brushed I'm out like I'm done, but that's great. That's my life. Everybody's got their own life right Like I enjoyed it there's. I have no problems with it, but, uh, hard working is something that, uh, I feel very comfortable with.

Speaker 1: 32:54

So you're gonna do something, or you're training to do something that I physically think you would probably have to push me, uh, across the line and one of your nurseries, wheelbarrels, is training for a 100 mile marathon and I mean I I was at the gym today on the, on the treadmill doing a very brisk walk, slash jog, and I did like two miles and that was at, you know, the steepest it could go and that was enough for me.

Speaker 1: 33:21

And then I could probably run you know two or three miles and probably collapse and then be you know cramps all over for the next few days. So how do you even get past the you know all right 26 mile, 26.2 mile marathon? Now I'm gonna multiply that times four. How do you even get to that level of even Fathoming it and then attempting it and training for it and not hurting yourself horribly well that?

Speaker 2: 33:48

that, um, that kind of leads us to our uncomfortable right. That's why I own uncomfortablecom, which I will forward for this show, so we can all see it Um there we go.

Speaker 2: 33:59

Yeah, it's all about understanding. You have to teach your body to be uncomfortable, right? So our body is very protection Everything it protects us. If we get tired, it puts lactic acid in our legs so we slow down. If we can't catch our breath, we pass out, so we start naturally breathing. It's made to protect your feelings. Your emotions are all to protect you. So the only way to get past that is to slowly introduce it to things, to teach it that you're gonna be okay. So that's the process of training.

Speaker 2: 34:33

Your process of training is not just straight cardiovascular health and shape that's part of it but it's teaching your mind and your body that I'm gonna hurt a little bit but please let me go on because I'll be okay. Like it's just gonna be a little pain, I'm not gonna die. So introducing that day by day, year by year, will teach your body. That's when it can get dangerous, because of the point where it won't stop you anymore. Like you will die because it doesn't stop you at any. You'll get to a point where it doesn't stop you for anything. You literally can run yourself into dangerous situations of overheating and things like that. But anyway, so that's the man in all this is Aaron Wilkin. So DSAD is Domain Shane and the Accidental Domainer His name is Aaron Wilkin. He had a blog called the Accidental Domainer and we combined them.

Speaker 2: 35:25

But, he wanted to travel. He didn't wanna write every day, he had things to do and he is an ultra marathoner. He doesn't do small little ones. He's done all the best races. He's done Leadville 100. He's done Moab 240. He did a 240 mile run this past year. He did Mount Blanc 100 miler, New Zealand.

Speaker 1: 35:49

No way. The Moab is 240 miles nonstop.

Speaker 2: 35:54

Yes, and he did it, he completed it.

Speaker 1: 35:57

And is that terrain? I'm guessing in a condition All over?

Speaker 2: 36:00

Hilly. So there's tons of elevation, so that one has. He'll correct me, but I think it's 30 or 40,000 feet of elevation gain and obviously the same coming down.

Speaker 1: 36:11

The one I wanna do is 17,000.

Speaker 2: 36:13

Pardon me.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Do you have to do like a pit stop to change your shoes halfway through or like, oh, there's a lot of pit stop.

Speaker 2: 36:21

It's four days, Of course, yeah you have to change clothes, you have to change shoes, you have to eat. I mean, yeah, you're constantly trying to stay alive. Yeah, I mean he'll tell a story of passing out in a parked car that he found because he thought he was gonna die, and then he got some rest and got back going.

Speaker 1: 36:39

I got to meet him for the first time. I got to meet him for the first time at the ITA.

Speaker 2: 36:43

One of my favorite people in the whole world. Yeah, great domain investor.

Speaker 1: 36:46

He seems like a gentleman.

Speaker 2: 36:48

He's great, we hiked. That's the thing is. He's taught me a lot about this and he always told me one day you're gonna not wanna run so fast, you should try Ultras, because Ultras are more about walking the hills and pacing yourself. It's kind of like life At some point you're not gonna be able to sprint everything and you're gonna have to take things a little slower and do things a little different. And that's kind of where I'm at. I broke three hours in the marathon two years ago. You know, six, four years in pace for a 53 year old is good, but I can't go any faster.

Speaker 2: 37:21

I can't go any faster, Like that's as fast as I'm gonna go. So what do I do? I've already done Ironman. I did Ironman. My first triathlon was an Ironman because I was like those guys can do it, I can do it. And then I did it and my wife. I came home and my wife said that's pretty good for someone that didn't train hard enough. And I was like damn, it's on. So I did another one to see if I could do better. And I did. But then I thought the same thing Like how fast can I go? I can't go much faster. So anyway, we have a place in Leadville, Colorado. That's great training. It's a home of Leadville 100.

Speaker 2: 37:57

I'm going to in the mornings, put in the hours, and then the weekends, put in the hours and then work during the day. So that's what I love about domain investing. I think all of us do right. All of us love that. We can work the hours we need. And it's really not consistent. You know what I mean. The emails aren't just flowing every five minutes forever. You can answer emails. When you answer emails, you can talk to customers when you need to. When you have a meeting, you can set those in advance. You don't have to take instant meetings, so you can plan and be flexible. Many jobs cannot do that. It can be from anywhere, so I can live here. Now I can go to North Carolina one month, Nobody knows, nobody cares. As long as behind me is a Zoom and I can have good internet connection, I can do it. So that's what I love about domain is an opportunity of a lifetime to be able to do that. So I wanna do everything but help Mrs Havasham pick out a blood good maple that died last year on.

Speaker 2: 38:54

Sunday morning I saw the first Saturday in my yard in 28 years. I'd never I'd worked every Saturday. If I didn't work it, I was out running a race or doing something with friends. It was never at home. I sat at my home or saw my daughter. Like you know, with kids, you're an Uber, you play every. I've watched every sport that a young woman could ever participate in. I traveled to see that. So if you give up your time on the weekends to go away from your business, it's for somebody else and it is. You're absolutely right, and that's it's not for me. That's how it is. So when I sat here the first retired Saturday, I looked I literally cried a little bit Like it was amazing, like a beautiful Saturday, to work in my yard. A cobbler's son has no shoes.

Speaker 1: 39:42

I'd never worked in my yard on a Saturday in decades, so- but it was kind of like the changing of the chapter in your life, right, that's the emotion kind of behind it, it's yeah, and then you know you brought up. So for the record and people listening, shane and I have known each other for a long time. I actually saw you rupture your Achilles one time playing soccer.

Speaker 2: 40:04

No, yeah, it was actually. I tore my hamstring the only time I've ever taken up running for that long. It was brutal yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:13

It was the worst thing you've ever had. Yeah, you heard his hamstring.

Speaker 1: 40:15

Yeah, and we were playing soccer at one of the at the Domain Fest in Las Vegas at some indoor place it was just a group of us decided to play a soccer game and he heard himself. And we've always been friendly through the years but we've never really done a sale together and had a lot of conversations. And then with the ICA event we talked for like a half hour or 40 minutes about running and about the business and about all kinds of things, and then we decided to have for you to come on the show. You messaged me and say, hey, can I come on? Sure, and it was funny because at the ICA event people said to me like, oh, you're doing, how did they put it?

Speaker 1: 40:56

Someone said you're doing a podcast similar to the one Shane does, and I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, oh well, his is called, or his blog is called, uncomfortable. I was like I didn't even know that and I actually didn't know. Like I didn't say, oh, I'm just gonna copy him, but like if I knew that I wouldn't have done it. And it's like we're in the same small industry but we're also. Some people are in bubbles and I've been more on the brokerage side in my life, in my business, than domain investing. And I'll be honest, like I haven't really read your blog.

Speaker 2: 41:27

very often I mean I think yeah, that's not what you do. What'd you say? It's not really what you do. It's not like you're going looking for closed out domains. That's not your thing.

Speaker 1: 41:36

No, it's not my specialty and I know Josh. He's a great guy. I think his story is great being a firefighter and a domain investor and he was telling me how to be like picking names off the list in the firehouse waiting for a fire and being a domainer and it's a really cool story that he has. And Uncomfortable for me was I had, in some people's eyes, one of the most perfect jobs in the world working as in a cool startup on an island, getting compensated a lot of money, being part of a great team and great people and going to the beach on the weekends and doing those things and I decided I needed more of a challenge and it was time to go. And when I resigned I called Frank and talked to him about it and when I hung up the phone I looked at my wife and I said what the fuck did I just do? And there was crying involved and there was emotions involved.

Speaker 1: 42:33

But I knew that it was time to go on and kind of do my own thing and spread my own wings and get out there and put myself it's corny as it is in an uncomfortable situation to make myself grow.

Speaker 1: 42:45

And I did it when I joined Unirregistry because I had my own business before that and the opportunity came and that was leaving a good paying job and a good opportunity and success to put myself again out of my comfort zone. And I think if you're gonna grow or wanna accomplish anything, you gotta do it. And if I never wanted to do that, I could still be a broker working at CEDO and there's nothing wrong with that either but I would still just be doing what they're doing when I was doing there first, or selling mortgages when I got out of college, and again, that's a great living. But I wanted more and I wanted to challenge myself more. And then this as a podcast. I do get nervous before some of the episodes and I was nervous before I launched it and I was worried about how people were gonna perceive it and if they enjoy listening to it. Or am I gonna check the views, like after we post this one, and there's two and it's yours and mine.

Speaker 1: 43:45

But then it's like you do it and you're like that wasn't so bad, let's try something else, and you keep going.

Speaker 2: 43:52

And for our kids like. But part of the thing that I always tell everybody is, in order to make these uncomfortable decisions, we always have a base of somebody that loves us, right Like I know that if I failed when I retired, it was the hardest thing I've ever done, but I know that my wife would be there for me.

Speaker 2: 44:11

I know that, my daughter, that no matter if I fail miserably or we didn't have enough money or didn't go well, that I had a base of people that love me. And I know that sounds corny, but that's true. To make, to really get better, you have to have this base of people that care about you, because you have a place to fall and that so you can go get uncomfortable, knowing that it could go horribly wrong and it could be a terrible decision or you could push, like in racing, you could push yourself too far, but you're gonna come home and you're gonna be fine Like you're gonna still have people there that are still rooting for you. And that was always a good base for me to allow me to become more uncomfortable and to make harder decisions.

Speaker 2: 44:53

And then teaching my daughter I can't tell her to do something and not do it myself. Like she's scared to death to go give a speech. I can't tell her that she has to do it. And then, at the same time, I'm not doing things like that right. So by having a kid and trying to teach them, it shows you you're telling them all these things you should be doing right that you should be. So I'm right there with you, Like those are the moments that make us better, and that's always been my mantra and that's that it's proven. Now, like I was listening to Huberman Labs, it is proven that those uncomfortable decisions that build a part of your brain that makes decision making, the decision making part of your brain grows, and it's not made when you make decisions that aren't uncomfortable, that you want to. It's only made during the hard times.

Speaker 2: 45:42

That's why David Goggins is who he is, Because he's always doing he's an animal, but it's a proven fact and it's scientifically proven that you get better by making doing things that you don't wanna do.

Speaker 1: 45:56

I want an alarm clock that's him yelling at me in the morning to get going. I think that was yeah, burn the votes.

Speaker 2: 46:02

No, it's he has been motivating Like he's not. I know he mentally is as troubled as a human being like he's got demons, there's no doubt about it.

Speaker 2: 46:11

But at the same time he's not wrong, like we are capable of way more than we think we are, and but I do think it comes down. I'm really big about building a base of friends and people that care about me. I mean, I don't mind saying that. Adam Strong said that I sometimes take things too hard and he's not wrong. But what he doesn't know is I only take it hard from the people that I care about. Right, if some random stranger says something on the internet or that doesn't bother me at all. But if somebody I care about says something, yeah it bothers me and I probably take it too hard. But that's because that base is also the base that's driven me. My friends around me that root me on, that catch me if I fall that's really really important.

Speaker 2: 46:57

People with that kind of base do great things. They think it's a loner mentality. Loners don't go real far At some point. You can only go so far by yourself. It kind of goes back to our talk before. Your brokerage can only be so good with just you. Your company can only be so good with just you. It takes this giant group of people to really do amazing things.

Speaker 2: 47:22

One person gotta do a ton of things.

Speaker 1: 47:25

Yeah and I agree and I think, first and foremost, you're absolutely right. My wife has been 100% supportive making the decision to go to Cayman. She didn't even come with me or even ever stepped foot on that island and she's like all right, I'm moving with you when you move, supporting, leaving consistent income or not knowing and giving up a business to join Frank. He could have canned me two months in and moved back and I had not, like we had nothing and then starting the business, we had a beautiful house in Cayman. Our kids were in school there, like things were going well. One of my kids was not both, but like things. We had friends, like everything was the way that people dream and I said I don't want this anymore. I packed up the whole house. We moved in with friends. She supported that. The business was failing. During COVID and the beginnings of it I was writing checks to make the company stay alive. She's supportive of that, 100%, listening to me talk about those things and then, at the same time, on the flip side, right Is, I have friends that are totally supportive of me, that are outside of the business, that I talk to on a regular basis, that are cheering for me when I tell them that good things are happening in my life and they're like oh shit, what's going on? Are you okay? And then I also have some of the best friends that are made by being in this industry, and the funniest part is that some of those people are competitors of mine, right? And one that just texted me is Alan Dunn. My cell phone is off. He just texted me and said is your phone working? Cause? Obviously he's trying to call me, right? And Alan Dunn owns the name corp. He's a broker. And then you said you know what? I want to go on the podcast, but I'm going to get into domain brokerage. We don't have to talk about it. But, like you know, we're becoming closer friends and it's like I'm fine with it. You know, I'm fine with you talking about what you're going to go and do and there's plenty of opportunity for all of us. And you know, and I also think I also think it goes with saying in any business, and what I've learned over the years is yeah, you can't do it yourself.

Speaker 1: 49:37

And when I joined Frank, he said something to me that was interesting. He said you're having a problem delegating the work and it's almost like you're Hercules on one side of the ship with one giant ore and everybody else is on the other and you're trying to pull and they're doing the same amount of work and you're doing the same amount of work as they are, and you need to give people more work and more, delegate more things to them and rely on those people to do and carry out those things. And with SOTAR-COM and my business last year, my goal was to. Since I launched this business was not just to build a brokerage but to build kind of another platform similar to a domain name sales, because I was part of that design and I had a feeling that it would vanish and I realized that I can't do it all by myself. And obviously I've hired other brokers at this point, some of them are better than me at doing brokerage because I've been running this business and managing for the last four years. I still make sales, but I'm not pumping the phone all day like they are and I'm not as sharp as I used to be.

Speaker 1: 50:46

But I realized that I needed not just help on the sales side but also on the tech side and that you can't get there on your own and, just like with the Uniregistry, frank was the face of the company, but behind Frank was 120 other people working to a common goal and it's like, yeah, and there you go. So you're right, you need. I need people to help me emotionally, I need people to help me in business. And then I also need people like the way I look at my friends. I got a friend who's like a financial planner. I've got a friend who's an accountant and it's not by design. I got a friend who's a director in like middle management at a large company.

Speaker 2: 51:31

And I've got other random friends in totally different industries but it's almost like they're my board of advisors and, depending on like the situation I might find myself and other than just talking about life like a business issue, like talking to them helps me work it out from a different perspective, your peers and your friends tend to be people that you admire, right, you don't find people that you're always having to pick up Like it's a you're gonna be times that they need your help as well, but when it comes to intelligence and ethics and all that stuff, you generally tend to hang out with people that are equals or even aspire to be, and so.

Speaker 2: 52:10

I'm in the same boat as you. I live on a university town, so my friends are all doctors, but some are medical doctors and some are PhD doctors, but they're all of that level. I mean, my best friends are almost all medical doctors, because men my age that are running and doing things and driven tend to be driven in life, right. So they tend to be in professions that take being driven and that's it's great, because they're fascinated by my stories of domains and our conferences. Right when we had our crazy conferences, I'd come home and tell them those stories and they'd be like that is amazing, because they don't get to do that kind of stuff. And then at the same time, I'll talk to the tech people and they're fascinated by plants. Like I have a houseplant, can you tell me how to help? Like they're fascinated by the patience that I have with growing flowers. So it's just been this yeah, like you said, it's like this beautiful thing.

Speaker 2: 53:04

And I think the best leaders acknowledge all the things that you've said. Right, it doesn't always, you don't always get straight there, but the best leaders it is. They are the face and they have to be a leader and they have to step forward. But leading is also creating those opportunities we had talked about this earlier creating the opportunities for those around you. Your job as a leader is to create opportunities for those that you work with, and so it's not about you. Again I say this it's like children, it's not about you, and I don't mean to say that employees are children, but you are their leader. Leaders provide for them, leaders guide them, leaders support them and leaders give them opportunity. And opportunity is all that. Anybody can ask People. Humans only want two things to stay busy and opportunity.

Speaker 1: 53:53

That's really all they want. They want to step in.

Speaker 2: 53:55

People think people are lazy. That's bullshit. Everybody wants to be busy. It may be busy in something that you don't want them to be busy in but in general they do want to be an employee loves to have things to do and organized things to do. They don't want to just say here's a book, go do something.

Speaker 1: 54:14

No, they want a little bit of guidance and they want.

Speaker 2: 54:17

So that's leadership and not everybody's meant to be a leader. I look at somebody that's not doing a good job and I just said they're just not a leader. And there's nothing wrong with that. We're not all born leaders, but COVID, for me, taught me that I was a leader. Like when COVID came and the trouble came, I just felt amazing, Like I felt I'm gonna get our company through this. I felt that it was like nothing I've ever experienced. I was so happy to have that. And in my wife I go why am I so excited about COVID? She's like this is a chance for you to be a leader. This is a chance for you to do things and get people through this, and that's leaders love those kinds of opportunities. Here's the downside when it was all over, you just come down Like once I had a great COVID because our sales were double. You know, everybody was gardening, Everybody was doing everything that I had to offer they wanted. But when it was over.

Speaker 2: 55:10

It's kinda the band stopped playing, Then we're back to normal, Then we're everything and it's just not as exciting. So I struggled almost emotionally, which is you can't tell anybody that Cause everybody else was like I finally get to fucking go out Sorry my language, but I finally get to go eat and I get to my business was I was dying, I was I, financially, was getting killed and I'm the opposite. I was like I was making so much money. I'm actually coming down from that. So it was a very difficult time. But to roll that back into what you said yeah, I mean that's. You have to learn to be a leader, you have to learn to be a manager. You have to. It's just part of growing up and becoming better at what you do is. Frank wasn't wrong, he you were. You were probably doing exactly what he said. I've done the same thing. My father told me that over and over, but I don't always listen to him because he was my father. It's hard to have your father as your boss. That's very difficult situation.

Speaker 1: 56:06

Yeah, I agree, you know 100 percent, so. So let's talk about what your future plans are, and getting yourself a little more uncomfortable is you're going to be launching your own domain brokerage in the very near future. What are you going to call it?

Speaker 2: 56:20

Well, I don't know what I, you know I. I don't know, I know here let's put it this way I know I want to do domain brokerage. I know, um, I do enjoy outbound sales like I. It's almost I hate to put it this way, but it's almost like a game. You have this, you know it's nobody. Nobody's looking for your email, right, you have a domain name and the people that you're trying to reach aren't Looking for your domain at that time, like you're trying to Quote, convince them, or you're trying to reach out people that it could work out with well and I think that's exciting, like I.

Speaker 2: 56:55

I do like it's a, it's a talent, it. I wasn't very good at it, I'm probably still not very good at it, but I do like that prospect of matching Great companies with domains that can multiply the efforts that they have and that's that's a tough job. That's a tough job and it can't be spammy. Spam is a huge problem, but essentially that outbound is. I really, I really enjoy that part of it and I love the negotiation part. I love and I said this to drew on on domain sherpa quite often and I love selling expensive domain names, but I love the businesses that can that are able to afford them and how they're going to utilize them, like that's what I think. That's. I love that story. I love that. That's what at the podcast that I was doing when I was doing uncomfortable it was talking to people that were building businesses because I want to know how you can afford a million dollar domain. What have you done and what have you created and what are your, what are your skill sets and what are your thought process of being able to form a company that can afford a million dollar domain. And once you've bought that domain, how are you going to make that million dollars payoff? Because it's not just going to be a little thing. You stick at the top of your website, right, it's got. It's more to it than that. So I love that conversation and I want to have more of those conversations.

Speaker 2: 58:14

I want to talk to serial entrepreneurs that come back and say, shane, that worked out great, I'm looking for something in the Skateboard. You know, I want I want that to happen, because I know serial entrepreneurs, once they've figured out domain names, they're addicted. They want to come back and do more things with domain names because they know the effect it has. So that's my future. That's what I want to build my own portfolio up and continue to grow and add more domains. Now that can spend a little more time hunting Um, I'd like to do that.

Speaker 2: 58:45

And then I want to be in the domain business, plain and simple, whatever that entails. I want to be in that business. I want to. That's what I want to do for a living is I want to buy and sell domain names, utilize domain names, everything about that. I want to be part of it. So that's kind of that's kind of my future. What that holds, I'm not quite sure. Um, you know, I've tried out some things. Some have worked, some haven't, and I'll just keep building on that. But I know that if I do work, I do want to work with a team and I want to work with a team that is a team just like we talked about before. Um, if I'm not the leader I want, I want the leader to be someone that makes everybody better, right, that's that's what we're looking for. I'm too old To have anything but right. I'm too old to do anything but something I really love and enjoy and that doesn't mean every second, that doesn't mean every minute's going to be enjoyable.

Speaker 2: 59:38

Uncomfortable, as we said, has to be part of it. Yeah, um, but in general I'm 50, going to be 55 years old, I want to go out in these last 20 years and have a hell of a time, make some money, do great things with great people. That's plain and simple. If I was going to put it in a nutshell, what's your emu?

Speaker 1: 59:59

planning on using? Pardon me, what's the RM are you planning on using?

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

I think I think pretty much everybody does the same thing, right, I think everybody pretty much uses like an Apollo based For emails. They use, uh, sales linkedin, sales navigator is kind of a contact point and a searching point. And then, as far as the notes, everybody uses a little bit of different um, you know how they keep their notes in there, um, but yeah, I think I think everybody uses the same thing. I know everybody likes to pretend that they have something special, um, but everybody pretty much uses the same two or three people to find a source, contacts, uh, and then some people I'm a big builder of when I say proprietary tools, having tech build stuff that they pretty much uses the information we get from everybody else and feeds it into a way that we can use it where we're comfortable, right, like that's what. That's what we do.

Speaker 1: 1:00:59

Yeah, and I mean we use um as a company. We do use Apollo. We find the um being able to find contacts and, if you want to put them into like an email campaign, apollo is good for that. It's it's a confusing website with so many bells and whistles and things. It's it's like it's just so much going on on and it's it's sometimes hard to navigate. But as a crm, we use um like closecom, because we like that one, because you can create as many custom fields as you want. You can create and track all of the, the leads that you're working on, so you could export the leads from Apollo in there or you could take, you know, opportunities out of sales navigator and then it integrates with.

Speaker 2: 1:01:38

Zappier.

Speaker 1: 1:01:40

And then you know what? Do you know what zappier is? I don't think.

Speaker 2: 1:01:43

I've seen it, but I've never used it. No, I'm not familiar with it.

Speaker 1: 1:01:47

So with zappier you can um it. So instead of you paying someone for apis, you go on zappier and you can search, like whatever services you need, and zappier connects to close and then you can have it. Do you know different things?

Speaker 2: 1:02:01

so, like one of the things like it's like a plug-in for apis, it's like a plug-in, yeah, and so like close has is is on zappier and then, like, one of the products we use is like ip stack.

Speaker 1: 1:02:14

So then when someone inquires to our website on a lead they inquire, we got the ip address, then zappier hits ip stack and then it tells us where the person's located and puts it in the In the lead, in the crl. That, or, if you want, like different data sets. Or if somebody unsubscribes from an email, it updates, it removes the email address, like, and it does all different things. So, as a, as a, when I started the business where I was used to this robust system of uniregistry domain himself that we built over seven years, I had nothing.

Speaker 1: 1:02:49

Yeah right, and so I used. You knew what you wanted to do.

Speaker 2: 1:02:52

You just didn't know how to get there.

Speaker 1: 1:02:55

Well, I have. I don't know how to write a line of code, no, but you know what?

Speaker 2: 1:02:58

you wanted it to do, you just had no way. Yeah, creating no way.

Speaker 1: 1:03:02

But I also didn't have any time Because I needed to get something going and get it going fast, because I needed to start getting going with the business. So then zappier allowed me To do kind of like backyard mechanic work, you know, to make my system, paint my numbers in your short term. And, and as you get bigger, you start to replace zappier in different areas. Because you can get expensive, because you buy credits every month, right. But like if I were to start another domain brokerage or any sales platform and I didn't want to spend a lot in development, I would use clothes, set up my fields and then use zappier to help enrich that's the word they use enrich the data in some way, and then you can. You can do different. You know fun stuff with it.

Speaker 1: 1:03:47

Um, yeah, sales navigator is not bad. I find. Um, I find what the unfortunate thing these days with linkedin is a lot of people are automating their communications in linkedin and now a lot of the experience on linkedin for me is I just get a lot of trash People messaging me constantly about Stuff and you're like, I'm not. I try to respond to everybody and check it and you're right, I'm not interested, and they just keep writing to you like, and you know it's automated and it's just like dude, like, please, like, respect, you know, and what they're doing is they're ruining linkedin because Other people that we want to contact Um are going to stop responding To everybody. Right, it's not going to be a useful tool.

Speaker 2: 1:04:30

Yeah, you get you just get thrown in the mass spam, so you look just like spam yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04:36

Yeah, just trash, and then we're just not worth it. Right, and and you know the, the more that time goes on, when you're trying to do an Acquisition for somebody, you know the who is has been really privatized over the last you know, eight or ten years. So the who is history is starting to fade out. It's not as accurate as it used to be, but if you do find that nugget and you figure out that this is the owner, possible owner, of the domain name on linkedin and you find them, you know the odds of them answering. It seems to be getting a little less as time's going on and I I have a sense that when I started using linkedin back in 2002, if I messaged you on linkedin, I would usually I think it was like a 90 response rate of people like how are you? You know like there was always, but now I feel like it's starting.

Speaker 1: 1:05:23

You know it's, it's going down and and I don't know if linkedin's doing enough to block Automated folks and people from areas of, like I don't know, certain types.

Speaker 2: 1:05:34

I'm starting sequences in linkedin like that's not something that.

Speaker 1: 1:05:38

I.

Speaker 2: 1:05:38

I, I didn't use linkedin Because I didn't. In the nursery business my stuff was local and regional. I just didn't need those kind of contacts like it wasn't something that I needed. Um, that's my awards are like my 1976 basketball awards when I was seven, like Nobody cares Um, but I'm starting to get sequences like, hey, would you like a virtual cup of coffee? And then I go and then another one comes. So that automation. That never happened like that.

Speaker 1: 1:06:07

Yeah, so that's what I'm talking about, just happening more and more and more, and we've actually tried it as a business and I was like this is ridiculous, let's just stop.

Speaker 2: 1:06:14

you know, like I don't yeah, I know nobody wants that. I mean that the honest truth about all email Is it spam, right, like outbound in our industry is Officially spam. Nobody asked for the email of them you trying to sell a domain. So you have to remember that when you're reaching out to people, whether it's linkedin or email, officially, by definition us contacting you is spam. Now we can say, hey, we're, it's a business thing, but it was Unwanted. They didn't ask for us to contact us, they had no interest going in.

Speaker 2: 1:06:45

So you kind of have to keep that in mind and be professional and under you know when you approach someone that it's an earnest and and no is as good an answer as yes, right, so at least they respond. And but I always in my linkedin I put my personal details. There's a picture of my family, my dog, so that if you get something for me, I'm hoping they at least look at me. Go. This seems like a normal person. Like seems like I could call this guy any day and get him on the phone. Like this is not a normal looking guy.

Speaker 2: 1:07:12

That you would expect. So I try and really personalize and make it make everybody feel, whether they've gotten an email from me or Any kind of contact, that this guy's only reaching me because he has something that he thinks I could use. So I'll give him the time. So that's the hopes, like that's a goal. I'm new to this. I have tons to learn. I am not a professional at domain brokerage, but I feel like I'm a professional when it comes to understanding businesses and into like understanding the value. So I'll get better at what I do. One thing I do think that's catching everybody off guard Is is email. We again we talked about we had a nice little discussion before but Email google's not messing around with spam anymore. Like everything has to be perfect or they're not letting things through. Like email is getting knocked hard. Everything has to match up and it's good from a domain owner. Nobody's gonna spoof you. Right now. If you spoof it, it's not getting through, but if you spam you, buzzwords are gone, like all those words that people are using writers done.

Speaker 2: 1:08:13

You can't write like that anymore. It won't make it through spam. So you got to. You got to cut to the point or the chase right now. You got to. You got to keep it pretty clean on how you write.

Speaker 1: 1:08:23

Yeah and I mean you're right. But what's amazing is if I opened up my email right now, there's going to be in my other folder or promotions folder, a ton of emails, right, and I get probably 50 or 60 these a day. And then I also get constantly are the fake docu signs and the fake. The fake emails from my input, from my my employees, saying I want to update my bank Details for payroll. I get those all the time.

Speaker 1: 1:08:51

Yeah, I mean it's a lot of fraud that's happening, you know, and, and also gets through.

Speaker 2: 1:08:57

They're they're gonna be one step ahead of everything. Like that's the thing is. You know, when I look at the things it get through, the first thing I look through is I look at the email to see how it got through. Like what did they do? What can I use from those guys That'll help me get through? Like that's what I? That's the first thing that I go. Why are he getting through? And I can't get a nice email through? So I try and look and see what they did to make it pass all the spam tests that I have going on. So in some cases I kind of Like getting some of them so I can learn from what are they doing.

Speaker 1: 1:09:31

Um, yeah, and I was. I've heard from somebody that I've heard that one of the moves that someone who's a who's like a scammer Would buy a name an auction. That was a developed site and that site had a good reputation of sending emails to their customers and so they'll pound that until it gets blocked and then it closes and they trash that name and buy another. Buy a bunch and just 100 by good reputation domains.

Speaker 2: 1:09:55

Yeah, that's, it is domain reputation and that's why it's difficult to start a new company with a new domain. You have to warm up the email like you've got to give it months and months and months of warm up oh yeah, that's why they have warm up services. I mean, that's why they do it? Because in order to get an email in a domain, it has to show activity and you can't start it off by emailing customers.

Speaker 1: 1:10:19

Yeah, but I also think you know what I think is, when your email gets through, then the odds of them responding and then them responding, and then at meeting, like whatever their plans are, you have no idea what's going on on the other side and then them giving you the opportunity for a phone call, or them not giving you the opportunity for a phone call and just saying how much you know and then not responding, and or you know saying they're not interested. Um, I mean, I think it's. It's really like you're just dragging. You know you're dragging your net around the ocean and I also found that we've been in a situation I've personally been in a situation and others in my company have been in a situation where some of these massive companies say Either the domain isn't for sale or they're not interested in buying it, and we've gotten the domain by going to somebody else and we've sold the domain to somebody else in the company where other times We've continued to pursue it and then got an email back from the lawyer saying you better stop so.

Speaker 1: 1:11:23

You know, it's like it's hard from our point of view too, because sometimes there's mixed signals, you know, and then I also think Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 1:11:31

Well, I was gonna say I've had domains where I'll I'll email it. I'll email and say it's not for sale and then I'll get an email from a totally different person that says hey, I heard from so and so that you were looking at the domain. What were you thinking of offering? I'm thinking, hold on, are two people in the company, like somebody's got to make this decision? And then when I ask the price, it's Multiple, six figures. And then another domain or two months later buys it for a tenth of that from that company. Like yeah like.

Speaker 2: 1:12:06

It's like a big company. Everybody you know who's got who's making that call to sell that domain. It's it's hard getting the right person that can actually Make the official call.

Speaker 1: 1:12:17

Yeah, timing is sometimes the essence of life, right? And um, yeah, you know, one of the one of the things that I find is is that, you know, we offer our services and we've emailed companies about buying domains and and it's, you know, radio silence, no response, no response, no response. And I've had it where we're saying, hey, you should buy this name, it would be a great fit for your company, right? Radio silence, call in, nobody answers, nobody gets back to us. We give up after a period of time and I've been referred to somebody at that same company who says they want to buy this name.

Speaker 1: 1:12:52

Would you like to represent us to go and acquire it? And I know that I've. We've emailed them a bunch of times, we've called them a bunch of times and they're acting like this is a new thing and they've never considered buying this and it's just. It's just weird how the timing and sometimes they just, for some reason, they didn't acknowledge your emails, even though we're spending A lot of time and energy making sure our deliverability rates are good and things like that.

Speaker 2: 1:13:17

So you know it's just sometimes luck, luck at the draw is is that's how it works, right, you know, even. You know, even when you have a domain or you buy a domain and then all of a sudden, you sold it and the person that that sold it because it hadn't had an offer in five years, then all of a sudden, you buy the name and sell it and they're like and I, that's just how life is, like you, just there's no there's nothing you can do about that stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:13:41

You have to do what you can control and keep working after it. And but you know, in our industry we only get paid when we sell domains or buy domains or take actions Like that's the only thing. All the rest of the work doesn't get paid. Like you're not getting a salary. There's not, it's it's commission and you have to earn it and you're, I'm hoping, and it and I found that it all evens out right, you're going to get those sales that you barely did any work and it falls into your lap, and then there's going to be other ones where you work your ass off and really nothing comes of it. So you just have to hope that overall, when it's all said and done, that it's worth your time and and it usually is right, like most of us have done very well over the years Um, but, but in any individual case, if you try and say that it happened as of x or y, hmm, maybe, maybe it did sometimes it's just.

Speaker 2: 1:14:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:14:29

I mean, I think that I think the x and y is that you create a process and a formula and you stick with it, and you consistently stick with it and work hard at it every day, and that there will be some level of consistency. But you got to realize you get to kiss a lot of frogs, um, before one turns into, you know, a sale, and you're right, some of the sales don't require as much effort, um, and others, you know, blow up and and you've worked harder on that and have been had better sales calls than you ever have, and and for whatever reason, something changes that is out of your control. You know we sell names that some of the sales people started working on two years ago, three years ago, that that worked for me right now, you know, and or four years ago, and that they are now. The company is now in a position to buy it. Or you know they said what's the price? Okay, that's good, but we got to talk about it. They keep delaying, delaying, delaying, and then they call and say, okay, I want to buy this. Other situations the deals blow up or they don't have the money to buy, or whatever happens, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:15:31

And then I just had a gentleman call me from a name that I sold, I think, like five or six years ago. That said hey, jeff, how you been? I'm like great, how are you Nice, talk to you. He's like oh, I moved to a new opportunity and we want to buy this. Can you help us? Oh, absolutely. You know what are your feelings, what do you think it's going to cost? And I quickly give him like a rundown as to what I think it might cost and who I think the owner is and what I think is happening with it and why I think the name is worth what it's worth. And he's like okay, you know, send me an agreement, let's get cooking.

Speaker 1: 1:15:59

And I did. And so you know it's a weird business. You know, and I think a lot of it for me is a lot is referrals now from for me personally and for a lot of the sales people as well that you know you can live off of those and do well. But then, obviously, new business comes in. We pay a lot of money in google ads and have sellers that point their names of those too. That kind of create that. You know that consistency. But there's also again that process and um, that you got to stick with in sales, you know, and yeah, you've been doing a long time.

Speaker 2: 1:16:35

It takes. Nobody wants to hear that something takes years and years to be successful, but that's the reality, and especially in domain investing you just it takes a long time, um, to build a base and that referral you got Was based on years of experience and years of relationships and those will multiply. For you know you, just you've you've gotten a point where they keep calling you or they tell a friend hey, jeff is the one who got it, why don't you give him a call? And that just takes a long time to do that. It's it's in the beginning. For a new person like myself, it's pretty hungry. Like you, you go, you could go a year without having much income because you just don't have a lot of domains under management. You get, you know it's. It's hard. It's a hard go in the beginning, but once you get going, then you get going and you're fine.

Speaker 1: 1:17:24

I think you, I think you Going out there and and launching your own brokerage, though I think you know the hardest part, and that's the domain industry. Yeah already right and understanding Valuation, being able to explain it to people. Being able to explain the escrow process we know, explain transfers. Being able to overcome objections about domains aren't useful anymore. Being able to back them up with legitimate stories.

Speaker 1: 1:17:49

You know when I first launched this business, my biggest problem was when I told a story about a success I had, I always had to talk about another company. You know what I mean. I couldn't talk about my own because I didn't sell shit yet, right? But you know you as yourself, as a lone wolf doing it, you can and, being someone who's been a writer in the industry for years and being a contributor to it, what you say has weight and and easily can be backed up. Right, and I think you already have that.

Speaker 1: 1:18:21

And when I used to hire Brand new salespeople, I would say, if you immerse yourself in the material and you use all of the resources we give you and learn from those around you, in six months Um, in six months you can, you be good enough to put yourself in situations that you'll probably get yourself in some trouble and put yourself in some weirds, like it makes some big mistakes, which is great, and then in 12 months you'll be relatively dangerous.

Speaker 1: 1:18:49

You know, and that's when you're really going to start to have like a pipeline that's building and potential repeat customers, and then also People that you spoke to this month month one that are finally come back with that funding or they're going to come back with a new offer. Or they're going to call you and say can you help me acquire something else? And that's going to multiply in snowball and snowball and snowball and then over the years, some of this snowball you don't even realize you have anymore, because these are people that might have vanished from your life years ago. Or it's a friend who calls you and says I told so and so About you. He needs you and now you're in with them. You know, and I think I think you'll do fine. You know and getting going, and and it really doesn't take much For you to get a full Day's work out of it, especially you can supplement with your own inventory of great names when you're yeah, that's a great thing, is I?

Speaker 2: 1:19:44

I? It's funny as much as I talk I generally don't share any of my sales or my purchases. I kind of. But I mean, like you know, I'm doing fine, like I'll, I'll make over a quarter million dollars in profit in 2024 is my goal in my own inventory of profit now I try and rule that by domains. But I can live on that like I'm fine, like I hope so.

Speaker 1: 1:20:08

That's not. That's not gonna be a problem.

Speaker 2: 1:20:11

I think you know buying and selling. I do say this you know, taking a percentage of a domain and selling it Is great, but what's really great is buying and selling your own domain, where you get to keep it all like. That's really nice, especially when you have six figure domains and and you know I I do enjoy that part too. It's and it you know it's. It's good negotiating your own when you, when you have to turn to the owner and all you have to do is talk to yourself Whether the owner is gonna get very emotional for you as well when it becomes.

Speaker 1: 1:20:39

Yeah, but I'm not. I'm in love with nothing. That's the thing is. I wouldn't sell my daughter or my wife.

Speaker 2: 1:20:46

But other than that, like I don't, I've never worn a jersey Of a player in my life I would never put another. Yeah, but just that's true.

Speaker 1: 1:20:55

Now I will say Michael Jordan. No, that's true, that's true, michael Jordan.

Speaker 2: 1:21:00

No, that's true, that's a very ironic. Michael Jordan has been like. When I was in, I lived in North Carolina. Michael Jordan went to North Carolina. We had them move away.

Speaker 2: 1:21:10

I was so disappointed. I moved to Chicago. Michael Jordan gets drafted, so I watched all through grade school or junior high Michael Jordan. Then I moved to Chicago and I go to all his games in 86, 87, 88, 89. I live all the way through the 90s. I go to Alabama. What does it do? He becomes a Birmingham baron and goes to play baseball right down the road from me.

Speaker 1: 1:21:33

So I will say that oh, yeah, absolutely. So I will say this man.

Speaker 2: 1:21:39

I have seen Michael Jordan More than any human other than my family. I mean, I've seen him thousands of times, so I will take all that back. You're right, there is one person that like it's just like I grew up with him, like I just he's always been there. No matter where I've lived, michael Jordan has been there. But other than that, like I'm I wouldn't say I'd sell my, my dog, but you know what I mean Like I mind domain name I'm not in love with any of that.

Speaker 2: 1:22:07

They are domain names. I'll sell it. I'll sell anything. I sell my car, no problem. If a guy comes on the street and gives me enough for my Bronco, I'll sell it.

Speaker 1: 1:22:15

You got a good man, it's just, I think, in its industry, though, I find that, um, there's not many people that are that can do both be great at domain investing and and a good domain broker for themselves. Right, there's usually people are really good at, you know building a nice, I think, drew.

Speaker 2: 1:22:34

You know I'm good friends with drew. I really think the world of drew and and we all we all have different personalities but I love it like um. I mean, he's just a kind of guy. I have a lot of friends that are just like him, that are aggressive and go-getters, but he's done a good job of having his own portfolio and other people's names. And he is, I agree, um, and he's in the same boat. As I said before, like you know, it's, it's. I love selling other people's names. I love premium assets or premium assets, I don't care if they're mine or yours, but I'd rather they be mine, I'd rather they be mine.

Speaker 2: 1:23:11

So yeah, so you know he's very realistic and so I appreciate that and so it is kind of my business model is you have to have, you have to respect your clients like you have to respect their names, and you can't push your names in front of them. You have to, you have to objectively somehow figure out what's best for your client and you can't Say my name is best. It may be, but fortunately, if your quality is good enough, you have, you're not, you're not putting junk in front of them, right, like if I put a great four letter or something and I'm not gonna have anything, but if you have some two letters and one word, it's like that's a little different. He has good stuff to.

Speaker 1: 1:23:50

I think the thing is is that if I had this happen when we were buying our house, yeah we had a great realtor, a nice woman.

Speaker 1: 1:23:59

Uh, we were looking at my house in Florida. She goes I have an opportunity for you, but I need to tell you up front there's a catch. And I was like okay, let's go. You know, does it come with a timeshare I got to buy? Or like what's the? You know what's this ridiculous catch? She goes the owner of the house is a good friend of mine and she's my neighbor and I'm like so what? And she's like well, you're gonna live next to me and it's a good friend of mine. So you know, I'm letting you know ahead of time that there is a relationship between myself and the owner of this house and the house was required to by law.

Speaker 1: 1:24:34

But she disclosed it and I feel that, even though we're not required by law that if there was a name that I felt Someone who hired me To help them find a name was one of mine that I thought they could benefit from, I would say I don't usually do this but, based on what you said, this is a domain that I own, or my company owns, or my wife owns, and I think it fits, and this is the price that I want for it. If you don't like it, I'm never going to talk about it again.

Speaker 1: 1:25:06

Yeah that's it right, and as long as you do that, I think it's fine. Yeah, but if you're, I just wouldn't put it. Five more, they don't know about geez, you know, but I think on homes.

Speaker 2: 1:25:17

I've never understood how they can represent the buy and the sell side like it's. That's tough, like when, when a real estate agent has a home and they're they're representing the seller and the buyer, there's a huge conflict of interest in getting to the best price.

Speaker 1: 1:25:37

I think the thing is a lot of realtors, a lot of realtors I've met In the last few years. There's some great realtors that I've met and have worked with, but in other cases Some are just saying, okay, what do you want to offer? And they just put it on the offer sheet and just email it like there isn't the yeah, the negotiating going on as much as it used to be and, like you know, I think, yeah, the market has been so hot that there's no like if you really wanted to put the screws to somebody, you can't, because then they just haven't.

Speaker 1: 1:26:08

Another five families come in and buy the house and you're out so but like around here, you can still negotiate and it's hard.

Speaker 2: 1:26:16

My realtor can't give me the. They can't even tell me like if I want to offer they a normal realtor, if it's just the buy side, they would say I think you know, I think we could go in and do this, but they can't do that because they know what the other side is. So they can't really say anything. They really get.

Speaker 1: 1:26:33

That's when they're useless. There's no point in having.

Speaker 2: 1:26:36

So if I have yeah, if I have somebody on the sell side, I get a lawyer for the buy side. That's what I do yeah it.

Speaker 2: 1:26:43

I just I can't have it as the same side and they want both sides because they commission on both. But so I found that that's a that's a conflict of interest, because I can't. They can't help me at all. On the buy side they can show me houses, but we have Zillow. We have so many tools now I don't need to drive around with Maggie in her four door and have her. It doesn't have to happen like. I can virtually look at most of the houses and we'll go do a walkthrough After I've chosen through. Before I had to go through 10 houses. I don't have to go through 10. Maggie can just show me the last house that I I'm interested in.

Speaker 1: 1:27:16

But yeah, it is interesting and these are all.

Speaker 2: 1:27:19

These are all the things that that we're getting better at and in the ethical choices. That's all part of what we do right and some are better at it than others. But you know there's people that I, you know respect, you know yourself, everybody. We don't always get to all talk, but we all know who each other are, we all been. If you've been doing it this long, you have to be doing something right. Right like people they've been doing it for decades can't be completely Corrupt and immoral.

Speaker 1: 1:27:48

There's they tend to yeah, I agree, I think. No, I agree, and I and I've done co brokerage deals with drew. Drew actually grew up about 40 minutes from where I grew up and I know A couple of his friends that he grew up with, like in similar circles to people, so that's kind of strange that you know. I know a guy that used to be in the fish business with drew, so you know him and I, him and I have had some calls, but we're negotiating with each other and in teasing each other and making fun of each other and having some laughs, and I like him a lot. I think he's a great guy, I think he's an extremely talented salesperson and, you're right, he's one of those people that can be the investor and can be the broker.

Speaker 1: 1:28:31

Me, on the other hand, I've sat and I've read lists like yours and I'm bored to tears and I can't stand sitting there and doing it every morning and sitting in an auction and making those bids every day and then waiting for them to end or hemming and hawing. Or should I make another bid? And if I were to go and become serious about it, I would probably automate it a bit more, where I would put in the most the highest bid, and if I win, I win, if I don't, I don't, and just you'll use an API all the all day.

Speaker 2: 1:28:57

That hike that we took in Vegas. You know there was a hike during the conference and I'm walking with Mike Ambrose, who is one of the founders of Dot XYZ him and Daniel Nagari and Mike is is generally just one hike. I can see how nice he is. You know I'm with Aaron Wilkin, mike Ambrose and Stephen Kennedy Literally three of the nicest guys in all the industry.

Speaker 1: 1:29:16

They're all three great guys. They're all brilliant.

Speaker 2: 1:29:18

They're all so smart Like I was an honor to walk and hike for four hours, and I can't think of a better business meeting than four hours up a mountain, right Like you just talking, looking ahead, you don't have to worry about eye contact, like I don't always make great eye contact and so this is a perfect situation where I need to watch my feet anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:29:35

So, talking to those guys, and I will say there's something about having Stephen Kennedy sell six names on the four hour hike Like you can hear his email pring selling and Mike is 11. You know Mike has half a million or more names and Stephen has I don't know 100,000 or something, but but there is something about cash flow of having those guys sell six names during that process that you're like man, I would love to have that. But I also know how hard they worked and how, like Stephen started with one or two names and built that all over since I started. He was in high school when I started. So I respect the hell out of all those guys because I know they didn't all start with that. They all started with nothing and built that through rolling it and investing and learning their skill set, and I appreciate that model too.

Speaker 2: 1:30:26

So I that's why, when you ask me what I want to do, I appreciate all the models of making money in domain investing and I'll probably explore all of them as part of what I do. I just want to sell domain names. That's what it comes down to mine yours, whatever it is. I love domain names, I love the business, but I also like crypto and blockchain, like I understand that that part of technology too. That technology is very important and there's a lot of opportunity there, so I incorporate that. I also, you know, understand the value, like you said, of the tools, and you know, at DSAD we look like a simple, boring website, but Travis on the back end has so many tools and links and he's built all these things, custom coding, so that we can do things quicker and faster. That's a very important part of all we do. Every domain investor who's as anything, has APIs and tools built out for them to make their day more managed, quicker and more efficient, and that's.

Speaker 1: 1:31:27

Well, yeah, I can do it all manually. You lose your mind day after day after day, and by the time it's time to evaluate the names. You're already tired and in over, you know. And then there's also those that have the bots, that are just pretty much doing all the bidding as well, right? So yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:31:42

Well, and that's what the API is. You go ahead and put all your information up ahead of time and your bot slowly puts it to bed. So you know it's. That's what APIs are all about. You should, like, if you're in the domain business, you really have to have a bot doing your work.

Speaker 2: 1:31:57

We joke about Yanni's bot, like, always being honest, but we all know I can tell the huge domain's bot, I can tell Steven's bot, I can tell everybody's bot Like, and I also know like what the ranges are. Like, the average, the average acquisition for me is $380. Like, I know that's what it is and then I talk to other people and that's about it. By the time you do your close outs and then your larger price names, when you average it, I can tell the people listening to this if you participate daily on the expired auctions and you get all kinds of names, you're going to average $380 to $420 a domain if you're at all ranges. So that's what you expect If you're going to put a thousand names. You want to add a thousand names this year. Expect to spend $400,000 if you're going to be in that game.

Speaker 1: 1:32:47

So I mean that's not a sign. Yeah, and that's a big investment and that's a lot of choices, you know, and then you get to carry it. I'm going to hand register.

Speaker 2: 1:32:54

If you're going to hand register, you're not going to have as good a quality of names. You have to be a mix of. You know, certain type of names that sell and that's that is all over the board. And they're more expensive every day, right, like names that were for $50 go for $500. It's just, it's a different ballgame. I mean, I paid about Winterline, w-i-n-t-e-r-l-i-n-e. That name would have cost me a couple hundred dollars. Just, it's a cool brand. It was about it was a thousand dollars. It cost me a thousand dollars to add Winterline. I just picked it up at Namejet. So you know, those are the. What do you?

Speaker 1: 1:33:32

like about Winter? What do you like about Winterline so much?

Speaker 2: 1:33:34

Winterline is just a good. I like to buy names that are too known, easy to spell, words that make a good brand. It's a good, brandable type name. It'll sell for $8,900 or something and it's it's and it exudes like outdoors and clothing and it could be technology. Those are the just the kind of names that I like to add, those kind of brands. Now am I going to reach out and outbound that to somebody? No, that's going to be a decision where somebody's coming up with a, with a naming to do that. There's no companies name that Like. I'm not going on the crunch base and finding Winterline. That's what we all do when we're looking for it. We look for existing, but if you go and there's a crunch based list of 30 people that have the name and a dot com, you're not spending a thousand dollars to get that name. It's not going to be a thousand dollars to name.

Speaker 2: 1:34:28

So it's all relative when it comes down to it. So, and then you have people like Ike, who've been doing things like that for, or Josh sorry, josh Eisenhower that we talked about. You know he's up to whatever 10 or 15,000 names. When he was buying those, when they were $100 and $50, and now he's killing it. You know now he's selling lots of those names. So it's all relative. You can still make a lot of money entering it. It just costs more money to enter. So that's the thing.

Speaker 1: 1:34:57

Yeah, and I know another investor that sold his portfolio to GoDaddy. I'll keep his name confidential but he said the majority of his portfolio he bought in GoDaddy closeouts and he said it was funny to sell a lot of it back to GoDaddy and a good laugh about that. You know they could have kept them all for themselves.

Speaker 2: 1:35:15

It's an appreciating asset right. That's what it is. Yeah, Domains are an appreciating asset and so far we have proven that 100%, that dot coms that are solid quote however you determine that have been appreciating and definitely in the auction. There's no doubt about that.

Speaker 1: 1:35:33

Absolutely, absolutely, all right. Well, how can people get ahold of you? I know they can go to dsadcom, but how else can they get ahold of you?

Speaker 2: 1:35:41

if they have any questions, I just have an easy. I have domains. Well, twitter is a good one. I just have my name. It's at ShaneCultura, I have pretty present there and then you're welcome to email me. I always I get plenty of email domain Shane at Gmail. I keep it in a nice easy Gmail. For all that, I opened up my DMs on Twitter. I don't know if I should have or not, but I got 100 DMs yesterday just people asking about names.

Speaker 2: 1:36:09

And I will say this a person asked me about a name that he had and I said it's not a good name, it's a matter of fact, it's a trademarked name. And I said you just can't have trademarks. And he said well, what about this? And it had an offer from GoDaddy for $1,000. And I go oh well, I would definitely not counter too much. You're playing with fire, it's a trademark, I highly don't recommend it. He said, well, okay, let's pretend it's not a trademark, what would you do? And I'm like well, I'm that quality, I'd probably come back at 2,500. He's like let me think about it, I'm not exaggerating.

Speaker 2: 1:36:45

30 seconds later he goes. I just got this email. It's 10 minutes after. They're offering $4,000. I'm like how, what's the span? He goes 10 minutes and I said this is trademarked. But it is a big trademark. So I said, all right, this is fire. Like I would say just take it normally. This is not how domains work. You shouldn't do it at all. But just put $10,000 in and just go and three seconds later, taken, we accepted it's more than we want to pay $10,000. So in the course of like eight minute DM that I never would have owned for a name that I thought was horrible and unethical when it comes to squatting, he sold for $10,000.

Speaker 1: 1:37:26

And I'll bet you, if you track that name, I'll bet you in the next week or so, you're going to see a marketing campaign with that on it somewhere, or there's going to be something on it. This one is so bad.

Speaker 2: 1:37:37

I cannot imagine. I'll tell you after the show. There's no way. It's a protection name, there's no doubt about it. Oh yeah, yeah, but there's no way. There's no way, there's some timing like that.

Speaker 1: 1:37:48

They know they could. They know they could file and win right. Yeah, they could have just sent the cease and desist and probably could have gotten the name, but I think them getting it quickly was more important than getting it the other way. The you know I always felt, and talking to John Berryhill, that like between three and five grand is the magic number because that's what it costs to file.

Speaker 1: 1:38:08

But, there's no, it's 100% chance of a win if you sell it to them for three or five grand, right and the end, and they don't have to wait two months to get the name and it's just done.

Speaker 2: 1:38:19

It's just easier for them yet.

Speaker 1: 1:38:22

But yeah, so making that out makes sense.

Speaker 2: 1:38:24

It's not. You know, I told him he goes. Oh, I should do this for a lot of names. I go don't take this money and enjoy the luck of the draw, but this is not a business model.

Speaker 1: 1:38:34

Take the money if you want to no, it's not a business model.

Speaker 2: 1:38:37

Yeah, so but the DM.

Speaker 1: 1:38:38

It did make it more interesting.

Speaker 2: 1:38:40

Pardon me.

Speaker 1: 1:38:41

Is he in the United?

Speaker 2: 1:38:42

States. I don't know, he didn't have a U or a Z instead of an S kind of thing, so I didn't. I don't know because it was during the day, but I do, yeah, yeah, and his English was fine, so I'm not quite sure, but the DMs did get. They did get a little overwhelming, but I do like talking domains to a point Like it gets to be a little bit much with all the offers. But every once in a while something will come through where you'll be able to have an interesting conversation and learn more and make you know people don't forget when you help them, right? I mean, that'll kind of tie this all up when you, if you do everything you do just to make money, life's gonna not be too good. So if you help somebody and you can take five minutes of your day, you can't do it for everybody, but but I do feel like just answering that email, that guy that made $10,000, he won't forget me, like he will. Maybe he becomes a big company.

Speaker 1: 1:39:34

Part of the story now, yeah, yeah, so hopefully the life changing amount of money for him.

Speaker 2: 1:39:38

Yeah, yeah so I, that was worth it for me. So all those other 99 DMs, that kind of sucked. We're good now, like it made it.

Speaker 2: 1:39:46

It made it worth it so that's why I appreciate being on here and you giving me a voice and drew on Domain Sherpa. Let me be on that. I truly enjoy that. I love, I love talking about domains and being part of it, and I think we're all really fortunate that the houses that we have or the little things that we have, they've been purchased through domains. That's crazy. Who I mean? That's. It's just amazing. When you tell somebody that the things I have are made from selling domains, only we truly understand what, what that is and how crazy that is.

Speaker 1: 1:40:15

So it is, and I'm lucky Like I. All of my wealth, all of the things I have, are really from from domains. I'm gonna be doing this for 14 years now, so the money I had before was a lot less than what I have now, so I would say the percentage is a much smaller and, yeah, I'm definitely grateful for what this is.

Speaker 2: 1:40:34

Yeah, yeah, I think it's great.

Speaker 1: 1:40:37

Yeah, All right, Shane. Well, hey, thanks for having. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun. We've covered a lot of material. I can't believe it's been an hour and 40 minutes.

Speaker 2: 1:40:48

I know I tend to run long, Sorry about that. Everybody you can, you can.

Speaker 1: 1:40:52

That's okay, no, that's great, you know, and we'll definitely have you on again. And you know, I think it'll be fun to potentially have some others on at the same time. Brooke wanted to come on. We were joking. Yeah, I love Brooke. She's like my Robin Quivers Dad some more balance to the conversation. So maybe she'll come on and we'll have you on again in the near future. So thanks again and until next time.

Speaker 2: 1:41:17

All right, thanks again.