We’re joined by three Domain Sherpas: Kate Buckley, Braden Pollock, and Michael Cyger.
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Today’s Sherpa Review panel is extra fabulous just for you. We have three panelists and yet we do four domains that were recently bought or sold, get some insights on the market these days. We also discussed the NameJet list and whether they’re a good fit for investors like you. For our third segment we actually discuss working from home tips, best practices, lessons learned in between. There is a whole lot of shenanigans, lot of laughter and some great insights along the way. Enjoy the show.
Favorite Sherpa Network. I’m Tess Diaz, Executive Producer of DomainSherpa.com, and I’m delighted that you’ve joined us for today’s Domain Sherpa Review. Is this a show where we get into the minds of successful domain name investors using real examples so we can learn strategies and tactics to become better investors ourselves. We do have three segments to the review today, but a little bit different. First we’ll be learning what the Sherpas recently bought or sold. Then we’ll uh, preview some domains going to auction soon at namejet.com and whether the Sherpas think they’re a good investment opportunity for you. And in the third segment we’re going to talk about working from home tips and tricks, things you know, successes and failures that we’ve learned that perhaps you would like to apply as well. So joining us today are three [inaudible] an industry thought leaders. A thank you to each of you for being here. We have Braden Pollock. Hello Braden. How are you? Hello. [inaudible]
Good. This is our West Coast show. I should have said that. Um, so, uh, joining us from [inaudible], I’m in LA. Funny, shiny. Doing all right. Meh. Yeah, I’m doing well. I’m doing yeah, it is all West coast today, isn’t it?
Yeah, the best coast. I’m almost there. And Kate Buckley. Hello Kate. How are you?
Hi Tess, I’m good. I’m good. Good to be here with you.
Really delightful to have you. And I just tweeted a minute ago, you introduced us to ProtectANurse.com. Sounds like a wonderful charity to connect folks. Tell us about that for a sec. It’s not yours. You’re just excited about it.
That’s exactly right. I was, uh, you know, listening to NPR this morning, you know, making our coffee and just going, just my heart hurting for all of the frontline medical workers who do not have the equipment that they need. And I go on Twitter and the first image I see is this nurse holding up a plastic sports poncho and saying that that is what she had been issued as PPE morning by her hospital in New York. And it broke my heart. So I, I did some research and I found, um, a website called ProtectANurse.com that was just registered. What a smart use of a domain name. Um, and it is basically a matchmaker, uh, where it connects, uh, donors just like you and me and Braden Mike with hospitals who have desperate needs to protect their doctors and nurses. And there was like a heat map. And so you can click on a hospital in your area and see what their needs are and if you perhaps have it in your house, maybe you ordered a CMS that you don’t need or maybe there are medical grade and we don’t need those. Um, or maybe you have access to be able to get some of the PPE they need, uh, and then you can either drop it off or drop it off at ups. And I think it’s just a marvelous, marvelous idea.
That’s beautiful. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And Michael Cyger, original founder of DomainSherpa. Hello.
Oh gee, good to be here. Thanks for having me on the show Tess and Braden and Kate, original [inaudible].
Yes.
I like to, I like to be bad though.
Oh, alright. Wow.
Um, but yeah, thanks for having me. And I think it’s awesome that you do these shows Tess and you’re the host and so we can see people’s right faces and voices and we can smile and crack jokes because, you know, so, so many of us used to go to offices and see people on a daily basis at the coffee shop or running errands and now we just stay home. So, you know, it’s really important for us to, uh, stay positive, fight the loneliness and, um, uh, thanks for making the show happen.
Of course, I actually put a lot of work and excitement into developing a trivia night someday. We’re going to do soon. Yeah. We’ll just repost. Yeah, just, I mean, we need some lightheartedness. This is very serious. It’s no laughing matter. But, um, really I think one of the biggest things we need to do is protect our mental health at home. Uh, especially those of us with children. So, uh, anyway. Okay. Yeah. Protect a mom is just going to be selling wine. Watches connected anyway. Great. Yeah, I’m grateful. Those were my biggest problems. Really very quick at self. Let’s do this.
What’s new Sherpas? So despite all this, um, domains are still being bought and sold. Um, so let’s see. Kate, what’s new? Is there a domain you’ve bought or sold recently that you’d care to share? Yeah, uh, sure. Uh, I actually just got word from escrow.com that this transaction closed and uh, it is therapists doc. Oh, interesting. The timing, because suddenly he is much more available online. Um, wow. Therapists, plural. Dot com. And this you sold it, correct? Um, I brokered, I brokered, the sale for my client. Okay. All right. Uh, gentlemen, what do you guess the sale price was? Yeah, eighty five thousand eighty five thousand and one dollar.
Just joking. Um, I think that uh, yeah, that’s probably a good guest therapists, uh, plural. So you’re going to go there and you’re going to find a therapist to work with. They’ll do all the billing. It’ll be like the Upwork for mental health. Um, you know, I’m not sure if the pan, if it just closed, I’m not sure if the pandemic would have helped it or hurt it. Um, but it sounds like you maybe negotiated before the pandemic. You know, I think it’s clearly a high five. Could be a six figure domain name. I’m going to go therapists, I’m going to go a little bit higher. I’m going to go, um, uh, you know, I think it could be anywhere from like 60 to [inaudible] two 50, and I’m going to say one 40, 140 K it should, it should be two 50. [inaudible]
I went low because I think in this market there was an offer and the seller took the offer because
okay.
You know, there’s not a lot of big sales happening. I’m going to jump in even though it’s not my job. I worked for years with, um, a domain investor who owned the majority of the best domains, in my opinion, in the therapy industry, except not that one. And no one wanted to buy these therapists just couldn’t, you know, they do so much individually and they couldn’t, they couldn’t figure out the HIPAA stuff. And, um, I have seen, I mean, my family [inaudible] has a number of therapists involved. Um, and I mean [inaudible] well, my kids go to individual therapy every two weeks. Um, there’s family therapy, um, you know, because I’ve had 100% custody of kids for a while and their dad was going through some tough times. And nobody’s been able to do anything online ever.
And boom. Did they figure out HIPAA compliance in like a minute? Um, so yeah, so I’m going to say like one Oh one I think that the seller knows it’s a six figure domain. It’s that kind of, uh, it’s like that house sale when three children are selling mom’s property and they each have a hundred K in their mind and they won’t go under 300 K for the house. That’s what I think. Not because I think that’s what it’s worth. But I think just the dynamics, I think it’s worth more once people, but it is an emerging industry really. So what do you go for Kate? So you’re, you’re, you’re kind of all right. So, so what happened was I was doing diplomat, closes deals, mental health, and she was saying that we’re all right.
So the reality was, uh, every single person had a piece of the puzzle, correct. Correctly. So what happened was I was discussing offers in the say 300,000 to 500,000 range, uh, actively with CEOs and CMOs and tele-health and, uh, then the bottom fell out of the market. And though those conversations, just crickets just gone off the map. Mmm. So, so you know, my, my client decided, you know what, cash in hand is a good thing. Um, I’ll liquidate it and, and use those funds to, you know, to build something else and I’m interested and doing. And so it went into the escrow at just over $91,000 Braden.
All right, we may all be right. However, what do I win? I would like to say that when we began this call, Braden was like, he is right now caressing his shoulder because he just walked into a door. Do you know what Braden, I walked, but I walked into a door because I was, I was hurrying up to sit down and get on this call is she and priority pocket door. And I ran into it. But here’s the funny thing is, is right before the old pandemic broke, it was just over a month ago. I had shoulder surgery on this shoulder. Oh wait, you know, arthroscopically, they went in and they carved some bone out on scar tissue and fix the shoulder. And I ran into this one, not this one too. Sore shoulders, both squash, injury polo. It was probably him tripping over Lola. Okay. Oh, the dog. Yeah. Lola
wants to know why he was tripping over Lola graduations. That is an absolutely excellent sale and I’m really excited to see this industry emerge. I think it’s going to make a difference for, uh, for the world really to have better access. Can I ask you a quick question about it? Sure. So
get from 300 to 500 K negotiation and then suddenly close at 91. Do you like go back to those same CEOs and say, we need to liquidate this, we’ll take 90 K or we need to liquidate this will take one 50 but we’re negotiable. How do you, how do you handle that?
So we had a low ball offer on the table the whole time and once the 300 or 500 conversations went away, uh, we went back to all parties and said,
Hey, let’s make a deal. Mmm. Cause like, you know, many of my clients are like looking
domains or real estate. They’re going to come out on top. It’s just going to take longer to have these sales. And so we’re not going to soften our prices at all.
Others of my clients are, you know what
Cash is king and I need liquidity for other projects. So just take the best offer on the table as long as it’s reasonable.
Right. So I’m led by my clients in this regard and this client said,
you know what? Yeah, just take that low ball offer on the table because we know it’s serious, we know it’s legit and they’ll do a quick cash close and that’s what I want right now.
Gotcha.
And it was a retail sale not to somebody like Braden.
No, it is a
bully and user sale as you will see shortly.
Gotcha. Yeah, I do have standing offers on names and then a low ball offers and every once in a while I get a call saying, how can you do a little bit more? And I say no. They say, okay, I picked up names that way. It’s, I mean it’s definitely a, we’re heading into a buyer’s market. It’s no question. And yeah, and your buyer got a great deal on that. I mean that 91 is probably your commission. Everything else. So the seller did not, yeah. Agree. Say all on that. No, unfortunately. But they chose to take it. So, but you got to work with what your needs are in your time. And Kate, you do a good job really being led by your clients and what their needs are. Mmm. And I also think like question,
I think there’s a lot of industries that look, you know, fat from the outside, but once you get in the industry, it’s, it’s not like this should be a, a seven figure domain name. You know, it’s just, it’s a hard sale to try and get a domain in some industries sold that you think should be like
an Upwork two sided marketplace or you know, a freelancer, two sided marketplace or something like that for therapists. You know, every therapist.
But I know I’m at least on the Island, a hundred percent booked. Uh, they’re only word of mouth and they don’t need to go on to two sided marketplace is, you know, maybe if they’re going to go completely online, then that’s something that’ll keep them. I’m busy. Mmm. But you know, I don’t know. I, you know, I look at a lot of deals and I hear people talking and I only know what I know from my business background. I’m in dealing with things on a daily basis. But not all of them. Not all domains are slam dunks. Even though domain investors, I think they should be.
Well I think, I think they’re pissed. That name is, uh, you know, it’s a, it’s a directory to Legion name and telemedicine and therapy space is huge.
Mmm.
There are a lot of therapists online working from home. Even if they’re fully booked during the day, they then can take, they can fit in more sessions. And there’s so many people online. Cause I know therapists that do this, there’s so many people on these, these directory sites now it drives the price down. These, the therapists are only making like $35. Wow. That’s, that’s their net, which is super low for third. Right.
And so, but because there’s so many therapists out there,
and they might live in a little town, but they, they can just go online and have access. And so they take the 35 bucks and, and frankly there’s a lot of lawyers that do the same thing. Hmm. One of my investments is in a company that uses lawyers to review privacy policies and they were actually looking for paralegals and I said just apply for, just put an ad out for lawyers at 25 bucks an hour. I was like, no lawyer is going to work for $25 an hour. I’m like,
you’d be surprised.
Wow. I said just just put it up and he calls me back cause like I got so many resumes, it’s amazing. And so he ended up about 30 bucks an hour and
hundreds of lawyers signed it.
Wow. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. And this was, this was a year ago.
You’re in Africa right now. It’s even more so probably. Anyways, I throw that out Kate, because I want you to like push back and say no, I know this industry cause I’ve done research and I agree or I disagree or whatever.
I was trying to hold on, I’m going to plug my laptop to the power source. I just realized it. Yeah, there is. It’s an interesting industry. The margins are pretty slim. So it was, it was a huge sale pitch and huge long tail educational sales cycle from the beginning and a end. You know that people are scared and people are locking down spending. So I, I’m actually thrilled with the sale. My client is thrilled with the sale and at the end of the day, my duty is to my, yeah,
we reached out to every single client when the market crashed and said, let’s talk. What’s your strategy? How can I support you right now? What can we do? And, uh, you know, so you’re happy. I’m happy. Good. Yeah. Add girl. Yeah. Okay. Mike, what’d you buy or sell lately? I sold unicorn.io. Ooh, unicorn. Dot. I preface it by saying that I sold it in December of last year. That’s all I’ll say. Yeah. [inaudible] just guessing tests. Okay. Braden, who’s guest? Ben unicorn. Dot IO 10 grand. Let me just give you the number. I think, look, I think it’s a [inaudible]. You know, I was coming up. I think that it’s, um, I mean there’s so many meanings behind unicorn now, right? You know, successful companies and I think that doesn’t really exist now. If it was rainbow unicorn, that would have been right over the top. And uh, so I think you got the higher end of the IO market. That’s what I think. Okay. Okay.
You know, I just, I don’t do, I only deal with the top 1% of.com and see a one to 2%. So it’s tough for me to talk about iOS. Would it be if it was.com and then we just do the math from there and then we’ll just take a small fraction of it, a unicorn. Dot. I I like what they’ve done with it. That’s fun. No, you’re not allowed to look it up. You could also say like Braden, no, it was better. The um, landscape of die. Oh, sale prices. But he’s saying he believes it’s sold in the top end. Oh, I owe sales prices. So if you’re not comfortable saying a number, you can certainly walk through what area of a price range you think it would be for a dot. IO of all the decisions I have to make today. Pretty comfortable throwing out a number.
Um, inconsequential. Sequential. Thank you. I’m going to say 7,000, $287. [inaudible] I like it. Tess. What’s your guess? Mmm. Oh really? Um Hmm. It wasn’t December. I actually like, what are you gonna I mean, what are you going to do with that unicorn.co? I’m not so sure how much money you’re going to make with that, but I think you’re going to attract a lot of startups and interest. Nobody’s gonna forget that name in the little techie space. Mmm. So really I want to hang with Braden like somewhere around 10. I’ll go with, well, Ann and Kate. I’d like Euro. What are they called? The what numbers? Jason Shepherd was just talking about it, but I can’t think of the name, the vanity at the end. So, um, nine, eight, eight, eight is my guess. I love it.
[inaudible] breaks the internet. The sale price was $14,988. Wow. Congratulations. So I did do a vanity. Um, and uh, uh, yeah, Braden was closest I, um, so I purchased this domain name@park.io in December, 2017. Uh, and I’ve paid $4,600 for it, which was more than I wanted to pay. I say that for every single domain I buy as high as I thought it had a $30,000 price to, you know, I thought it had a retail value of around $30,000. Um, so basically I’ve got a 3.3 ROI, $10,000 profit and two years I put it, you know, I listened to it directly, um, in my FTE account, put a force, they land Lander on it, had 30 inquiries on it over about a year and a half. Mmm. And then a buyer reached out to me, uh, in late 2018 so not quite a year, and he offered me $1,000 for it. Right.
And that’s typically how these iOS work. Typically, how every domain works, right? Like somebody offers you what they feel is like a very reasonable price. Um, I quoted the back a price of 30,000. Mmm. And then what was interesting is that we started discussing like escrow.com um, or Epik as a payment option. And we even got on the phone. So I’m like, I remember like walking out in my backyard and chatting on the phone with him and I’m like, this is a done deal. Like we’re starting to talk about payment terms and um, this is great. $30,000. And then he went completely dark, like no responses. And then I emailed him, I’m like, Hey, just checking in, no response. And then, you know, I emailed again and I’m like, Hey, it sounds, it looks like you’re not interested in this domain name any longer. Mmm.
Should I just close out the discussions for now? And he responded back and he said, Oh, I’m swamped at work. I couldn’t figure out a way to finance it, so maybe I’ll contact you again in six months. Okay. And I’m like, Ugh. All right, fine. I thanked him and that was it. And then in, so that was October. Then in March of 2019, I received, uh, another significant offer higher than a thousand dollars. So I reached out to this guy again and I said, you know, are you interested in this any longer? And he said, no, I’ll pass my God. Okay. So I wished him the best again. And then three weeks later after, he’s like, no, we’ll pass. He reached out to me again and said he was interested and he offered me, um, to pay the $15,000, basically over nine payments, a nine monthly payments. And so I said, sure, we’ll do that.
So he made the final payment in December. He paid the escrow fees. It was done@escrow.com no hiccups at all. Love escrow.com. Mmm. And, uh, yeah, and you got a great domain name. And so he is, he runs a staffing company, so he loves, uh, unicorns to him. You know, unicorns typically in a startup world are companies that are valued at $1 billion on paper. Um, in the staffing world, unicorns are the people that produce 10 times the amount of work product, uh, then a regular, you know, employee or, or, uh, worker. And so they’re the, you know, and we all know people like that that produce just a phenomenal amount of output. So that’s, um, that’s what a unicorn is to them. So they wanted that domain four for their company staffing company.
That’s really cool. So when he said, I can’t figure out how to find it, why didn’t you say I’ll finance it for you?
No, I think he said, well, I think what he meant was that he couldn’t figure out a way to pay for it because we talked about financing on Epik and we talked about financing through escrow.com. I think he meant he didn’t have a way to figure out how to get the cash flow to pay for it. Yeah.
And then the actual buyer, did you suggest this payment plan? He suggested it. How did that come to be and how were the negotiations on that? Did,
did you know that this was the actual buyer that we went back and forth on?
Right.
He suggested a nine payments and so I said, okay, I’ll set it up on escrow.com do you know that that price is like $415 of escrow fee that you’ll pay for it at the beginning. So you make your first payment plus your escrow and then it’ll just be on their payment plan and then you’ll get the domain at the end.
So you just took his first offer on how to finance it?
Yes.
That’s smart.
Yeah. Yeah. By that point, you know, it was a, I’m generally a long hold sort of person. If I have a one of my top domains, I’m going to hold it forever and I’m not going to really come down on the price significantly, like from 30,000 to 15,000. But unicorn.io, it’s a great domain, but it’s not one of my top domains, ones that I’m going to keeping my, you know, family trust for years if it doesn’t sell.
Um, and so, yeah, I was, when he came in with a reasonable offer, I was, I was fine with it. I think that the upper [inaudible], I’m not an expert on the IO, uh, domains, but I think they are hot. And I think that great single word, aspirational, uh, dot. IO domains can go anywhere from like 20 to a hundred thousand. I know Mike Carson, who runs park, that IO is sold them lunch in the 60, 70, 80 range. Um, most of the stuff in name by what the top of the range is around 30. Um, most of them are smaller, shorter than mine. So like, Mmm. Mixed data IO. So for 40 K at flip point, 2018, uh, matrix.io. So for 30,000, library dot. IO sold for 30,000. So, you know, uh, unicorn I think is similar to library. Maybe a little bit better. Yeah. I thought, I thought 10 was closer to the top of the range. I didn’t realize they go up that high.
Yeah. Deal with those names. We’ve got to get you to trade him some of your dot. Ws is for dot. iOS. Ooh, well on that note, Braden, what have you bought or sold lately? So some WSS for $9. I think you’re on the wrong show, but it’s true. I actually, there was a bunch of names that I was letting expire and I put them on name liquidate and I sold a bunch of them. Actually nothing. Nothing fantastic. Let me, let me look. Yeah, all of them. So for between $9 and $104, if you’re going to drop ’em or delete them from your account, why not put them on nickname? Liquidate and get some money for them? Exactly.
Um, easy. So it’s, it’s an Epik owned property. Um, and so there’s a set and my name’s Raul at Epic, so there’s a setting that, anything that I set to do not renew it then automatically just moves over to name, liquidate and gets listed there. So I do nothing. Then when it sells on my account is credited, so it’s hands off and it’s easy. That’s pretty cool. Okay. Yeah. And they, there’s a pretty decent sell through. I mean most of them, I’m looking at the list now. Most of them sold for about $15. You know, $15 is better than $0 million. And how much does name liquidate, keep or Epik keep? Um, 9%. 9%. Yeah. Bad. Yeah. And considering I don’t have to list it off to spend any time. It’s just an automatic, just a radio button. You click, you can, you can click the names individually or there’s an account setting where everything just moves over before to E four drops.
That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I don’t remember. It’s like, you know, two weeks before. So I don’t remember what the, what the day is. Seven days, I don’t know. Okay. So you want to take us through one of those or a different, you’d say the price and we’ll get the name HQ. WT Ws sold for $15 and they were all two and three characters. Um, let’s go with, um, I D I did not sell anything significant this year and you know, a handful of like, you know, 1000, $2,000 names. Um, and if we go to on my spreadsheet now, the end of last year, I think on the last time we were on the show, we talked about satisfying.com it’s a Jaron T you would remember because her parents, can we talk about satisfying? I had to at the end of the year, satisfying.com and stairwell.com. I know we did not talk about stairwell. I don’t think so, but I just really want to have another chair and conversation or you don’t. All right, so let’s, let’s talk about Joe. It’s funny, I can’t remember the specifics of that Jaron conversation. Right. But I remember I was on a run listening to that one and I was down by ’em just at the Harbor just South of me. I remember exactly where I was when that whole conversation was happening. And did you, did you run faster or did you stop and just say, I just can’t do it anymore? No, he was run.
I was [inaudible] yes. Oh my God. Hey, whoever’s phone that was, you need to turn that off. I’ll tell you that much. [inaudible] that was chase telling me about social distancing. Oh, I care about you. Alright, so what are we guessing on stairwell.com [inaudible] dot com sold at the end of 2019 and what’s that? I want to talk about satisfying.com let’s do it. [inaudible] Mmm, well we can do both. Okay. [inaudible] today. Okay. Okay. All right. What are we talking about first? Let’s talk about stairwell. Okay? Yes. What do you think you sold it for? [inaudible] stairwell. And it’s a.com not a dot. IO. He wishes a.io, stairwell.com. It’s an interesting one. [inaudible]
non stairway.com. There’s no looking up. [inaudible] he’s doing their hands above the table. Show me your hands right here. Um, I’m going to say 60,000, right? I’m going to go a little bit higher. Braden seems to always like get a great sell with a noun like this without a Jerin. Um, and so I’m going to go one 10 stairwell.com. I have no idea what it would be. No clue what stairwell would be, what kind of business I’m going [inaudible] I since I guess when everything else, one 60 let’s go brain. I want to hear, um, okay, I’ll, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna, I’m gonna start with the backstory. Okay. So I got an inquiry from somebody I know Mark monitor for one of their clients and the, the offer was 35,000 and uh, he said, you know, my client saw your listing and thinks it’s way too high. Um, but I think that 35,000 is a solid offer. I told him that I know you and it’s not going to be enough, but you want me to put it forward in him. [inaudible]
I thought I looked it up when I said 35,000. That’s, that’s what I haven’t listed for. Well, my spreadsheet, it was 35,000. Okay. Yeah. So that, that’s weird. Have you ever listed yet on after Nick for 35 yeah. Everywhere. That was the buy it now price. Yes. So I thought, okay. So I literally type sterile.com and I click, there’s a registry and I clicked through and the buy now price is 85,000 and it was my, my, my assistant lists everything for me. I put everything on a spreadsheet. I told them the pricing and then she goes and uploads it and she made a mistake. You put any five and not a 45. So, um, I took that opportunity and I said, yeah, 35 she’s not going to cut it. I’m listening.
It’s like, I know, I know. He says, I’ve talked to them and he says I can, I can get them to go to 60. Will you do that? That’s it. You know, for you. I’ll do six. Nice. Nailed that. Kate, did you say 60? I did. Nice. Did you look it up? Did you cheat the money? She looked it up on name bio. No, I did not swear. Swear. Swear. Swear on Hudson Murphy. I did not. Who bought stairwell.com like what are they doing with it? I don’t know. All right, now I want to look it up. Now. I’m going to go type it in. Look, it just, it says the name of it on the webpage it. Ah, okay. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting font they’ve chosen as well. I like the font for a few years. Um Hmm. And um, I paid $3,600 for it. That’s great Braden.
So like why am I gonna turn down 60 right now? Exactly. That’s why I was in 35. I figured 35 is going to be sufficient and it, you know, it’s also honestly, I don’t think so fantastic name because you’ve got stairwell, stairway, staircase, they’re all kind of similar. [inaudible] yeah. No, no stairwell is any better than staircase. [inaudible] put those nouns. I think that people put their own meaning on them. And so, but I just don’t know what meaning. I can’t even think of like what meaning would be on stairwell. Well, here’s the thing too. I mean, so I went to Google. You type in stairwell and it’s not the first one. The first two pages are completely just dictionary definitions, which means really no one sees a branding opportunity or even a conversation need around that. So that’s a little tough. And then I went to a trademark search. Is that a positive? It can be. They’re not competing with anybody except with a word like stairwell where people are going to get it mixed up. Was it stairwell or stairways or stair?
That’s the problem. We need to do a trademark search. There are only four trademarks, even like us, trademarks ever requested, three of which have been abandoned. So usually not really a great sign. That kind of thing. And the markets that they’re ran are sucky markets for having money for branding. So yeah, that’s tough. There’s nothing in Crunchbase except for once. And knowing that data that you just looked up with trademarks and [inaudible], uh, you know, the number of companies that are using it, I would probably have set the price around 35 K as well, and then negotiated down from that. Yeah, that was my, my plan, my, that was my buy it now. Right. That’s, that includes commission as everything else, right. I’d have to look it up, but I think it was like 20 or 25 and I would’ve taken, yeah. Did you have your assistant? Like a plaque? Best mistake. The funny thing is I sent her a message explaining her mistake.
I got this inquiry. It’s a free 85,000. It shouldn’t be. It’s supposed to be 35 class. She’s like, Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I’ll fix it right away. I’m like, don’t worry about it. I already sold it for 60 grand to sit in the logo. The font that they’ve used for stairwell, the a is simply an arrow, right? Like a little mini rocket ship. And then you think about stairs [inaudible] Oh, although the stairwell is the Shafter enclosure. But you could spend a brand story around how this product, whatever it is, uh, is your portal. Yeah. Right. But you know, it’s a stairway to heaven, right? Stairway is better. Yeah.
Well, stairwell has the word well in it and you can incorporate that into your brand story. Some sort of health care, something like
be well, and I, I don’t, I don’t know who the buyers, cause it came through Mark monitor. Mmm. And, um, I remember when I bought it that I was like, Oh, I’ll take a flyer on it. But I mean, there are these competing names and it’s not fantastic, but I’m not going to have for 3,600 bucks. We’ll give it a shot. Yeah. I like, I like these, these, um, compound words because I think they make good brands. So I have a bunch of them. And the thing is, it’s like you have to look at it from a portfolio perspective because a lot of them, most of them, right. You have not yet sold. Hopefully someday they do. But the thing is that when I do sell one for 10 or 20 times what I paid it. Yeah. All the others.
Yeah. Great. And let’s talk for a minute about compound words as a brand. Why you think that and some examples.
Mmm. So I, you can, you can pick them up a lot. Less expensive than one word. Um, and they are, I mean they’re halfway between a one word and a two word, right. Was it compound word? Mmm. And so they make, they make really good brands because they’re super memorable. Right. Um, and less expensive, right? Because you’re moving towards that two word, the longer, but has it as a compound. The people know them. People know the expression, right. If you will. Um, just like it was a single word. Is that my, is this making sense? Stairwell is a single word. It is a single word in the dictionary. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I don’t, I don’t know where we’re like, like I single word income where where a single word stops in a, in a compound word starts. Cause Cade is the brains of the family here. So she can talk to me. She knew what Jared was. Right. And so, yes, I don’t, I don’t know. I mean I have to look it up and it doesn’t really matter. You know, sometimes they like playback. Is playback one word or is it a compound? It’s one word.
Oh, I’m going to make a [inaudible] question right here. We’re going to figure something out.
A trick, compound word. So I, I have, I have playback.com I’ve had it for a long time. What’s that? I like playback, playback.com. Um, I mean you’ve got words like I own carpool.com which, which, um, Mike knows about. I love carpool. Um, and that I believe is one word also, but really it’s made from two words in it. It’s right. What’s that? It’s a portmanteau. Okay. Yes it is. Yeah. You’re all right. See, this is why we invite Kate. I have, I have a bunch of these and I, I keep buying them. The naked brand I’ve sold. Mmm. You know, a fair amount. Um, I, I S I saw them regularly and I always get in that, in that range. I mean 35, um, for a two word or compound, three, 5,000, just kind of the sweet spot for it. They moved pretty easily in that range, but sometimes, sometimes higher, although I think this was a little bit of a fluke. I honestly don’t feel it was worth the 60 but it was offering. So I took it, I sold velvet rope. Mmm. For 35 I still love letter for 35 [inaudible] Mmm. So you know, what are those? So breast check for furthest to word 20. Mmm. That was all last year. Interesting. So the, that sounds like very satisfying sale.
Tell us about the sale of satisfying.com. [inaudible] uh, satisfying. Um Oh wait, don’t tell us anything we have to gas prices but it was end of 2019 December. Okay. Hands in both the screen Mike made up the rules you might remember cause we talked about it cause you, I remember you were residing at a at named con. Yeah. In fact I’m going to remove myself from guessing because I took notes during your talk and I quick checked my notes and I did note the sales price so I’m going to remove myself. So she had missed the cheating. She just checked her notes. She recapped. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Like satisfying. I think it’s a terrible brand. Satisfying Carol horse syllables. It’s a Jerin or something like that. It could be a Porto man Checko or whatever. I don’t know, satisfy the Italian entree isn’t it? I uh, yeah, I, I would pass over that if it were on name jets, I would, um, you know, well, everything’s good at a price, but I, you know, I think you would be, uh, [inaudible] maybe you got
15, 20 K four
maybe. Do you want to guess, Tess? You want to take a shot? I like satisfying more. Mmm. I know my, okay. My seven year old daughter says satisfying about 20 times a day because any kid who watches any social media, there are all these videos of satisfied and you can like watch like someone cut cheese or food in a blender and they go satisfying. So, um, I don’t know. Full disclosure. No. Makes sense now. Yeah. And it currently displays cheese in a blender. Manchego I’m pretty sure I actually love them. I mean, again, I’m not going to comment on price, but I, I love the name and I loved it from the second Brighton was talking about it. I think it’s fine. I think it’s fabulous. I think it could be amazing. Brand. I think it’s a, it’s very current to your point test. Um, just hasn’t guessed yet. Well, I still have good cultural relevance right. Me, the seven year olds. I also, frankly, I don’t know that I can think it’s certainly offhand of another Jerin that I like better than the infinitive. I mean I would rather here see the brand name, I’m like, there are so many opportunities for our audience right now to be snickering, but um, satisfying is so much better than satisfy satisfied. Um, satisfying is in the moment because if you’ve already been satisfied, it doesn’t really matter. You want it. Many of them are in the future, right?
I don’t even get what you’re talking about. Like who’s going to buy satisfying? Like what is the door? Sit down and talk with your children. Teach your kid. My kids like to fart too, but I’m not going to buy fark.com cause what am I going to do to make money on there?
You need [inaudible] homeschool your kid on what was, what’s the math, um, acronym. I forget it already. What’s the, what’s the math acronym that Jake was telling you for? [inaudible] yeah, we’re trying to do PEMDAS with your kids. Then they need to be schooling you too, Mike, and learn about satisfying videos.
Yes, because my kids make money every single day. They understand how that works.
So before you tell us Braden, Tess, what kind of business would run on satisfying and Kate, what kind of business would run on satisfying? Just to pick a number.
My number isn’t actually going to be that high. I’m going to say 12th because really it’s, it’s, I think it’s going to be in the moment and it’s not going to be, it’s not a brand, right?
You’re just sitting in some bar, some other company that makes money some other way is going to by satisfying because it’s the great marketing name.
Uh, no, I do think that is a secondary possibility. But the primary possibility I think is some company with those small idea that’s either going to, um, you know, put out a bunch of videos for kids is what I can see. I could also see it as a clothing brand as a do. I actually love it for like a coffee or tea, a drink brand. Um, a lot of things like that, but I just don’t see it for a huge idea. That’s my primary thought is that it’s for a main brand for a new emerging company. My secondary thought shirt. It could be. Yeah.
Okay. What do you think, what kind of company would run on satisfying.com as a brand?
I would do I female centric site. Right. And it’s going to have, Mmm. Uh, I just want to point out you be kids videos.
Okay. Was he saying it’d be female centric? So just like the waters in which we swim,
I don’t feel like this is going to end up being porn. I can already see this site. Right? You’ve got a video channel with, uh, with original content makers, right? Then you’ve got your bloggers, um, and then you have, um, articles on recipes on how to improve your sex life on exercise. Uh, and then you have your online store with chocolate and why? And a dry portabella mushrooms to make beautiful results. Show and end. Yes. Toys for her satisfaction. Perhaps make their way on that fertile as well. I mean, I can go on, but that’s the women’s brand. Yeah, I like it. Yeah.
I have a better, I have a better name for that. It’s, I have pleasure.com for that application. And for the porn site, I have throbbed.com
Oh one beer too. Okay. Okay. Wait. So I just, um, I just started dating after my, like divorce a couple of years ago and um, then there’s a global pandemic, so some dude hits me up on whatever site I’m on. And um, and I was, and he wanted to go for a walk in the park and I was like, [inaudible]
hinder
non Tinder Canton. Um, but he’s like, do you want to go for a walk?
And I’m like, ah, I don’t know. Like [inaudible] maybe I would go for a walk, but like, I don’t even want to hug you. Hello. And next thing I know, he’s like something about exchanging bodily fluids. And I’m like, yeah, well you never know who you’re going to get on these sites. Right. I couldn’t help it before I stopped talking to him. I was like, the only fluids I want to exchange are hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes. Anyway. Pleasure and satisfying. So I see your portfolio has a little theme going on here. Braden. Tell us more about satisfying. I also have stamina.com. Wow. You’ve got like it covered every single direction. Braden. Okay. That might could be taken in so many different units.
No, I did not mean that. What’s in your mind? We got off the rails here. What’d you sell it for? I’ll bring it back. So I agree, Mike, that it’s not the best name. Um, because you’ve got satisfied, satisfied, satisfying. So again, there’s no room for some confusion, um, and leakage, which is why I only spent $3,500 on it back in March of 2015. [inaudible] Mmm. And uh, I got an inquiry for some loan number. Uh, but then the guy called me like two minutes later and I told him I enlisted for and we went, uh, I didn’t negotiate basically. Um, but I did let him make a down payment and then, uh, two monthly payments after that total price, 50,000, five zero. Wow. He was, um, you know, I said, my listing price is 50,000. And I explained why. And um, he’s like, wow, I don’t just, don’t, I can’t do 50,000.
I’m like, look, [inaudible] just tell me what you can’t afford now. It was a wrestle taking payments and some, some reasonable, you know, not forever, but he’s like, well, how much down? I’m like, you just tell me what you can afford. I’m easy. Okay. And he said, uh, I could do 35,000 now and then I would need a couple of months. I’m like, fine, take a couple of months. And even the second month is payment was late and he emailed me, he’s like, I’m really sorry. It’s going to be about two days late because my payment didn’t come in from PayPal. I’m like, you do that really well, Braden, because that is your personality. Like just what
can you afford down? I’m not gonna say 20%. I’m not going to say 40%. What can you afford? And if you would’ve said like 5,000 down, you would have been like, okay, let’s talk about it.
Yup. Right. Because look, I like payment plans because they’re totally secure. Right. I don’t leave the name until they pay me. Um, so I anyways, I do, I do pay on plans all the time. Mmm. And matter of fact, so, so that was the second payment. And then a couple of days later he says, emails me again, I’m really sorry. It still hasn’t come in. It’s probably not going to be until Monday. So if you know, you need to charge me interest or some penalty, that’s fine. And I said, don’t worry about it. It’s like a few days isn’t gonna make a difference, you know, and I, I point the name to whatever site they want immediately, soon as I make the first payment because it’s risk-free and I’m, I try to be real easy to work with. And then if somebody defaults, they give a month.
Do you just, uh, do you just maintain the contract yourself and you just point the DNS where he wants it, where they want it?
Yeah, yeah. It depends. If it’s a, if it’s a big name, um, and there’s lawyers involved, then I think it’s a little bit more complicated. But I typically just set it up at Epik and that’s it. And Epik just pings on when the payment’s due except the wires and I, I do nothing after,
- Um, I just want to go back. So this buyer reached out to you in an email,
send an inquiry,
what platform or how?
At the time it was uni and I’m out actually now switching over to Epik because they got an SSL lenders in it. It’s a pretty good system, but I needed to export all of my history because I’ve got five or 6,000 inquiries. So I wanted to, I wanted to put that into the, into the Epik system. So we just exported that and it’s, it’s literally last day or two has been there. They’re importing that into my account and then I’ll switch over to the SSL landers at Epic. Um,
so do you know how many inquiries you got on satisfying for the time that you owned it, Braden, for those three or four years?
Probably not many, but I can certainly look it up and I’ll do that for you Mike.
I’d like to know, I wouldn’t think that you’d get a lot, but I’ve been plenty wrong today. Um, what’s interesting is that you price a lot of your domain names, so if I go to pleasure.com I can see it priced on your registry right now.
Yup.
Then when he called you, did he make an offer? Who put out the number first? How did that go? It sounds like on that one call you just got it all done.
[inaudible] ha it was, it was 10 minutes. Um, yeah, so he had sent me an inquiry through the Lander and then literally, because once he, once he submits it, then he gets my, my contact information. So he just picked up the phone and called me. And, um, he, when I, when I said, you know, find 35 grand, a couple of payments, no problem. And he said, Oh my God, I am so excited. And actually getting those name. Did you ask him what he was gonna use it for? I didn’t. I don’t think so. We have a seven year old daughter. I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I think it was a gifted tested daughter. Um, I don’t, I don’t remember if he did or not. I mean, he might have told me, but I don’t know active site on it. No. So how many inquiries Brighton D did you see? You know, it didn’t come up.
You come up. But, uh, so I sat down and explained to my daughter that, you know, quarantine was starting, blah, blah, blah. Within five minutes I find her with my phone. Hello. Quarantine day one recording like a video. Um, Mike, I received 11 inquiries. Gotcha. It for three or four years, I think you said 2015. I bought it in March of 2015 first first inquiry came in September of 2016 okay, interesting. Yeah, so yeah, you buy that domain name, then you hold it over a year and you’re like, damn, I bought a dog for 3,600 bucks. Like not literally a dog. Your dogs are kind of cute, but like you’re sitting on this domain name and some names take four or five years to get inquiries, but you know what, I’ve, I’ve got, you know, my average hold time for a larger name and he was about five years, so that’s fine. I mean, I don’t, I don’t look at any of these names like, ah, I blew it on this one. Yeah, you’re playing his number. Always know if you buy it, if you buy it right. Look, you know it’s eight bucks a year to hold onto it. Right. [inaudible]
it sucks. When, when there’s a name that you’re going to sell for $500 that’s a bummer. What are you guys doing? Yeah, for the audience that are listening and they have like a little chat going on. You’re Braden about, about you. I’m your Sherpa network. I was talking, not reading the chat, but I was listening to you, Braden, so I’m just going to read it. I’m calling you guys out. We’ll start at the top then where it talks about the boy they’re talking about you personally. It starts where I say I’m holding back from Sanchez. I’m holding back from saying this, Braden Pollock, I’m selling satisfying.com. I said I’m easy. Okay. Huh? What? And then LOL.
Angelica, like satisfying justice. Hello. Bam. Thank you ma’am. Sail. Kate says he blew it on this one. This is too easy. It sucks. Braden. We’re just calling quotes from Braden. Oh, that’s true. And I mean, I never ask my wife. She’ll tell you. I don’t hear the words coming out. They just come out autopilot. Okay. I don’t know if our sponsors would like to be associated with us right now, but it’s too late. Um, we have amazing sponsors. And do you know what, not only are we educational and entertaining. Um, sometimes we get a little spicy, but, um, thank you to our sponsors. Let’s take a moment, get serious. Uh, tell our, uh, our audience about our sponsors and then we’ll jump into the next section.
Efty was built by domain investors to increase your inquiries, sales and profit, forget spreadsheets and archive emails. Manage your entire investment portfolio in one place using a secure and completely confidential platform. Learn more at efty.com. That’s E F T Y.com.
Alrighty. At time for the NameJet portion here NameJet sponsors us as we review a marketplace list of domains heading to auction soon. If you’d like one of the names below, click through, uh, pretty quickly because once they go to auction, you lose your chance to put in a minimum bid or even just watch what’s going on in the auction and seeing how much these Sherpas know what they’re talking about. So, Mmm, we have a handful of names here and I deleted who goes next? Michael Cyger of course it’s you. I, I mess up more when Mike is on call. Any other time. Uh, Mr. Michael Cyger, what are your thoughts on this name jet list?
Uh, on this name jet list. I like a few of the brand bubbles. Mmm. I like them, but I wouldn’t buy them for my own personal portfolio. I’ll say that right off the bat. So I’m not going to be bidding on any of these. I like solar deals. It’s a nice brandable. If you go on a name bio and your on
deals
at the end of the word, you use the suffix, um, and you search and then you um, look at solar at the beginning. They seem to sell well like two to $8,000 at the retail range. And I like to search over the past three years to see over the past two years there, not including pandemic times. They seem to be selling pretty well. So I would try to buy it for five to 10% of what I think I could sell it for. That’s typically how I operate that. So I like a solar deals. I like story plus. Um, there are, it’s similar to stairwell.com story well.com sold at CDOT last year for $7,500. Um, story one.com sold for $4,500. So I think story plus is a similar type of domain name. There’s a lot of [inaudible] plus at the end, you know, as a, as a suffix word, Mmm. That are selling. So those are two that I like. I’m not a co, it makes me think of nautical. There is a trademark I think. Did I look that up?
No, maybe there’s not. I can’t remember. I liked that one. I wouldn’t pay more than a couple of hundred bucks for it. Um, it could be a clothing brand, could be something like that. I think it, I think it would sell for around two thousand three thousand dollars. That strikes me as the kind of name that would make it onto a brand bucket for that price range. Um, and I like a space tv.com. Um, one day when we’re in quarantine, we’re just going to stare out at space and asteroids will fly by and we’ll just watch that. I don’t know. What are you guys saying in chat? Oh, nothing yet. Um, so yeah, I like space TV. There’s a lot of TV domains that sell. Uh, so, you know, I might be into space TV for a couple of hundred dollars, but you know, like Braden saying he holds his domain names for an average of five years.
Plan to hold this one for an average of 10 to 15 years, maybe 20 years. Um, but I like space TV. I think it’s a memorable brand. Got it. Very cool. You’re a funky guy who likes space TV and I like that, that you got to think differently for some of these uh, Braden thoughts? Uh, yeah, mostly. Um, my opinion aligns with Michael. I try not to agree with him, but a couple of who I think, I think, uh, so yes to space TV, I think that’s decent. Not worth a ton, but it’s a decent name. Um, solar deals agree with that. I think premier broker is a good name as well. I value name, but I can see it retailing for 2,500 bucks. Uh, not a co. Same thing. I think it’s a good brandable. Uh, cerebral palsy I think is a good name. Right? Like a, a
portal for all things CP related. Um, I like a, what I call pharmaceutical names and that’s just one of them. Okay. Mmm. I think I could see a big, like if you look up asthma.com or, uh, diarrhea.com is owned by Pepto pharmaceutical company. You’re good category names, right? [inaudible] companies use it to advertise their wares. [inaudible] story plus agreed land wanted.com I think was a good name. You know, there’s, yeah, homes wanted and, and we buy ugly houses.com. It’s that kind of thing. So it would be, it would be some, you know, reach or, or, okay. A group that buys land on the cheap [inaudible] dot com is a good name for that. Again, not, not huge value, but I think you go for, you know, 500 to five grand, probably retail and there you have it. Yeah. Nice. Ms Kate Beckley thoughts. Mmm. I also like story plus.com note, shocker there for me.
Um, three name I own. Um, I first launched my company, I was doing the story Corp com all of my branding and I still have it up as the Lander for all my branding. Uh, so love all the story names. Uh, cerebral palsy. Agreed. Absolutely. Especially with the CPC at $13. Um, and the search volume, sadly there are a lot of people who need help and resources who they or their loved ones are suffering from that condition. Um, not go I think is problematic. And you know, somebody mentioned mentioned fashion brand. I think that’s too confusingly similar to Nautica. Um, and then, um, it is from what I was able to tell, it is a bruise sports club, a pro football team. So that is why it has a search volume that it does so interesting when their premier broker agreed, uh, you know, not, not high value but a nice to have for someone. Um, my advocate, I actually really like, Mmm, I can see, you know, a, a, a defense attorney buying my advocate.com, um, and doing something interesting with that. Uh, I w I loved them. Tech names, loved them. So online funds.com. Uh, it’s, it’s, it’s basic and generic, but it’s also descriptive and I think that one has value in the right hands. Uh, cool. homes.com. I also love real estate names. I think cool homes.com is fun, not high value but, but fun and, and we’re something in the right
hands. And uh, the last one that jumped out@meisfuneralplans.com. You know, something and nothing that anyone wants to think about, but something that, that inevitably we all have to do. And uh, I think that’s, uh, a nice cute word domain with strong metrics. Agreed. Yeah. Good one. All right. Thank you guys. I think that’s a good list. Anything else you should think we should cover or highlight on here or?
Um, you know, I was looking at the search volume on super pizza, which I think is a fun brand. Uh, and I was surprised to see 6,600 exact match searches per month. Um, so I went to the U S PTO and typed in and there actually is a trademark for super pizza by super bakery in, uh, the classification, all natural organic whole grain pizza dough. So, well, I think that a pizzeria could start up on Bainbridge Island called super pizza and use it. I think that it could be, you know, somebody could make an argument in court and I don’t know [inaudible] it’s a little close of a trademark. Um, so I would think twice about buying that one.
Hmm. Yeah. And that’s a great lesson too. Um, not that any of us are giving legal advice, but it is smart. Even when you assume something wouldn’t have a trademark, just check, um, just check, you know,
if it’s going to be something specific like that. I don’t know how you could sell super pizza for anything other than pizza or I don’t know, a video game. Um,
like if you were buying, if you were buying stairwell and there was an organic pizza dough that had a trademark for stairwell, I’d be like, that’s no skin off. Yeah, that’s, that’s fine. Like, I, that doesn’t affect my buying that domain at all. Yeah. So my portfolio is made up primarily of one word, kind of generic dictionary words. They all entered Marco. I don’t even look them up because it doesn’t matter. Yeah. Throb. Pleasure might not have, it doesn’t matter what trademark anyone has. stamina.com. Okay. [inaudible].
Yeah. Funny thing is when a broker called me up that name years ago and I was, I was in the car and I was, I was with Lisa, uh, at least as my wife. For those of you listening that don’t know Lisa is, um, and you guys know stamina dotcom. I told her the price and she goes, yeah,
it sounds like a good price.
And I said, yeah, I think, I think it is. Think I’m going to buy it. And she just walked, I’ll split with you.
And so, uh, I used our joint money so she and I own that together. So Lisa participates in your stamina, you have stammered together? Yeah. The world of domain investing. Why is it every time? It’s right before our sponsors. Really guys. Oh, did I, I guess I won’t tell you what Kate, just, just [inaudible] for the sponsors, you know, I feel bad for the eyes at home. They can’t participate in this. No. [inaudible]
there should be a live show where people can just chat while we’re talking.
Would we get through it and then they can see all of our, so yeah. Before we jump into the next section where we’re, we’re, um, we’re really gonna focus and talk a little bit about working from home, best practices, good ideas, train wreck events we’ve had, whatever helps. Um, let’s take a moment for our advertisers. They support us in our educational mission.
Efty was built by domain investors to increase your inquiries, sales and profit, forget spreadsheets and archive emails. Manage your entire investment portfolio in one place using a secure and completely confidential platform. Learn more at efty.com. That’s E F T Y.com.
So, um, thank you guys for agreeing to do a little bit different thing for our third section today. Um, let’s talk about working from home. This is a huge transition for many Americans and um, even some of us who’ve worked from home like Brighton, you’ve worked from home I think forever, but you’ve closed your four. Oh, just kidding. But I know you’ve closed your four audit, your four offices, and transitioned your employees to working from home. So I think all of us have some interesting insights here. Um, Mike? Nope, just kidding. Braden, your first, um, tell us, tell us what you’ve learned, tips, tricks, anything you have to say. Are you home right now? I’m sorry? Are you home right now? I am. Yeah, the office is closed, so I work from an office typically. Um, I mean sometimes I’ll, I stay home because I don’t have to go to the office, but I’ve got people there and it’s better to face time with people, but not for the last few weeks. I’ve been home for three and a half weeks now. I think. Um, it’s not bad. Lisa’s home too. Um, we, we have in our house, we have a, we’ve held the study and we have this, this double-sided desk,
one giant desk that
you have to size. Uh, Kate, what do you call that? [inaudible],
right. Says, okay, so we have a partner’s desk. Um, we, we face each other, but we’re, we’re now, um, but since we’re both home all day and we’re doing stuff like this, there’s a lot of video calls, video conferences, phone calls. So I got, I got kicked out. Well, the office, um, so I’m in the dining room, but I have a nice view, um, out the,
okay. I don’t know if you can see that. You do and you got the puppies. Was that before you got the puppies?
Uh, yeah. All the puppies wander around the house. Okay. So there everybody gets focus. Um, so what I’m doing differently now is a lot more zoom chats with my staff where we get everybody on the same time. Um, everyone’s required to be available all the time, just like I would walk into somebody’s office. I want to be able to walk in on them. Um, so I need to be able to just, just, um, zooming in on them, if you will. Um, so everybody’s working and, and uh, dress professionally, um, or the lawyers are nobody else’s.
Um, so, so that’s the difference. A lot, a lot more, um, uh, group video calls that I didn’t, I didn’t do before. I may certainly Skype with a lot of people. It wasn’t with a lot of people, um, outside of my office, but now it’s, we all try to stay connected. So there’s a lot of that happening. Okay. Um, and then I take a lot of breaks. I go for a walk or walk the dogs or go for a bike ride or take a swim or do something just to kind of break things up. Cause I have a tendency to, you know, work a lot more. Um, I get up at, um, I think I was at my computer at 6:00 AM Mmm. And, and then it’s like at 10 o’clock at night, I’m still typing away, so I need to be able to break it up. And then what Lisa and I are trying to do is, is that six o’clock or six 30, we stop and no more work. Um, which is, which is kind of hard because I’m dealing with people in China and so they’re now up in, so I’m getting messages. So I try not to do too much of that. But, um, you know, you have to kind of [inaudible] make the time for before, um, some RNR go out, sit in the sun and uh, not make it all work all the time,
which means I have something to say. I’m just something I’ve noticed about you, Braden at the beginning of this call. Really and truly you, you walked into a door right before the beginning of the call, you look exhausted. Um, we started out with, you know, we were like, how can we even film, we’re all sharing this like dire news and difficult things. And um, and then I thought it was really special. All paused. A couple of us got out, our dogs had that moment to help transition us before we started. But you look so healthy and happy and sunshiny right now. And that alone, to me, just the market difference in your appearance from an hour ago when we started to now really is like a physical manifestation to me of why we all need to spend time with each other and to find the lighthearted moments.
Um, and just to connect on any level. So, um, thank you for every hour. You’re working with the city of LA to helping them out a little bit. Let’s little shout out. I don’t know what your cool is saying or not, but you’re a zero man. Wow. It’s a lot of, a lot of projects I’m working on. Well thank you. Yeah. Humble. You know, stuff actually happens because there’s a lot of hurry up and wait, particularly as it relates to funding. There’s the various organizations I’m working with. You know, they’d want to do things, but then they have to go and get their funding approved and um, know, well there’s a lot of things we need. We need certification for some things and approvals and there’s a lot of stuff in the works. Yeah. Which, which takes a lot of time. Um, and that’s why working so much.
Sure. Yeah. Well that’s really meaningful. Not only I’m sure to the city of LA, but I mean just everyone in the country knowing that there are clever, um, hardworking, um, people in the business. We’re all looking for solutions for us all over. And the beauty and excitement of America in particular in our creativity. I really see that shine in so many different domain investors I’ve spoken with who are doing incredible, unexpected things that all together. Um, I think, uh, you know, it’s a mountain to be moved. So good for you. Uh, uh, Kate, what’s going on? Uh, how’s working from home for you? Do you already work from home? I have worked from home since 1998. Wow.
Walk born in 1998 but good for you. Our friendship just ended, there was so much love. Yeah. So I, I definitely can share what I have found to be best practices, but of course those are completely different now then they were three weeks ago. Mmm. Right. So because you know, I used to say, Oh, make sure that you schedule one social outing a day, you know, have coffee with a client, have lunch with a prospect, meet a friend for yoga. You don’t go to dinner with friends a couple times a week or what have you. The, obviously that’s all off the table. So, um, I would say the best practices for me now quarantine Kate. Um, is that it? [inaudible] yeah. Um, uh, act like you’re going out of the house meeting, get up, make your bed, uh, you know, put on actual clothes instead of you know, your pajamas.
Um, and uh, you know, it, it mentally transitions you I find for the day. Um, also make sure you have a really good, uh, functional setup, a working set up. For instance, um, you know, I, I have a large monitor in addition to my [inaudible] laptop and I have risers and they don’t have to be fancy. You can use a box as a riser. You can use books, make sure you have an ergonomic chair, cause you’re going to be sitting, sitting in it a lot. Uh, I like doing a large monitor and a laptop because then I can go on a vacation and work in my dining room right? Or my backyard does my vacation spots these days. Um, and take care of yourself, make sure you’re getting enough sleep, make sure you’re getting really good nutrition, you know, make yourself beautiful meals. Um, reach out and talk to family and friends and colleagues and check on them, see how you can help connect and make each other laugh like we did today.
That’s all. So, so, so important and have a purpose. You know, if we’re all just, you know, figuring out what your purpose is right now is your purpose to, uh, to, to help others. Then see how you can help get on Twitter, um, search, trending hashtag. See how you can get involved and help and lend a hand with Twitter. Well, what I mean by that is that how I found out about protecting nurse.com because I was searching for ways to help our healthcare workers, right? So social media, like any tool can be used for, you know, good or evil, but there are so many ways to get involved without leaving your home or you can support. There is a doctor, grandparent, um, you know, there’s so many things that you can do through mentorship, through kindness. If you have, you have extra funds, check out feeding america.com or.org.
They, they own both. Um, and then, you know, kind of try to balance your, uh, you know, when you work from home, like Braden was alluding to, the, the lines can get blurry and if you’re, if you’re, if you’re type a and driven and entrepreneurial, like we all are, you can find yourself working all the time. So I found it helpful to break up the day with, you know, an hour of exercise, uh, you know, long power walk or bike or bike ride or away from other people of course. Um, and then, you know, Todd, my partner is working from out in his home office and uh, we, you know, kinda meet in the hallway and say hello. And then we again, like you at I Braden, we knock off work by about six or six 30 and we make a beautiful dinner together and talk about our days and just try to encourage one another. But my top recommendation is to have a really cute coworker and you can still adopt online. Absolutely. You can foster a dog or a cat. Uh, even if you’re not ready to adopt a, you can kind of talk
nervous licking is,
this is Hudson for those of you are listening on audio. This is a 13 month old little red and white cavalier controls. Daniel. He was just the cutest, funniest thing. It makes me laugh every day. For those of you who said, I can’t adopt dog because I’m not home enough to walk them and it’s not fair to take and to be able to take care of them, you know, do not have that bullshit excuse because you’re home. Go adopt the dog or cat here, here or foster. If you don’t think you could do it after the fact, just do it for now. That’s right. Good call. Yeah. Michael Cyger.
All right. I have been working from home for a long time, uh, since 2002, we’ve run our company remotely. So, um,
so yeah, I enjoy working from home. My biggest thing is, uh, like, like was just said to have a work area. I don’t think you can sit in bed or sit on the couch where you normally watch TV and, and feel like you’re going to be that productive. You need to find some area that you can sit for most of the day with breaks, but that’s your space and you can put what you need around you and feel productive that way. Mmm. Like Kate, I think that you need to set up a routine that you do daily. Um, if you had a routine prior to the pandemic and the lockdown, then use that same routine. So if you’re up by six and you’re at work by eight and you, you know, chatted with somebody at 10 o’clock for 10 minutes before working another session before lunch, like do that same stuff Duff, just call the people on the phone or I’m sure you can.
I’ll get you the number for, um, Braden zoom session for everybody in his work. So you can just zoom with Braden. He’s on all the time. Um, but yes, still set up that daily routine and then stick to it. I do recommend getting dressed as well. Kate said, uh, and then finally make lists. Like I, my wife and I joke around that like we love lists. Like you just make the list and then you feel so good when you check it off. Like you’re making progress breasts every single day. So I have an Asana board, asana.com. Um, I use, I have one for daily priorities. I have one for, um, each of our publishing companies. And then whenever I have an idea that needs to be like, I should redesign my newsletter to make sure that I take advantage of this. Like I just type it on sauna item and then it either goes into, Mmm, my priority one, my priority two or the parking lot, the parking lots, just anything that I’ve ever thought of in my life. And then once a quarter or so, I go in there and take a look at it. What should I be doing for the next quarter? What do I want to try and achieve strategically that makes sense to do. Um, and then I just move them around into priority two as I have time or priority one, what I should be working on for the next week. And uh, and then it feels so good to just check it off when you get stuff done. So, um, yeah, definitely think about keeping a list and checking it twice
and don’t forget to exercise. Yes. Don’t put on 15 pounds while you’re sitting at home.
I find like I’m skipping meals now, but I will skip lunch because I wake up, have Bri and I still work out just as much as I did before. I think I’m running more, but like I just feel like I’m not burning as many calories for some reason.
Well, yeah. You’re not even like walking to your car. Um, I will say so I’ve been working at home for eight years and in that time I’ve had eight summers with my children at home while I’m working. And so I was very nervous to transition to working from home and read quite a few books, none of which I remember now. Sorry. Um, but I did, I read a bunch of books on how to be successful about it. I talked to everyone I could think of about it and kind of my heart goes out to the rest of the world that didn’t get that time to repair, think it through, planet out. And it’s just stuck in this. And I really recognize that must be hard. And I think there are a lot of pressures, especially with other people, whether it’s children or just other people in your home, other people want to eat at the same time or at a different time or, you know, um, did I cook this?
Did I clean this? Um, you know, before or after, because my work from home routine is I clean up before everybody gets home, but not necessarily the minute, you know, something happened and that lifestyle doesn’t work for me anymore. But, uh, what I have found for myself, certainly. Um, I try to set my time, I divided it into like, what are my primary tasks in life? And it’s pretty much my self care cooking and cleaning, like household care. Mmm. There’s, um, exercise, which I don’t consider. I mean I believe it is self care, but it’s so much more than that. It’s um, and then, um, obviously the main chunk of my time is being gainfully employed. Thank God. Um, but I think once I broke that down for me and then every summer I was telling Mike earlier, I’ve always done this for my children in the summers.
I break down like academically, what do they need to achieve summer, um, intellectually, emotionally. Um, personally what do they need to know? Are there any relationships that need work? Um, so I built out a schedule every summer for my kids and I save it and the next summer I re rework it. And so I just pulled from that and I’m grateful that I have that. Um, not just the actual paper, but like the experience. Um, I find it means a lot to actually print it out for myself and my kids to print out what are our goals during this time, what good can come of this. Um, what are we grateful for during this time? Um, so we do a family meeting in normal life like once every two or three weeks. But now we do it every week. And, um, and then I’ve worked out basically in the mornings you wake up, make your bed, get dressed, hygiene breakfast, then school starts after all my kids are all settled, then I start my stuff, you know, and then I have them staggered to take breaks at different times.
So sometimes they get to be with each other and other times they can’t, so that, um, they start to miss each other. Um, and um, and force it, I basically, I made all my kids have to have an exercise routine, which I think as adults we’re more used to disciplining ourselves hopefully. And um, yeah. But for children, and it’s hard, especially if they don’t want to or they don’t feel the time. Um, I also have made sure to have outdoor time scheduled. Um, like I work on my patio more than I ever did in the past. Um, but I also hold little meetings with my kids out there. Like, instead of, you know, I have my kids once a day, they need to come and tell me how they’re doing in school, what’s happening in this class or that class. Um, so I’m holding a lot of those little meetings on the patio.
Um, and then otherwise, you know, obviously doing other things outside, walk the dog, blah, blah, blah. But, uh, one other thing I have, um, my dad’s cousin, um, has always for like, as long as my dad comes from this enormous Italian family and, um, my dad’s cousin, every Sunday he has a time that he calls someone in the family and he just like opens the family book that he has. And literally he closes his eyes and points his finger down and randomly I get a call from this dude and it’s like, so awkward for like 30 seconds, and then you talked for half an hour and we have these. And I’m like, what a great idea. And more or less I’ve adopted that. I have had conversations with people in the domain industry that I have known for 15 years and I’ve never had, um, like more than like, Hey, what’s up? How you doing? And this has been amazing and nobody minds and it’s not awkward. They’re like, Oh, you want to talk to me? Okay. And you just call
people that are,
it’s not as random as my dad’s cousin. Alright, but there are people who I’m like, I’ve never talked to you. And literally they don’t even ask like, why are you calling? What do you want? They’re just like, I’m so happy. My cylinder and
[inaudible] they even pick up like who picks up their phone nowadays?
I don’t know about you Mike, but everybody takes my calls, you know, one time, one time Braden called me and we were Skyping back and forth and he’s like, I bought a new house. Let me show you when he starts. I don’t know if we have FaceTime or Skyping and he’s showing me the whole house. I mean, that’s awesome. I already love you, but it’s been, it’s been really special. And I do. Last thing, I think in a work environment, like if things are slow, amazing time to work out, kinks in different situations, different challenges that aren’t a big priority. This is the time. I mean, so much productivity could come from this. And the neat thing is it takes a lot of creativity and we need a creative outlet somewhere. And I think, I think this is it. So Braden, you now have fabulous posture. You get the best posture of um, Sherpa award. Um, and I think we’re good to wrap. What do you guys think? Any shout outs, anything going on or are we just like we talked to shut up,
shout out number one. Uh, thanks to CDOT they just came onto DNH Academy as a corporate customer. So I am honored that they chose Deanna Academy too, onboard their new brokers and give them education. And then shout out number two. I’ve been doing, uh, socials every Friday afternoon at 2:00 PM Pacific, which is late enough for me to start drinking in the day. And uh, there are a ton of fun. Last Friday, we had 92 people on at one time and we’re doing them every Friday, 2:00 PM sorry for the people over in Asia because it’s so late. But I, I I’m really not functional before 12 o’clock, uh, is the problem. And so yeah, go to a Dean academy.com/. Social I’ll send you an email with the zoom information in a calendar notice so you can just click on it and add it to your calendar or there are a lot of fun. We chit chat. Uh, all three of you have been on one or all of them. Right. And you might’ve been on all of them. Mmm. Yeah. So it’s just fun to like see people’s faces joke around. I try and come up with some topics, but then we go to Q and a and sometimes we go and the chat is open so you get to chat about whatever you want.
So yeah, come on over and join us every Friday.
Super cool. Mike, thanks for organizing. You’re great at that. Kate, any shout outs? Mmm, I’ve had the pleasure of attending two of Mike socials. I highly them. It’s
a great opportunity. Uh, I’ve also been organizing my own socials with my extended family who live very, you know, they’re all back in the South. So, um, so task, just kind of seconding what you were saying about the, you know, reach out to people. They’re very happy to hear from you. And uh, it was yesterday to see, you know, my [inaudible] little nieces and nephews and then, you know, my, my grandparents, my grandma, my two grandmothers. It was very special. And then of course everyone, all the, all the boomers fumbling with the zoom technology. It was, it was, it was a little bit Christopher guest there for how many people do you get on at one time? Uh, we have had, uh, seven to 10 on, on the, the two we’d done so far and uh, and we’ve been organizing zoom game nights with friends, celebrating friend’s birthdays over zoom, you know, you do what you can, you get your, like Tesla’s was saying, there’s a lot of creativity that can come out of this.
Um, and this is what I’ve been telling my clients and also people that I’m in conversation with regarding acquiring domain names is look, opportunity comes out of chaos, right? And then, and then you just get into conversation with them. What do you need right now? What are your goals? How can I support you? I had a great conversation today with an executive and a media company and they’re looking at a couple of the very high value domain names I’m brokering right now. And I just asked her, I said, how do you feel like this would further your objective and are there, are there any questions you have for me? And that just kicked off this creative brainstorming session. We ended up talking for ages and uh, you know, at the end of it, I don’t know if she’s gonna they’re gonna make an offer or not, but you know what, I made a new friend.
It was a creative outlet and we sort of helped one another with brainstorming, um, how these domains can solve problems and open doors, particularly right now. So get creative. Very cool. Thanks Kate. Yeah, Braden. I don’t have any shows, but I have a car tip. Hmm. All right. For those of you who drive a combustion engine, cars, cars, take gas, don’t forget, you need to drive in them every week or two, you know, a couple of blocks, not just starting them. You can drive them also. It will help prevent any rodent damage. What are you saying? So I’ve got in my car, I’m an electric car, but I was just going to drive it last week and it would not start. Yeah, just a drive train. So this is not going to to the shop. And they called me back and it has damaged because it’s been parked for three weeks and so little critters got up there and ate the wiring. Oh, for the transmission. Oh cool.
Yeah. So I said, well, okay, well what’s this this morning? So he says, well, I’d go over the quote with you, but he says it’s many thousands of dollars. He says it’s a very expensive thing. It’s, it takes days to fix it. And he says, I can go over with you, but you’re going to want to make an insurance claim. So just the J D gesture is, it’s really expensive as the gestures are going to come out. I want to want to see it. This is the dealer. Okay. So I called my insurance company. Guess what’s not covered? Rodent damage and damage. So those of you that are not driving your car, make sure you drive it every so often. So a keep the alternator charged and be, you don’t get road damage. One more car tip is if you’re not driving your car, you know your insurance is based on mileage.
So you might have 10,000, 15, 20,000 miles a year coverage. Um, if you’re not driving, you bring it down to 5,000 or 1000 a year and it’ll drop your insurance. And if you’re not driving it at all, um, you can, you can take it down to non operable limits. Some hundred dollars a year. Good call. Thanks Braden. Nice to know. Yeah. Yeah, I’m driving my PR, we have a Prius that, uh, I didn’t drive for six months cause my daughter didn’t go through the driving class and yada yada long story kids today, some of them don’t want to actually drive. So I’ve got this older Prius that we didn’t drive and then the batteries discharge and it costs like 1000 bucks to recharge them or 1500 bucks to do something because we didn’t drive it on a regular basis. So yesterday I needed to run to the post office.
I’m like, Oh, I’ll take the Prius cause I need to drive it. Like you’re saying, he can’t just start it up and I get like a mile up the road. Yeah. [inaudible] [inaudible] uh huh. Red warning symbol. I’m showing a picture on my phone. It comes up on the dash. I’m like, Oh shoot. Like what is going on here? And then the gas wouldn’t work properly and it was still driving, but it wouldn’t accelerate very well. And so, yeah. So drive, um, more often than I do. Oh, here’s another question. So I was watching TV last night and you know, Chris Cuomo from like CNN or something like that. He’s on the screen, he’s got like, he’s got coronavirus now. So he’s at home. And I’m like, wow, if you look really close, like I just show you real fast. Bam. It showed you real fast. Doesn’t that look like me? No. Does that look like me? [inaudible] and I was like, is it shame culture staircase? I forget. I thought it looked like me. And I’m like, and then I showed my kids the picture and they’re like, it looks just like you dad does. It does. You guys know who his brother is, right? Yeah. Governor Cuomo from New York. Yeah. Their banter is funny. So the governor gets on this show regularly
recently. He’ll say, governor, thanks for coming on the show. Governor says, mom said I had to see the clip of Chris making the, the mother sauce. No, I do look it up on YouTube. So they’re, you know, they’re in, uh, so, so, uh, you know, Chris Cuomo is in quarantine at home. Yeah. Filming from his basement and then, and then there’s B roll of him making, yeah, their idea. Italian mother’s homemade sauce with a picture of his mom behind her whole banter. And then he’s like sneaking to the, his brother the gov and he’s like, you know, I mean you couldn’t even find like a jacket that fits your ride. And he said in one hour a day.
And then there’s like, my mom loves me more. It was amazing. They have great, there was one might’ve been yesterday where he says, Chris says to his brother, so what do you think? I mean, there’s a lot of notoriety now. Everybody knows who you are. You thinking about run for president [inaudible] have you thought about it? You want to think about it? No, you’re a good interviewer. I mean, it just means that have come out of this. I mean, social media is having its day. I mean, we are so lucky. It is not 1918, whatever they went through, my heart goes out to them. Thank you guys for taking so much time to be on here for you. Certainly uplifted my spirits for the day. Um, and you kind of had some smart stuff to say here and there. We’ll see y’all next time. Stay safe by. Stay six feet away. That’s right. Thank you. Tess. Stay safe everyone. Great to see you guys. Bye. Bye.
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