Monte talks with Dan Polcrano, Executive Editor and CEO: Metro Newspapers, and Brian Null of golfcourses.com

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello everyone. Welcome to Domain Masters. Another week under our belt and another great show to have tonight. I have two great domainers who are guests tonight, and it's the first time I'll have two gentlemen that have been very successful in the domain business. We usually have guests that are from the search industry or webmasters or CEOs of companies that have been successful and legal experts; but tonight I decided to make it a complete domain  success story. My first guest, who I'll have in after the commercial here, is Dan Pulcrano; and he's the founder and CEO of the Metro Newspapers. The Metro Newspapers is locally based in California and a group of three weekly newspapers which includes the Metro Silicon Valley, Metro Santa Cruz, and North Bay Bohemian. And why does that have anything to do with domain names you may ask? Well, Dan happens to own some of the most prestigious city domain names in the entire world. Names like Houston.com, Philadelphia.com, LosAngeles.com, SanJose.com, basically every major city in Texas, California, and across the country. He is also part of a larger network of city-related domain names, which is the AssociatedCities network. It's a great network that a bunch of domainers who own a bunch of city names have gotten together and really created the basis and foundation for a local search network, which is going to be pretty killer. So, I'll have Dan on in a minute; and I also will have Brian Null on, who many of you know as a forum member in many of the forums. He's been very successful in selling and buying domain names recently. If you've read on DNJournal, two of the most recent successes that he's had is the selling of OfficeSupply.com to the HYPERLINK "http://www.ireit.com" Internet REIT group, which I had their founder on a couple months ago, Mark Ostrovsky; and he purchased OfficeSupply.com from Brian. We did the escrow for that. Brian also purchased GolfCourses.com as part of his GolfCourse network of domain names; and he's been pretty successful with that. So, we're going to learn how these guys are being successful on the web with their domain strategies and learn a little bit about their business and what they can teach us about being successful with our domains. So, hang on. We're going to break for a couple commercials and be back on with Dan Pulcrano.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Again, this is Monte Cahn. I'm your host. My first guest again is Dan Pulcrano. He's been an internet pioneer since 1993. As I explained, he's the CEO and Executive Editor of the Metro Newspapers, which is located in the Silicon Valley area; and we're going to learn a little bit about his business and its subsidiary, Boulevards.com, which operates one of the largest networks of city.com web sites. Its brands include SanFrancisco.com, LosAngeles.com, Houston.com, Philadelphia.com, and more than 200 other cities. Boulevards.com was one of the first operators of city guides on the web. Boulevards.com also operates the MrMovieTimes.com network, which includes sites such as newyorkmovietimes.com and chicagomovietimes.com. Dan, welcome to the show.

Dan: Thanks, Monte. It's good to be here.

Monte: Yeah. Glad to have you; and Dan and I met each other for the first time at the most recent SES meeting. Again, it's a pleasure to be able to go to several different conferences and meet our customers. Dan happens to be one of our customers, and it was a real pleasure getting to know you, getting together with you, meeting you, and learning a little bit more about your business. So, I really appreciate that.

Dan: Likewise, Monte. Sometimes it's good to get together in the non-virtual world.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. Definitely, 'cause when you're virtual, you don't really know who you're doing business with. So, tell us a little bit about your domain background; well, just give us a little bit about your background, first of all in business and how you got into the domain name business. Then, you really hit a home run on the city name. So, a lot of people want to know how you seek these things out, how you got in early in line to get the domain names, if you had to get them in the aftermarket, if you registered them from scratch. All that stuff.

Dan: Well, we registered some of them; but the big ones, we purchased from their initial registrants. We purchased them for what was considered a lot of money in the late 90's. In most cases, low to mid-five figures and sometimes in the six figures. But in retrospect, those were very good values given the appreciation in the industry. I got into the business accidentally, I guess. We were publishers of local weekly newspapers here in the Silicon Valley. Being kind of the canary in the coal mine here in Silicon Valley, we realized that a lot of what was being done on print was going to go online. So, I started looking at putting together city guides for various cities we were doing business in and also trying to work with other publishers to get their content online through the city guides. We were doing that even before the web browser came out. We had launched a service called LiveWire at the LiveWire.com domain in 1993; as you remember, the web explosion was 1994. So, basically we saw it as an extension of our industry, providing information to communities. An interesting thing that I realized after we started going online is, we always looked at what we were doing as publishing, and what we found is that to print through the years, what we were really doing was we were creating communities of interest.

Monte: Right.

Dan: Both geographical and around subjects. Publishers never really saw themselves that way; and what we had done in the old dialog days, the plain old telephone service days of BBSs is we were aggregating these little geographical online communities where people would come and talk to each other online and then get together in the real world. They could call up and say, “Hey meet me at this restaurant or this club, or whatever,” and be there in a few minutes. When the web came along, that kind of changed everything; because everything went global. We saw an opportunity around the city domains to kind of create these local communities again which had been created by default by the realities of dialog telephone service and local and long-distance dialing rates.

Monte: So, you were like before the local search times. I mean, you basically took a local idea that went global and brought it back local again by getting the city names. You had that vision.

Dan: There wasn't even directory back then [laughing]. I remember seeing a couple barefoot guys in lecture, and we went by their offices; and they, of course, turned out to be Yahoo. We were like a few years before Yahoo even started with their directory, and then search came later.

Monte: Yeah. That's amazing. So, God, what foresight and vision to be able to use a local city name and actually put it to use like that.

Dan: Yeah. Well, like I said, we were the canary in the coal mine being in Silicon Valley; so we saw first what was going to happen to traditional media. That's why we got in gear; and also I've always loved playing with computers and technology. So, it was fun and interesting for me as well; and I didn't have a family, so I could stay up late online. Then, when it came down to registering domain names, I was up at 3 or 4 in the morning, as probably many of your listeners have been, trying to grab names.

Monte: Right. So, what was the most money that you paid for a domain name, and what was the domain name at the time, if you can share that?

Dan: I think Houston's our most expensive. I don't recall the actual price, but let's just say it was mid-six figures.

Monte: Okay, and the least expensive domain name and what city was that?

Dan: We probably bought a number of major cities probably right around $10,000, some of them probably even less.

Monte: Like, give me an example of one of those cities that were $10,000.

Dan: San Francisco.

Monte: Wow. That's incredible.

Dan: [Laughing] It was a lot of money at the time, though.

Monte: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: It was just a word on the internet. People thought I just had a screw loose.

[inaudible]

Monte: [Laughing] I don't think they think that now. Wow, that's incredible.

Dan: Don't forget. $10,000 was down payment on a condo back then.

Monte: Right. But still, to own a city name back then, you know. And again I guess you registered, like you said, some from scratch. Maybe not some of your more premier ones, but I bet you got some really good ones from scratch. Maybe some smaller city names.

Dan: You couldn't make any money with it back then, though.

Monte: Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. So this is a really true long-term hold for you.

Dan: And there were significant risks as well. I mean, there was a threat from the cities. Remember Barcelona tried to get their domain back. So, that was that worry. There was also the worry that the domain name scheme wouldn't hold up because there were these little schemes, like real names, to try to divert domains. That, of course, failed, thankfully. And there was the worry that the proliferation of other domain suffixes, other TLDs, was going to dilute the value of .coms; but what we found is that, it wound up just enhancing the value of the .coms because the clutter created a situation just like toll-free telephone numbers were 1-800-FLOWERS was worth a lot more than 1-866- or 877-FLOWERS. So, .com became the most valuable cyber real estate.

Monte: Right. Definitely. And, okay, so you took this idea and you got the domain names; and then, how did you meet the other folks that owned the city names and try to get together this community that you have of AssociatedCities?

Dan: Well, we kind of started stepping on each other at some point. I was trying to buy them all, of course, and probably took a run at just about all the major cities at one point. Then other people started jumping in there and bought a few; and they organized an association [inaudible] Chicago.com, Atlanta.com, brought together this association and they invited me to join. We talked it over for a while and wound up joining forces, cause boulevards had pretty much become its own network. We owned 60% of the major cities in the U.S. and then between them, they owned a good chunk of others, as well as the CostelloCities internet company, which owns Nashville, Palm Springs, and some other good names. So, the four of us got together and formed a new AssociatedCities. Then a bunch of other domain name holders saw what we were doing, and they asked to join as well. So, Richmond.com just joined, Vancouver.com, SanDiego.com, and others. So, we've pretty much got a pretty good coverage in the U.S. now.

Monte: Yeah. That's great.

Dan: It's kind of like the old broadcast television days when individual broadcasters formed networks and shared programming; and newspapers eventually developed the Associated Press to kind of provide the connective tissue between the newspaper industry.

Monte: So I'm assuming that by having all the cities, or at least, I mean it's not all of them obviously, but everyone coming together with the city names, you're creating quite a nice, local search network and are able to refer back and forth between cities. So like, for instance, I'm assuming that, and we discussed this actually, and so I'm not assuming, you actually told me. If somebody's dialing in Philadelphia.com, chances are you can send them information and links and hotel information from the New York area and from the Washington, DC area, because typically people that go to any of those cities are also interested in the cities that are in that local region.

Dan: Exactly. We do see traffic interchange between our sites and other sites, particularly when there is geographical proximity; because, very often someone's coming over from Germany or France to visit New York, they're going to jump off and see some other cities. So, they might wind up on our Boston site, for example.

Monte: Right. So what are you doing on each of the city sites to get advertisers or people and companies and organizations to start filling the space so that people are getting good content and stuff out of it?

Dan: Well, we're starting to develop sales tips in all our various cities. It's a big challenge for us because, of course, we've got so many cities. So, scaling up quickly is a business challenge for us; but we are putting sales reps into the cities, we're hiring writers around the country. So, we've got staff now in Houston, Denver. We're looking for staff members in Washington, Philadelphia, Raleigh, St. Petersburg, Seattle, Los Angeles, and a few other cities.

Monte: Wow. That's great.

Dan: St. Louis.

Monte: That's great. So this is just kind of, it's still, even though there's a lot of cities here and names have been established a long time ago, it sounds like that it's in its infancy and there's great potential.

Dan: We're just at the bottom of this. One of the things that all of us city.com domain owners are trying to do is improve the functionality and quality of our sites. We get a lot of natural type-in traffic. Most of our traffic doesn't come through search engines. It's just people….

Monte: Typing it in into direct navigation traffic is what you're getting them, I guess.

Dan: Exactly. People are just, you know, they say I'm visiting Los Angeles, so they type LosAngeles.com in their browser and they see what's there. Now, as we can provide more depth of information and a better experience for users, we think people will keep coming back more and more.

Monte: Right. That's great. So, and are you having any difficulty working with the other members of the AssociatedCities network? Is everybody on the same page? How are you guys meeting, coming up with the ideas to start working with each other doing the cross linking? I guess it's important to have some kind of consistency between sites that you're linking to so that people don't get lost in the menus and if they're on a different side of the pages, and things aren't laid out in a consistent manner because they're going bouncing from one city to the next.

Dan: Well, like any association, you have differences of opinion, different strategies; but we're finding is that the sites are becoming more and more, I don't want to say standardized, because they have individual personalities. But, you know, we're finding that revenue streams exist in certain areas, we're refining our business models and comparing information, which is helping the sites evolve into a more predictable experience. We have developed linking schemes among our sites, we do meet quarterly as a board, we've had meetings in Hilton Head, Las Vegas, and we're getting ready to meet in Acapulco. It's not a bad association, we're actually going to be going to Buenos Aires next year as well. BuenosAires.com is hosting it, so it's a fun association to be involved with. We're always out on someone's boat or smoking cigars in some nice Vegas hotel; so, we try and have fun while we're trying to invent the future of city guides as well. But we do have lively debates and arguments, and the board comes in and referees issues and tries to keep us all together. And we have lively email discussions as well.

Monte: Right. So, give us a little bit of an idea of what you envision the future bringing to not only this network but your domain names as a portfolio. I mean, what do you see like 5 or maybe in the next 12 months and then the next 5 years on this whole thing?

Dan: Well, the big effort right now is to develop really good technology to support or city guides and better integration of features, trusted supplier content, engaging the communities more. Just building onto sites richer, deeper, and better interface. I think all the domain name holders are interested in that. So that's what we're doing is to [inaudible] network, trying to connect ourselves more tightly to the cities. Now AssociatedCities, the trade association, is looking for other city domain name owners to join us. They will only accept a pure city.com domain. If it's hyphenated, misspelled, or in a language other than English, or a .net, they are not eligible to join. But if it's a city.com domain like Atlanta.com or Albuquerque.com, then they're welcome to join.

Monte: Right. I know that you and I spoke briefly about should you be letting smaller cities in versus big cities, and probably yes because it even supports the infrastructure of the network. I mean, how big does a city need to be or is there any limit as long as it is classified as a city?

Dan: Well, PidgeonForge.com just joined. It's a city in Tennessee that none of us had heard of; but then when we looked it up, we realized it had a substantial amount of tourism and they joined us. I think we're in the process of discussing some minimum threshold as far as population or tourist activity, but I would encourage anyone with a pure city.com domain name to get in touch with us and then we can review the criteria with them.

Monte: And what's the best email address to get in touch with you and I'll post it in the chat room while I'm talking to you.

Dan: If you want to email the whole board, it's board@associatedcities.com; and I would just say go to the associatedcities.com web site and then there is a contact us form to enable you to get in touch. Info@associatedcities.com is the best. Let's go with the info@associatedcities.com.

Monte: So, how long have you been in Silicon Valley?

Dan: I've been here about 23-24 years.

Monte: So you've seen, I mean, God, you must have seen just a complete evolution of not only startup companies but the whole online industry just evolve in front of your eyes and then the crash and then the re-evolution of what's going on here. I was just there obviously a couple weeks ago, so Yahoo is right in your back yard, Google is right in your back yard, WebEx, Adobe. What are some of the other companies that are around the corner from you?

Dan: eBay, Intel, a couple little companies named HP and Apple.

Monte: Yeah. Little ones. [Laughing] So, tell me about that experience, living in Silicon Valley watching the internet boom, bust, resurgence of the concepts and what's going on now.

Dan: Well, I never have to buy wallpaper again, because I have a lot of stock certificates from that era I can paper my walls with. [Both laughing] We did a lot of business deals with a lot of startups. It's real interesting. We get the technology first. It's really leading edge and we've done a lot of deals that didn't work and we've done a few that worked out really nicely. You know, people say, “Boy you're really smart to buy all those names.” Well, of course they don't notice the 20 other stupid decisions I made; they just notice the one that worked out well. It's like my Italian grandmother used to do. She used to throw the pasta against the wall and see if it stuck; and that's kind of what happened with us.

Monte: Yeah. Well. I mean I'm sure you had some other good ideas; and all it does is take one good idea to outweigh and make the other ones look insignificant. So, I'm sure that this idea will be fantastic for you.

Dan: Yeah. Monte, I gave the AssociatedCities email address. If anybody wants to email me directly, just email Dan at any of our boulevard cities. Dan@sanfrancisco.com…

Monte: Dan@sanjose.

Dan: Dan@dallas.com, Dan@memphis.com, all of them get to me.

Monte: Right. Now talk a little bit about the Metro Newspapers, because you operate three MetroNews-related periodicals that are free to the public, right? It's comparable to kind of what we have here, what's the name of the Miami newspaper that's uh…

Dan: Miami Times.

Monte: CityLink.

Dan: New Times.

Monte: New Times. Right.

Dan: Yeah, their editor, a good friend of mine, just resigned this week.

Monte: Oh, wow.

Dan: Over that very interesting scandal with the politician who shot himself in the lobby of the Miami Herald.

Monte: Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right.

Dan: He was involved in all that.

Monte: Oh, yeah. I mean I saw that on the news, but I didn't know that was, uh, I didn't put that together. So, tell me a little bit about your experience with your publication and a little bit about how you got into that and how you tie your experiences from the Metro Newspaper into the AssociatedCities network and where you're seeing the evolution of media, both online and traditional media. Because you have a distribution of newspapers that obviously are sitting at the doors of the Googles and Yahoos of the world where people are reading them, and of course you brought things online in those newspapers as well.

Dan: Yeah. Being in the publishing industry gives us a good base, a good foundation for building in the online services. We have a lot of data, entertainment information, listings, movie times, etc., as well as experience in packaging the graphics and information, which has proven very helpful for the online tradition. And unlike other publishers who have been less successful at it, we are not as tightly rooted nor are we defensive. We're not trying to develop online as a defensive strategy to protect our overpriced franchise and expensive infrastructure. We're fully willing to convert it and go with the flow. The dailies are having a much harder time, because they, for years, collected antique competitive rates for their classified ads, real estate sections, big employment ads, and stuff. So, they're having a much harder time than weeklies are. Weeklies are a little bit better niched. Weeklies have, for the past couple decades, grown in circulation; while dailies have basically been losing market share now for the past half century steadily.

Monte: Right. So that kind of positions your newspaper in a pretty good spot.

Dan: Yeah. We hope so. We're now betting on two industries, niche-oriented weekly publication which is very well read. We're the best read publication in Silicon Valley. We even outpolled the dailies in many of their numbers; but also our online business has been really growing fast. We're seeing sales doubling on an annual basis, and even accelerating from there.

Monte: Right. And if anybody is interested in advertising, how's the advertising conversion. Is it a good advertising network to be both part of the online and the traditional media distribution?

Dan: One of the things that we find is really interesting is trackable media. It's a very different sell. For years we would go in as traditional newspapers and say, hey, keep your name in front of the public, brand yourself, and just keep your name out there, and it was kind of an article of faith that it would work; but we could never really prove it. The advertisers would some weeks say my ad didn't work and other weeks they would say yeah I got a couple calls; but there was no tracking mechanism in place. With online media, we'll go in there and guarantee results. We'll say, look, you're going to book this many rooms or you're going to sell this many faucets and toilets if it's a plumbing store, this many glasses if it's an eyeglass store. We'll guarantee to deliver them a certain number of phone calls. So it's a tremendous value for them, and people are kind of shocked when I go in there and make a bold claim. You know, I'll walk into a [inaudible] and say look, we're planning to give you $225,000 this year. Yeah, we're not asking for your money, we're going to give you this money; and if we bring you $225,000 in business, can you give us a little bit of that back?

Monte: Yeah. [Laughing] That's a great way to put it.

Dan: You know, it's kind of a reverse sell.

Monte: Yeah. That's nice. That's very nice. So if someone's interested in advertising in your newspaper or on the online version, who do they contact at the MetroNews?

Dan: Just email me at Dan@sanjose.com and I'll get them in touch with the right contact.

Monte: Cool. And, okay, so now that you've been in the domain name business since, I mean your first name was registered when? 1996?

Dan: 1993.

Monte: 1993. So, God.

Dan: That was, there wasn't even a fee structure. You had to apply for it.

Monte: Right. So, what was your first domain name that you ever registered?

Dan: LiveWire.com.

Monte: LiveWire.com. Okay.

Dan: Which we still own.

Monte: Which you still own. Right. And how many domain names do you own in total?

Dan: About 3,000.

Monte: About 3,000. I know we have them all here at Moniker, nice and safe, right?

Dan: Uh, huh.

Monte: If you were going to give 3 or 4 things that other domainers need to know about being successful on the web using their domain names, what would be some of the things that you would be telling people so that people can take after the lessons you learned? Like you said, you like throwing the spaghetti on the wall to see if it sticks, but you made 20 mistakes before you had a big winner. What are some of the things that have made you successful and you can share with others so that they don't make the same mistakes?

Dan: Well, I think one is develop your sites. Put good information on them. Original content is helpful. Don't be afraid to hire writers. I think that where the industry is heading is having meaningful content on the sites, linkages are important, working with other webmasters to link to you and link back to them is also helpful. Don't be afraid of competition. There can be many people sharing the same space; so, very often you wind up working with your competition. Don't be afraid to be creative. You know, names that we didn't think were worth the price of registering a few years ago are now worth a huge amount of money; and I kind of kick myself for not registering them when they were available.

Monte: Give us an example. Like, what'd you find out?

Dan: Well, first, we completely dismissed .net and others, but now we're finding that we can actually turn them into businesses. We didn't think that, lke for example, category names like losangelestoothwhitening.com. We wouldn't have even looked at it a few years ago, and now we're crazy to have names like that because we find we can monetize those categories very nicely. The other thing we're doing preemptively, is we've started registering many foreign language, foreign character domains. We've registered most of our cities that were available. Everything from Chinese to Arabic and Hebrew.

Monte: In the IDNs?

Dan: In the IDNs.

Monte: Right. Right.

Dan: And we also have picked up some suffixes. We've registered a lot of cities with the .cn suffix. It's still uncertain how the user behavior will adapt to those names, but we think there's a good possibility that they will, so we've been registering those as well.

Monte: Right. That's great. Anything else you can share with people?

Dan: I think it's important to find a good registrar and use good tools. It's nice to have the type of system where you can put in a whole list and see what's available and then register the ones that are not taken. That's very helpful. I think that's probably a few of the good tips I can think of off hand.

Monte: Great. Well, great. You know your point about don't be afraid about the competition is one of the key points that people should realize in this industry. I call it coopetition. If you all work together with your competitors, you advance a whole entire industry. I mean, that's how it's always been in every industry. And what happens in an industry like this one, when 2 million new people get on the web every single week, it's a good thing to work with your competition. I mean, even the Googles and the Yahoos of the world who compete directly, head-to-head with each other in the back, they fill each other with advertising feeds so that they have full networks and people get good experiences on both networks.

Dan: Hey, Monte. What do you think? Can I ask you a question?

Monte: Sure.

Dan: What do you think Google is up to with that $4 billion offering they're going to float?

Monte: Oh, I think they're going to do some major acquisitions and also do some development. I think they're on the acquisition bandwagon. They just announced that they're going right at Yahoo and MSN in many of their offerings. Besides Gmail, they're going to be offering all kinds of web-related tools. I think they're going to go right into hosting just like Yahoo is offering hosting.

Dan: What about travelers.com?

Monte: What's that?

Dan: I'm sorry. Trader.com.

Monte: Trader.com?

Dan: Do you think they're going to buy them?

Monte: Um, don't know. Possible. [Laughing]

Dan: My hunch is that they might be using money to buy up the Intellectual Property. They've gotten into low row with the publishers about scanning books; but I think if they toss a couple billion around, they're going to have publishers lining up to sell their content rights.

Monte: Yeah, well, one of the big things that happened just recently was the Tribune Companies and, what was it, Los Angeles Times Tribune Night Ridder whose also there and San Jose [inaudible] Topix. I mean that's a big move to recognize the online media from that standpoint. They're sending Topix a ton of traffic now. It's a new idea that just came up a matter of fact. The folks from Topix host a show here on the WebMasterRadio.FM network.

Dan: We were their first customer.

Monte: Oh, wow. That's right. You mentioned that you were their first customers, saw that there was a good business model there, took the risk, and boom, helped them get started, huh?

Dan: Uh, Huh.

Monte: That's great.

Dan: Yeah, Richard Screntz is a real smart guy.

Monte: Yeah, he is a really smart guy; and they're responsible for starting DeMoss by the way. So, that's the first directory on the web basically. So, well, it's been a real pleasure talking to you Dan; and I'm sure we'll talk to you. I know we talked about you should definitely be coming to the T.R..A.F.F.IC. East Conference, the one I told you about that's here in Delray Beach in October where there's a big, huge gathering of domainers and VCs and the whole basically domain community. So, I'll give you more detail about that so that you can come and hang out with me for a couple days.

Dan: Great. I look forward to that. Always a pleasure, Monte.

Monte: Yeah. Definitely. And thanks again for your time. We're going to break for a commercial and be right back with Brian Null from golfcourses.com. Hang on.

[Commercial]

Monte: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the show. Again, this is Monte Cahne. Wow, what great vision and foresight by Dan Pulcrano; and he's a super nice guy. He took me out to a nice lunch in San Jose and told me a lot about his business and his vision. He's a really good guy to know. So, again, if anybody is listening or is in the chat has any true pure city names or email Dan or email the info@associatedcities.com or Dan@SanJose or Dan@Dallas.com he gets all his messages. A lot of you domainers will get to meet Dan in person at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference in Del Ray.

As well as my very next guest, who I was actually trying to get on the show several times and finally he's given me the privilege to speak with him. He's also a customer of Monikers and has been in domain name business since, I guess since 2000 and has had his names here and I've helped him with a number of transactions, both on the buying side and selling side and Brian Null has a lot of experience on buying domain names and then building out the website and increasing the value of the domain name and I think this will be really interesting conversation with Brian. Brian, you onboard?

Brian: Hi Monte.

Monte: How are ya?

Brian: Very good, yourself?

Monte: Good. Boy, I really appreciate you taking the time, I know we had to coordinate some schedules over the last several weeks, and like you, I have a couple kids to take care of, so its hard to have them in the background while your doing an interview.

Brian: Yeah, that makes it a challenge but I'm glad to be on this time. It's really interesting. Your previous guest is somebody I've been looking to make contact with, so . . .

Monte: Well, there you go. I can make the introductions and you can actually introduce yourself to him right off the bat.

Brian: Outstanding.

Monte: So Brian, I know you and I have been doing business, I don't know, I think we're going on like four years now or something, right?

Brian: I'd say that's about right.

Monte: Yeah, four years. Give us a background about what you did in real life and then when you got into domain business and why.

Brian: I was in the Corporate America life. I was a business manager, a business analysis manager for Enterprise Rent A Car Data Mining Department and hit one of those life branches where my wife wanted to pursue a residency in her career and that meant we needed to move. So at that time I made one of those life decisions – do I want to seek another job, another corporate decision in a different state or perhaps branch out and do something entrepreneurial and that's when I jumped into the web, both feet, that was in '99.

Monte: Right. What got you into the web? So you just started to say, you just saw it as someplace to be in the future, you know, something that was going to be successful in the future and so that's how you jumped in? Or were you put there by accident . . .

Brian: No, I got sold on it by my father-in-law. He had some really good ideas on the vacation rental properties, marketing those through the internet. He owns some and was using some services and saw it was a great opportunity, so him and I launched out together and opened Vacation Rental Properties. We hit some pretty stiff competition right off the bat, had a pretty hard time, getting folks to pay us money . . .

Monte: Right . . .

Brian: . . . to market their properties, so I learned a lot from that effort but ultimately it failed so at that time I transitioned into building websites for other dreamers out there, hoping I could make a fortune off of that.

Monte: Right, right. And so, what was the first domain name that you registered, if you remember?

Brian: I was into deals. I thought everything, the internet, was about getting good deals and I bought a bunch of city deals and trips, [inaudible] trips.com.

Monte: Right, right. Made your presence on I guess the whole idea of saving money on the web and then the travel portion.

Brian: Yeah. I thought, you know, people are looking for information or to buy stuff and buy stuff they were looking for deals, so I pumped a lot of money into those.

Monte: Yeah?

Brian: But then after we started to do the web development an opportunity came up to launch an office supply website. And I had been purchasing a lot of traffic, I knew how to buy traffic very effectively from back in the go-to days. I'd buy visitors for a penny; God, I miss those days. But I knew how to do that really well and I was doing it for my web design company to generate leads and it was working great. And then an opportunity came along to open up our own office supply website, it was BordersSupplyOnline.com.

Monte: Right.

Brian: In 2001.

Monte: Right, right.

Brian: You know, next thing you know, we launched that actually as a prototype to show office supply dealers, Hey, look at our system, you know, we know how to build e-commerce solutions that work. We're gonna push some orders through this property to show that it works. Well, it did. The first month we did like $17,000 in sales. I remember when we launched the property, Day 1, I think it was New Years Day and my sister who I'm in business with, called me and said, Hey, who's gonna answer the phone for the property that we just put up.

Monte: [laughs] [inaudible]

Brian: So, no planning whatsoever. So I said, Well, I guess you are. So she said, Well, alright.

Monte: Who was more hung over?

Brian: Yeah [laughs]. Exactly.

Monte: [laughs]

Brian: Yeah. So it did like $17,000 in sales the first month and we rolled some of that into the next month and we did like $35,000 in sales; rolled that into the next month; $45,000 in sales. And we said, huh, this is interesting. And about three months later we sat down and said, hey, are we a web development company or are we an office supply company now that just happens to do business on the internet?

Monte: I remember those days . . .

Brian: Yeah, yeah.

Monte: . . . because you were swaying back and forth and a little birdie told you to hang on to that baby, didn't they?

Brian: [laughs] That's true, yeah. That's right you did, absolutely. We had good discussions on it and you absolutely advised me to hold onto that, man, build that out . . .

Monte: Yeah, yeah.

Brian: . . . and we did. And we did that for 4 ½ years.

Monte: Now, you bought officesupply.com for what price? I want people to hear this success story because you bought it for a great price, monetized the hell out of it.

Brian: Yeah, I bought it from a domainer that's up in New York City and they actually own a bunch of really good names. They're actually who got me into the golf niche, coincidentally. They made the mistake of going back, a year ago I went back and I said, you know, what were those other names he had? And sure enough, he was sittin' on golf[inaudible].com, and I love golf, and I said, oh man, you know, that would be a great name, just to have, really just as a hobby.

Monte: Right, right, get in on some of the golf real estate.

Brian: so I shot him a note and he gave me a good price on it and not everyone thought it was a good price, but I certainly did and did that deal and that was really just as I was going to have a friend in St. Louis run it for me; and I was, you know, here you go, here's a property, now go build it out.

Monte: Now, which domain name is this?

Brian: GolfLessons.com.

Monte: Now, how much did you pay for Golf Lessons?

Brian: I paid 20k for that.

Monte: So you paid 20k. I mean, that's a great buy.

Brian: Yeah, I think so now.

Monte: Well, now you've built quite a little conglomerate of golf sites, so name some other properties that; ‘cause I've helped you with these on the escrow side, but name some of the properties that you've accumulated on the golf. You've basically take, took control of a little niche here.

Brian: Yeah. GolfLessons.com made me look at the industry a lot harder. It got me excited and I started seeing what else was available. The next one was GolfCourses.com. A guy up at Washington State had it, didn't own it, didn't actually resolve at the time. I think it was a [inaudible] but yeah, I shot the guy a note and we negotiated probably for three months or so. I don't know what everybody else is like out there, but I didn't sleep for three months, I knew it was a monster name and I just could not sleep until I had that one. That one . . .

Monte: Tell everyone what you bought that one for.

Brian: 55.

Monte: 55, right.

Brian: So that was, I used you again on that. You know, I was thinking back before this call, the deals that we've done with you have been pretty creative. None of them have been exactly the same. And I know that's why I've used you all along because its always been a unique twist on how I purchase a name.

Monte: Right.

Brian: I've never had the funds available at the time (except for GolfLessons, I did), but the other ones, as I've acquired them, I've had to lock ‘em down with a contract.

Monte: Right. So talk about it because that's a really cool strategy that you've been able to . . . You're one of the only guys, there's only a couple guys that actually does it this way, but it's actually smart.

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: You're able to come to an agreement, lock down the domain name with a certain amount of deposit and give yourself some time, so that you're starting to make some money back on the investment in some cases. Some cases your not allowed to until you pay it back but describe the process because a lot of people should be doing this.

Brian: . . .[inaudible] it enters your portfolio and then you can gather your funding accordingly. I bring money in from other sources, so when I get to say, hey, I just purchased GolfCourses.com – GolfCourses.com I'll let you know I did a second mortgage on my house to pull that one off. You know, I live the same risks that a lot of folks do out there. I've invested a lot into it personally. But I believe in the generic names so strongly. But then with GoldResorts.com, when I started negotiating with him, he was looking for, well, where we ended up, I should say, is 60k. So, I needed to, that's another one, I gotta have that name. I got a bad disease like that, I shouldn't tell people that but that's how I get when I want to buy a name; it's bad. But, I asked him what amount would accomplish that, what amount can I give you now that you'll sign a contract and push that name into escrow with Monikers. And I don't recall, do you Monte, what we put down on that one?

Monte: The GolfResorts?

Brian: GolfResorts.

Monte: GolfResorts, I think you had to put down 30 or 35 and then you made smaller payment.

Brian: Yeah, and we paid that off over the next three months or something like that. And all that did was give me the time to put together those funds and its great when you, at that point it was, you know, and I went to some folks looking for some money. I said, Listen, I'm sitting on GolfLessons.com and GolfCourses.com; now I've got the opportunity to bring in GolfResorts.com and that makes all the names even more. GolfResorts.com makes GolfCourses.com worth more, that makes sense, when you go to folks and say, now, look at my portfolio, I'd like to get some more funds.

Monte: ‘Cause now you've got, now you own GolfShirts.com. We're still in that payment process . . .

Brian: Yeah, we're still in that payment process; exact same scenario. The guy wanted some cash, a significant amount. And you know the interesting thing is I'm essentially an end user in golf.

Monte: Yeah. As a matter of fact, Brian sponsored the golf outing at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Conference and basically paid for all of us to go out and hit the hell out of the ball in different directions.

Brian: I still owe some payback for a couple golfers out there that hustled me during the early part of the week. Took all my money when the tournament came around. And they know who they are (Canadian Thunder).

Monte: [laughs] But that was a great treat because it was a nice course and you know there's not too many courses in the middle of Vegas. Basically, the only one you can play with right in the middle, right off one of the casinos.

Brian: Yeah. Unfortunately, it was only 110 degrees that day.

Monte: Yeah, and it was right in the flight path of the Los Vegas Airport, remember that?

Brian: Yeah. That was a good time, though.

Monte: But you're, that's real success, the way that you structure these, the creativity that you put in to structure them and being able to negotiate with the seller in accepting down payments and of course using an escrow service that guarantees and holds the funds; deposits are non-refundable, in case you breached, you know, they get to keep the money and go in knowing that as it is.

Brian: Yeah, you gotta have some confidence going in that you can put the rest of this together, you know. Anyone can negotiate their own terms and that's the beauty. And every time we've done a deal, I know, you've had to email me at one in the morning, three in the morning . . .

Monte: Right.

Brian: . . . trying to work through . . . you know, this deal's a little different, here's the penalty if I don't pay, here's the stipulations on it, when can I [inaudible], things like that change with each deal. But risking GolfShirts.com, right now I've got, I think, about 20k into the escrow already. If I default on my payment, I'm losing that. I will forfeit that money.

Monte: Right.

Brian: That's probably gonna scare a lot of people. You gotta have the confidence, you just need to know, I can put those funds together, to finalize that transaction. But for me, I'm a firm believer in there is only one GolfResorts.com. There is only one GolfShirts.com. If it's gone, I'm gone. And now that I've lost a few names in the golf industry, I've already experienced, hey, I'm running out of names I can get, that are really top quality names that fit into my model of what I'm trying to do. So I get, when I hone in on a name and I've got a person who's willing to negotiate on price, I get pretty excited about locking it down. Then I go about putting the money together and it's worked out.

Monte: That's great. And, you know, getting back to your OfficeSupply.com story, because I think you originally bought that name for $50,000?

Brian: Yeah, that's right, $50,000.

Monte: $50,000. And we're not allowed to say what the total sale price is but it was for well into the six figures, you know, mid-six figures and so you did very successful for that deal.

Brian: Yeah, thanks, I think it was definitely a win-win on deal.

Monte: Yeah, because you bought the name and you also bought that name creatively in the beginning you were on a payment plan on that.

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: And that was back, how many years ago? That was back in 20. . .?

Brian: 2002, I think.

Monte: And we structured a nice payment plan to be able to have you be able to acquire that name. Then you monetized the hell out of it, so you got all of that back out plus and then, then of course the folks at iReit.

Brian: As well, I remember, that's the deal where you become attached to your domain names, your nice one, and I remember sitting at the conference in Vegas, the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West Conference and the Avite Panel was up there and I remember one of them, I forget which one, talked about your emotional attachment to domains . . .

Monte: Right.

Brian: . . . when they're trying to buy domains from domainers . . .

Monte: Right. I think it was either, I think it was either Peter Cristofulu from MarchX or actually he's not from Avite he's from MarchX but I think it was Robert Holt from Walton Adventures.

Brian: Yeah, yeah, they all did. For me personally, I thought, wow, yeah, you're right on, ‘cause I had the hardest time letting officesupply.com go, you know; it's the name of a few hundred billion dollar a year industry. It's the name of the industry. And it worked so well for us over the years. But that deal, you know, Rich [inaudible] all the time. It's circumstance. That deal enabled me to focus and accomplish a lot with the golf stuff that I'm chasing, so that's what really brought that deal on.

Monte: Yeah, that's a great deal. So, you've been successful in the niche market and so golf and the golfing industry is your niche, off of Office Supply.

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: So how many domain names do you own in total.

Brian: I think I own around 700 or so, you've got ‘em all.

Monte: Yeah. So you have 700 domain names and you know, so what's the highest price you paid so far for a domain name all out, was it the office supply domain?

Brian: I think it was GolfResorts.

Monte: Oh, yeah, Golf Resorts, right.

Brian: Yeah, I think they're all, well, Golf Resorts was 60, Courses was 55, Office Supply was 50, Lessons was 18 and Shirts was, we haven't released that yet, can we say that one?

Monte: Yeah, yeah.

Brian: [laughs] GolfShirts.com was 36k. And you know, that's an interesting thing right there. I like to think I'm somewhere between, I'm an end user for sure in the golf business but I'm a domainer at the same time. I'm an amateur domainer, I love it. If I could make money doing the PPC stuff the other guys are doing, I'd do it; I'm lousy at it. But I love reading up on the domain stuff.

Monte: Well, we can help you with that at Traffic Flow. It's starting to kick ass now, so . . .

Brian: I've heard lots of good things about that.

Monte: Yeah, yeah, so we can help you with the PPC stuff as well.

Brian: GolfShirts.com is not going to be a typical, your normal domainer, PPC, business model approach might not look at GolfShirts.com for 36k and say, that's a good deal.

Monte: Right.

Brian: Because its going to take awhile to monetize that on that model.

Monte: Well, to you I see a little bit more of a global vision here. You're, like Dan was on just now putting together city names, you're putting together, you know, in a niche of golf related domain names and this becomes part of a package value now.

Brian: yeah, and they're going to feed off each other.

Monte: You're right, right.

Brian: I'll tell you I put a, or I was fortunate enough to get a really creative deal with Grant Kaiser, who was also at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West and is going to be at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East; he owns GolfTips.com. Great name.

Monte: Yeah, it is a great name.

Brian: And he and I have a fantastic, well I don't want to overuse win-win relationship but he, him and I put together a really win-win relationship with that property and he's allowed me to use it in our efforts and then I compensate him accordingly, and he's just a great guy. To be able to leverage that property in, the property's very much, well, what we've got is course information starting with GolfCourses.com, we've got travel with GolfResorts.com, we've got improve your golf game which is huge for anyone who golfs, with GolfLessons.com and GolfTips.com and then on products, we've got GolfShirts.com and DiscountGolfEquipment.com. And those properties all feed, you know, soon I'm going to have this dilemma of, do I sell this ad inventory to outside third parties, you know, sell my ad space or do I advertise my own property.

Monte: Or, do you sell the whole block to a big golf company.

Brian: Exactly.

Monte: You know, like a Nicklaus. You know, Nicklaus is right here in town, actually, right down the street from us is their headquarters.

Brian: Yeah, we are actually in some great conversations right now with significant folks in the golf industry and it's going well. Now, sometimes I say I don't know who listens in the forums; I love the forum, but one of the values of a generic, a strong generic name when people, which is the favorite domainer conversation, putting value to a domain name. A value that almost is never discussed, if you use it as a business, the leverage you get by that name. I can tell you when we go in to talk to golf courses and we say we're with GolfCourses.com, it opens some doors that wouldn't be open.

Monte: Right, even if they don't know who you are.

Brian: Yeah. It's, okay, well hold on now, it's GolfCourses.com and I own a golf course. I will at least to you to what you have to say.

Monte: Yeah, that's a very good point.

Brian: Yeah, and the same with golf resorts, if we want to go talk to, and we have, to some significant hotel chains, that have golf resorts as part of their portfolio of properties, we walk in with that. That at least gets us a conversation with the right person. Every single, Office Supply did the same thing. I got to talk to literally the CEOs of some multibillion dollar companies that typically are gonna screen you out.

Monte: Right.

Brian: I mean, I'm a guy sittin' in a basement. [laughs]

Monte: Right, right.

Brian: So, you know, it's a great leverage to be able to open some doors with those names and it works, I'm telling you. It's worked for five years.

Monte: Bird on a Chat is asking, So what would you do if you sold all your golf domains? I guess you'd have to go get some other niche.

Brian: You know [laughs], I have considered that when the day comes. I don't think I can ever stop buying premium names. The opportunity is just so tremendous. It seems like it's getting a little harder to find the available premium, not harder – you have to pay more – and Rick Schwartz says you have to overpay for right now to get a premium name. But next year, it might not be you who's overpaying.

Monte: Exactly.

Brian: A few years from now, it's going to be, wow.

Monte: Exactly, that's a very good point. You know, today what's considered overpaying might be underpaying next year because, I mean . . .

Brian: It is, it is.

Monte: Because if you assimilated to real estate and of course everybody understands what happened with real estate over the last four or five years, especially down here in South Florida, it's unbelievable. I mean, its so astronomically unbelievable today, in some cases its not real. And then everybody's afraid of this big crash, you know, that real estates gonna crash. Well, real estate's never crashed.

Brian: You know, real world real estate has allowed me to do what I've done. I was fortunate enough to buy a property in Colorado a few years back, about six years ago, and in three years time, when I left Corporate America we moved, bought a property, and when we left three years later, we sold that property, that, the amount that the property went up was significant. That single, thing is what allowed me to dump some money into what we're doing now.

Monte: Yeah, that's great. So utilizing funds with one successful business and moving into another niche.

Brian: Yeah, real world real estate, took the profits from that and moved it right into the . . . and its worked out fantastic. It was a fortunate situation.

Monte: So, it sounds like we've talked about the benefits of focusing on a niche, which, you know, which if you get a bunch of domain names in a particular niche, it becomes more powerful and more valuable. Developing a website versus developing a business on a domain name and we talked a little bit about that with the office supply example, so, you know, you had an idea and you developed the concept out and developed the website and grew it into a nice business and then further sold off the business after making money off of it.

Brian: Yeah.

Monte: And you've been able to acquire generic names strategically and uniquely with creative financing, which we've helped you out with and being able to lock down domain names without having to pay everything out of your pocket up front, therefore, although its still a risk, you‘ve been mitigating that risk and the money that you're putting out for that domain name so you have a chance to catch up and make sure that you're validating your models.

Brian: Absolutely.

Monte: And you haven't bailed on any domain name yet, I don't think.

Brian: No, no.

Monte: So, that's another good sign that its working, because, you know, some people have bailed in the middle of a deposit or payment plan and they bail out for various reasons but they've bailed out and that's it.

Brian: I'd start mowing lawns for my neighbors if I had to, if it came down to it, just to finish paying those things off.

Monte: Right. Have you done some networking with some other domainers? You mentioned Golf Tips to me; now who else have you worked with?

Brian: That's some of the greatest stuff, especially going to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West and meeting some of what I consider the professional domainers.

Monte: Right.

Brian: You know, professional domainers are some of the smartest damn people I've come across. They're just sharp. I mean the guys that doing it and doing it well. You know, I got to strike up some friendships with them in Las Vegas and that's turned into, you know, its really benefited me. I don't know if its benefited them in any way other than golf. [laughs]

Monte: [laughs] Well, they got a free game out of it . . .

Brian: They did [laughs]. They got a free game.

Monte: But I'm sure it has. You learn something from everybody when you're with each other and you're right because . . .

Brian: And they watch my back a lot, you know, the guy who gives me a heads up on some things. You know, hey, this is what's going on, did you know about this? Or, I can introduce you to so-and-so. I can tell you the folks we did the OfficeSupply.com deal I met there in Las Vegas. You know, I don't think I need to say much more than that ‘cause that's probably the single biggest impact of networking and going to the Traffic show. That is a significant impact on my business and personal life. You know, and I let Rick know that. It was a really big deal. But it continues be. You know, I got to meet you in person for the first time. Been doing business with you for 4 or 5 years . . .

Monte: Right . . .

Brian: . . . and, yeah, definitely.

Monte: Right. And who are some of the people you've learned the most from since you've been in the business?

Brian: I'd say there's two people that I would consider my gurus, I would read everything they put in writing, and they're different, but fundamentally they're the same people. They're very different, but fundamentally the same. Paul Cotton [inaudible] over at Domain State and Rick Schwartz – I think everyone who listens to this show knows who he is. Very different personalities, but those two have an uncanny ability to really cut the fat out of a lot of conversations about the value of properties on the internet and where we're going and you know, I make it a habit of anything [inaudible] writes on Domain State; I make sure I read what he's talking about. You know, and Rick with his vision of, not only his vision of what's coming but how things have progressed. You know, one of the things that he said recently that really got my attention, he's seen the value of names go from, you know, 10 days worth of revenue to 10 weeks to 10 months and now its at 10X, meaning years of revenue.

Monte: Right.

Brian: So, you know, he's said you've had some bumps along the way but you know, when he says things like that, it really wakes me. He has a real ability to focus, to, like I say, cut out the fat of the conversation and focus on bottom line on the value of property and where we're heading with them. Those two, I think, offer . . . what amazes me is how generous those folks are.

Monte: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I mean, I think they believe what we talked about with our last guest and that is, its okay to have competition, its good, its healthy because we're all competing to together to advance an industry. We're all working together, competitively but also as partners, to validate the industry in the business realm.

Brian: Right, right. And a lot of people say they'll work with the competition, but not a lot will; well, I mean, some will and I'm finding that out. I called the CEO of the very successful property that's built on a generic name just this week and he gave me an hours worth of conversation and I said, hey, I'm a start up, you've been doing what I want to do with one of my properties that I just purchased (that I haven't announced yet) and he sat down for an hour and just gave me a bulleted list, here's what you should do, here's how you should attack it, here's some issues that you're going to run into and he said exactly, because I don't believe in not sharing with the competition. I believe there's a huge pie and we can all grow it together and that's going to benefit everyone.

Monte: Exactly. Exactly. Well, before you go, because we're at the end of our interview, what are like the 3 or 4 main points to get across to your counterparts here that are listening that can make them successful? You know, what are some of the tips and tricks that you've learned to be successful in the industry and that you could share across others.

Brian: Well, what's worked for me – and that's what I like to say, what's worked for me – because there's so many different business models and again, I'm not a PPC guy; I promise you if I could do it well, I would. But if you're going to develop a property, well, a lot of conversation goes, I'm going to do PPC or I'm going to develop it. Well, there's developing a website and then there's developing a business, and if you're going to develop a business I strongly recommend developing it on prime real estate. You know, do it on a quality name. You know, if you're going to put the effort into a business, and the resources . . .

Monte: Yeah, ‘cause it's so much harder if you're doing it on a sub-quality name and then you have to work so much harder to get it branded and to make sure people know what it is.

Brian: If you doubt type-in traffic exists, don't anymore. You know, GolfCourses.com is really turning into a great property for type-in. It just keeps building on itself. So invest in the good name if you're going to develop a business around it. You could surround yourself with good people on the business, I can tell you that. But, you know, you could put a business together with no real money out of your pocket if you have independent contractors that cover their own cost and you pay them on commission for what they produced. So I can tell you I've got six or seven folks working on the golf stuff and no employees and everyone's essentially an independent contractor and they're paid on performance and they cover their own costs. That allowed me to ramp this business up very cost effectively. So, again, I believe strongly in launching on a generic name, you know, if you're going to put your effort into it, get the prime real estate.

Monte: Good, that's a good point.

Brian: And right now, the names that I'm buying that aren't huge names that you know might get a 1000 searches on Overture in a month, I'm pretty focused on the golf stuff right now, I don't do a lot of those names if it doesn't fit my business model outside of the golf stuff.

Monte: Right.

Brian: I guess that's not true, though, if you look at my track record. You could tell me that's not true [laughs]. I can never quit buying. Oh, my goodness. So my strongest tip is the generic stuff. It's worked out very, very well for me.

Monte: So, go to brand on the good, strong generic and see it through and build a value in it.

Hey, a couple people were posting in the chat room to ask about the beach farm story.

Brian: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Monte: So, that's what's known as our closing story.

Brian: And that's my, well, I have a six year old daughter who's just starting first grade today and probably starting about two or three years ago, she's been saying that she wants to have a farm on a beach. So, as we were trying to come up with a name for this business, you know, hey, what can we come up with? Okay, how about “beach farm” and then we threw in “9” for the golf stuff, which turned into Beach Farm Nine, which also happens to be my initials, BFN. So, that's the story. We love it. My wife drew our logo and my daughter named the company. My sister and brother are part of the company, an old Air Force buddy is an editor for the company, and we're a family run business.

Monte: And, what's it do?

Brian: Beach Farm Nine is the parent company of all the golf companies.

Monte: Oh, great, oh.

Brian: BeachFarmNine.com, or Beach Farm Nine is who owns all the golf property.

Monte: Oh, wow, wow. Well, I hope to see that on Wall Street one day.

Brian: [laughs] Yeah.

Monte: [laughs] See, there ya go, there's thinking big. [laughs]

Brian: [laughs] . . . yeah . . .

Monte: Well, that's great Brian and I'm glad I had you on. You've been a great guest and again, an inspiration to others that are in your industry and I think, like you said, the key is working with others and not being afraid to ask when you want to learn something from someone else, and going to these events and learning who you're working with and meeting the people and you know, that's key, it's what's growing our industry and I really recommend that everybody attend these domain conferences for sure, especially T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East that's coming up here in Del Ray, Florida in October. It's a great chance to meet everyone that's listening, everyone that's posting on the board in the chat room, everyone that's been in the domain name business and been the gurus, considered the gurus and it feeds the community for years to come.

Brian: And I forgot to say one last thing. I want to thank you to Adam Strong for getting me connected to your show before I came on. [laughs]

Monte: Oh [laughs]. Okay.

Brian: He walked me through it.

Monte: Great. Great. Well, Brian, thanks a lot for your time. I'll let you go and I'll look forward to working with you again. Continue to work with you on your strategic purchases. Maybe we'll get some GolfClubs.com and GolfBalls and some other stuff.

Brian: Now you can cause me more sleepless nights.

Monte: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'll be up with ya, you know that.

Brian: Everyone on the forums.

Monte: Okay, Brian, take care.

Alright, folks, well, this wraps up another great weeks show of Domain Masters. Make sure you guys go to either WebMasterRadio.fm, check out the other shows that are on the network. There's some great shows being added all the time. Also, the archives are available at Moniker.com and at WebMasterRadio.fm and if you missed any part of the shows or want to see some of the shows that we've done from the very beginning, please go there and download the archives. We think we're up to five or six or seven shows that we've actually got transcribed into text, so you can actually take that and download those. They're pod-casted, so you can listen to them while you're in airplanes and on your iPods and your Mp3 players, so its cool too. If anybody needs to give us some feedback, or invite everybody to give us some feedback on the upcoming shows what you want to hear and who you want to hear from, email me at monte(M-O-N-T-E)@moniker.com and I'll be happy to help you out, along with any of your domain name related needs, so we can do that for you as well.

I will see you next week, same time, same place. Hopefully, we won't get blown away by the hurricane that's going to hit us on Friday, and so I'll still be alive. Be the master of your domain. See you next week.

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