Find Your Startup’s Winning Domain

Serial Entrepreneur – EP63

[00:00:00] 

Welcome everyone. This is thes entrepreneur club here on startup club on clubhouse. And this show happens every week where we try to, uh, decode. How does Colin say Michele? We try to decode the secrets that, uh, serial entrepreneurs use again and again and again, to find their success right.

Said perfectly. And how do we repeat that? So we’re just trying to get that secret sauce, that secret formula. So it’s not so secret. And today we’ve got a, a terrific topic and a terrific, uh, Guest host and speaker page. How, um, we’re gonna talk about choosing the right domain for your startup. Um, this is something that’s not only important, but I think timely as I’m sure Page will talk about because it’s, it’s actually quite a good time to try to invest in, in a [00:01:00] really strong and powerful domain name for your startup and page.

How is. Be with us tonight. Not only is Page involved in many rooms here on startup club, but Page also runs domain club here on clubhouse too. So we’re gonna scratch the surface of, of choosing the right domain for your startup today, but there’s lots of other, uh, deep dives into all aspects of the domain world over at domain club here on clubhouse as well.

So Page. I’ll let you introduce yourself and maybe say a few words and then, um, we’ll open it up in a little while for questions from the, uh, audience. Well, fantastic. I am a, a lifelong Homer for domain names. Meaning I’m a domain name fan. Um, I got into domain names about 25 years ago. I had been a private.

Financial manager, a family office manager. And we had a lot of companies we invested in and I, and I looked at the internet [00:02:00] back in 97 and I said, is this just a really neat way to play fantasy football? Or is this meaningful? And, and that’s when I kind of discovered the first step in, in starting a website was, was getting a domain.

And that led me to invest in various domain name ventures I’ve bought and sold over 40,000 domain names in the last 25 years from $1. All the way up to 1.7 million. And I think during that time, I’ve talked with a lot of business owners. Sometimes I’ve, I’ve been a consultant to them to help them find a name.

Sometimes they’ve come to me and they’ve said, well, we really want to buy your name, but it’s terrible. So the price is terrible, but you really like it. And anyway, I, I, you know, I try to understand, you know, what their position is, and then I’ve helped companies I’ve been involved with by domain names. So Jeff and Michele, hopefully I can bring some of that experience to bear, to help your serial [00:03:00] entrepreneurs.

Yeah. We’re looking forward to it because I know a big part of that has been you helping folks with their branding strategy, but also with SEO. So, you know, uh, all the members here page is the OG for real. So, you know, page and part on us, your wisdom, we’re really looking forward to it. And I’ll just say that page before you dive in.

I just wanna, um, you know, mention that, you know, why is, is the, a domain such an important part of your branding and, you know, One of the key things is it’s a crowded market out there. You need to make it easy for people to find you. You want to attract the right customers to you. Everyone’s gonna look for you online.

And if you pick the right domain, if you pick a strong domain name, that’s easy to remember, easy to spell correctly. Um, you’re really increasing your chances. Attracting the right customers to you and, and having them find you easily, [00:04:00] uh, on the internet. And that’s critically important and a lot of startups, and I’m sure Page is gonna dig into this more deeply, but a lot of startups are concerned about funds and money, and they try to find a domain that’s gonna match their brand or their company.

And they don’t really, and they see it’s available, but maybe it’s a few thousand dollars. Cause it’s a premium domain or someone else owns it and is selling it. And they say, well, let’s not do that. Let’s just make up some other name or let’s create a name that doesn’t exist so we can get the domain name.

And, and there are a lot of. disadvantages to going down that path and maybe we’ll talk about some of them and Page, I’d love to hear from you as well about the timing now, you know, we’re in an unusual economic time, and I wonder if that’s actually an advantage for startups looking for the right domain name.

Anyway, I’ll hand it back to you and I’ll be quiet. Well, I think we can fill up about four hours, but, but I’m gonna, I’m gonna hit, uh, a big topic, [00:05:00] right? And then kind of go back and, and relive some basics and then get to some advanced topics. And if I do that for about 15 minutes, does that sound about right?

And then we’ll let people guide the rest of the discussion. Perfect. And, and don’t forget, I, I know you got some cool sessions right after this, on domain club. So I think, um, you know, when it, when time is right, maybe you can tell us a little bit about that too. Thank you, Page. Well, I think the first thing I’m gonna talk about is as an entrepreneur buying or getting acquiring, the domain name is one of the.

That only really the CEO, the founder, or the principal producer or showrunner or the, you know, the person in charge is gonna do because your domain name is gonna touch your marketing. Your branding, it’s gonna touch your technical team. It’s gonna touch your communications and administrative, and it’s gonna touch legal.

And I think you may have people or [00:06:00] advisors in your company that are all gonna look at it from that point of view. What does it mean technically to do something? What does it mean, branding? What does it mean legally? And I think as the entrepreneur, almost like bringing the, the basketball to a basketball game or any other sport, you know, you’re gonna have and control the domain name and that’s gonna kind of put you in charge.

But the other thing is, is a lot of times in your startup, people are gonna. You know, competing for resources and you may be the only one that can decide that with a good domain name, you’re gonna spend less money on marketing, less money on legal, less money on admin. So it is a CEO, an entrepreneur decision.

If you don’t do anything, you’re probably gonna go to a registrar type in something related to your business, and they’re gonna come up and say, what you want is probably taken. And they’re gonna give you something like if I wanted to be domain club and [00:07:00] domain.club is joint is already taken. They’re gonna give me domain club seven, or they’re gonna give me domain.

1 2, 3 or domain wowee.club. And if you don’t do anything and don’t Excel, you’re just gonna take what you can get. And that’s gonna be a good functional domain name. But what we’re gonna talk about today is how can you increase the effectiveness of your business? Most of the time, you’re gonna start with the ultimate.

I encourage all of you to say what would be the best domain name for me to have for my company. And your domain name is a special, unique asset because it does don’t think any other asset, does it functional address of your company? Like the address of your old office, building the license plate on your car, your phone number.

Functionally. It’s how people are gonna interact with you and not just for marketing anymore. You’re gonna probably do your [00:08:00] distribution online. Especially if you’re selling a virtual product you’re gonna market online. You’re gonna take payments online. The internet really isn’t optional for any kind of business right now.

So even if you’re not an internet business, what you do online is gonna be important because that’s where you’re saving the money from the old systems. So think of your ultimate name, either the name of your company. If you’ve already started your company and you’re fantastic company.com, then you wanna say, can I get the pure.com of my exact company name?

Most of us as individuals don’t get to choose our name. We’re given at birth, our parents pick it out and, and we kind of grow into. The only people that do get to choose their name many times are actors and, and writers who can write under a pseudonym and they get to put some thought in it. So think about that for your business.

I’m gonna pick the brand of my business [00:09:00] and I’m gonna pick a domain name. The more your domain name exactly matches your brand without any extra letters or numbers, there’s gonna be a built in credibility like for domain club or domain dot. We don’t have to ask people to remember two or three more things.

We’re ex our name says what it does and it does what it says. So you first wanna say what’s our ultimate name, and then you Wade into the waters of the domain dilemma. The names you usually want are already taken and the names you can get, you don’t want. And what I’m here to say, if there’s one thing you can take away, and this comes from doing a year’s worth of shows on the name game.

Is, you’ve gotta look that dilemma straight in the eye and you’ve gotta push through it and say, I’m either gonna find the best available name and get really good at finding stuff that’s available. Most of which I don’t [00:10:00] want, or you’re gonna say, how can I acquire my ultimate name? That’s taken for the lowest possible price.

And you’ve gotta find a way to not just take. The best available name you could find in one hour at night, and then all of a sudden have that be the foundation of your company for the next couple years. So you have to admit to yourself what you probably want is taken and what you can get. You probably don’t like, and then you have to work from there.

Now the great thing is a lot of names are taken, but that doesn’t mean you can’t acquire them. Just like a lot of us. Don’t go look at new houses. We look at houses that people have already lived in. You can buy domain names from their existing owners, some of who are professional domainers that’s the distribution system of the domain name, business.

It isn’t necessarily, except for some new TLDs that [00:11:00] companies own all the inventory it’s intermediaries, but what’s great about it is they’re willing sellers. And if the best name that you want is available for a price you can negotiate. And one of the things that’s happened over the past couple years is payment plans have coming to being, so the name you want may be 8,000 or 80,000, but you might be able to pay for it over 60 months.

So I bought some of my best.club, domain names with the same concept, but anyway, that’s one of the basics. The second basic is okay, Page. I’m I’m having a toy company. We’ve got this great toy. It’s called Wowie wowie.com. It’s taken, what do we do? And most of the time as an entrepreneur, your decision is gonna go one of two ways.

You can stay in.com, which is the most respected. I think TLD, it’s got 160 million names registered in it. And the biggest companies in the world, when they say their [00:12:00] name, if they have the.com, they don’t always have to say.com after it. Cuz that’s what you’re most likely gonna think that they are. But your first choice when you’re picking a domain name is do you stay in.com and do you simply add words?

So you could be, if your company’s called WWE and you got a new toy, you could be WWE toy.com that’s taken. You could be get WWE or WWE media or wow. We app you can add one word or two words, stay in.com and have a longer. The benefits of that are people are gonna know its.com. When they type in your email address, page WWE toy.com.

They’re gonna remember its.com. They won’t have to learn anything different. The second choice is you can find the keyword that you want Wowie, and you can buy it in any one of, if you can believe this 800 or so [00:13:00] extensions.

So you have the power of being wowy and then a dot cuz all domains have something to the left of the dot and the right of the dot. And then the extension that comes after it, what’s called the top level, domain name. It kind of is a chance to either do something positive for your company or do something negative.

You’re admitting that you don’t have the.com. So sometimes it can be a negative. Hey, you didn’t have the.com. You must not be a great company, but if you can turn that into a positive, because the way that you’re left to the dot and your right of the dot match says something about your company, like domain dot.

That’s the shortest possible name we could get to be a domain club. Even domain club.com would be four more. Two more syllables, domain dot. It’s [00:14:00] perfect. And there’s something about being perfect. That means you don’t have any demerits or deficiencies. So sometimes you want to go for your perfect name, with a.now, which extension to get, go for.com.

Some of the ones that are doing well now, or X, Y, Z has got some popularity in the web three space, independent new TLDs like.club work. Well, cuz they say what you’re doing. If I have digital.club, I’m a digital investor’s club. If I have startup entrepreneur.club, I’m a startup entrepreneur.club. AI is really a small niche one, but if you were an artificial intelligence, you might be able to get away with it.

IO has become kind of trendy for technology companies. Then there’s other ones that are very generic, like site and online, and we may get dot. but most of those domain names are a far [00:15:00] cry from.com. So most of the time in the real world, you’re gonna be deciding between a one, two or three word.com or get your perfect word in another top level, domain name.

Now if you’re a global company and you’re gonna market your products and services globally, you can also use like a.ca for Canada, a.com.au for australia.co.uk for UK. And then you’re not gonna have to compete with every company in the world to get your name. You’re just gonna have to compete with those people in the country.

Now, the second thing you could do is you could say, I want my domain name to not only describe my company, but I wanna get a bunch of new business from it. So you can pick a domain name that because of the, the name that you pick is gonna give you more business than you would get. If I was just page’s domains, if people knew that [00:16:00] page, how was a domain investor?

They could come to page’s domains dot. But when I’m domain.club or if I’m Joe domains or if I’m domain outlet, or if I’m the domain store, I get this extra boost in credibility where people are like, huh? The domain store. That sounds like a place I go to buy domains. When I sold seniors.com for over a million dollars, the perception was that seniors.com would be a portal for seniors and that going in, I would have a built in value from credibility for having that.

So your choices really, and I’ll finish with this for domain names. Most of you for your companies are one, your company’s already called Jones interactive. Cuz your last name is Jones or you’ve had your company and you, you picked a name for it and it’s it’s, it’s a company name. It’s your last name? It’s your first name?

It’s your initials. Try to get that name or as close to as you can get it in dot. [00:17:00] The second thing is you, you try to brand your company. You say, well, I’m gonna start a domain company and I’m gonna call it, uh, domain EDIA or domain action, or you’re gonna brand your company and make sure you have the matching.com and the social media handles.

If you can, so that you don’t start your company and then decide later, oh man, I don’t have the.com or I don’t have the social media. And then the third thing you can do is you can pick a name that has so much prestige. Like the mattress company pick purple.com. They spend a couple million dollars on it, but they know that people are gonna remember purple.

There can only be one purple.com. And even though they’re using it for mattresses, they got a name that has so much inherent value that it’s gonna make every dollar that spend on marketing better go further. They’re gonna have to spend less. [00:18:00] So it’s hard to bounce around everything there is to know about domain names.

But I guess the one thing I wanted to get back to is look right in the face. This idea that what you want is probably taken, cuz people have been taking domain names for 25 years. What the registrars suggest to you or what you think of that’s available may not be the best thing to get and you really gotta work.

To find something better than what you’re being offered or find something great that you can afford either using payments. Anyway, uh, Jeff and Michele, I feel like I bounced around to a bunch of different areas. Hopefully with the questions I can fill in the gaps, but how does that go with what you wanted to do in the show?

No, that sounds great, Page. And if you’re in the audience and you want to, um, ask us a question or ask Page a question, raise your hand, we’ll start bringing people up as we see Vene here, and I’ll get to you in one second. I wanna just touch on, on one or two things that you mentioned, [00:19:00] and then also give Michele a chance to, to, uh, contribute as well.

Cause all three of us have had, um, a lot of experience in the domain industry. Um, I’m probably. The least experienced here on the stage, Michele has worked on, on all sides of the business. I’ve worked for.club Page, as he told you has done a lot of things, but, you know, Page talked about, you know, the power of potentially using one of the alternative extensions.

And one of the interesting things about the new extensions is they can add meaning to a very generic word. So even if you have, you know, even if you have a. Thing like purple.com. Great name page, as you pointed out, but as you also pointed out, they had to spend millions of dollars for people to know that purple.com was a mattress company because by itself, You don’t know what purple is, but with some of the extensions, if that was instead of purple.com, if was, if it was purple.agency, then you might have an idea that, okay.

Purple is probably some kind of a marketing [00:20:00] agency. Um, so there are a lot of extensions. If, if it was purple.law, you’d think it was a law firm, you know, cetera, et cetera. So there are certain extensions that can help. Put meaning behind a more generic word. So if you do have a generic term for your business, that doesn’t really define the industry you’re in there may well be an extension that can help shape that.

And of course, if you’re selling anything, there’s a.shop. There’s a.store. And sometimes you can use multiple domains. So you might. the.com for your main business. But if you also have an eCommerce site, you can also have your name.store or your name.shop for that eCommerce site. So there are opportunities to use multiple domains.

And then the other point I wanted to mention, and then I’ll, I’ll let Michele speak and then we’ll take questions. Is. Using your domain name as your actual brand name. This is something that was very popular, you know, back in the.com boom days when Amazon was called [00:21:00] amazon.com, uh, et cetera. Uh, and then, then everyone dropped to the.com from their brand names.

But now it’s coming back again in popularity, and there are a lot of advantages when your brand. Is your domain name because it makes it really easy for people to find you. And there are some advantages in the digital world. And I’ll just give one quick example. Uh, I’m the CMO of paw.com. The company used to be called treated dog.com.

And a few years ago, we had the opportunity to acquire the great domain name. paw.com and we made the choice when we rebranded to use paw.com with the.com as our brand. And one of the side benefits, you know, on the SEO side and otherwise is whenever we’re written up in an article in a digital article online.

Our brand name gets converted into our domain. It gets converted to URL. So we’re in the pet space. We sell pet products and there have been many instances when we might be mentioned in an article talking about the pet industry, and it might mention five or [00:22:00] six different companies. We’re one of the companies mentioned, and we, the only company in the article that has a link to our website because our brand.

Turned into that link paw.com. So there are a lot of advantages to consider using your brand name, your domain name, actually as your brand in its entirety. Um, Michele, I want to turn it over to you to say a few words and then, um, Page, if you have any further thoughts and then we’ll take questions. If you want to ask a question or say something about the domain branding space, please raise your hand and we’ll be happy to bring you up on stage.

Yeah. Thanks Jeff. Thanks, Page. Um, a lot of really good information here. Um, one thing that really stands out to me, um, having talked to a lot of different people, investors companies, registrars is the whole strategy page of having multiple domains, um, using [00:23:00] feeder sites, really leveraging. Domain names for SEO and to just get found.

So I I’m curious what your advice would be page for people that are in that scenario. And they’re looking to do content and they, um, really wanna get play, you know, get good play for SEO. Like what would you suggest to people, um, maybe using, for example, Either domains or the mattress, uh, company that you mentioned as an example.

Yeah, I think a couple things, Michele. Um, I think that it used to be, I would get you to remember that I was page how.com so that you would go to my website page, how.com. And you would remember my email now we all use Google and Google makes billions of dollars. Many times [00:24:00] just showing people how to connect with someone.

They already know who they wanna connect with. So I think having your company name on your site, so you come up in the first page and the first result for Google after the paid ads for who you are, that’s important. I do a lot of work with real estate agents. If, if someone already knows that I’m a real estate agent in, you know, in Burbank, California, and they type in page how Burbank I want them to come up with me clearly, I wanna own that traffic.

But what you can do with various domain names is I could also have a site called Burbank real estate.com. And what I’m saying, there is a lot of people haven’t picked their realtor, but they wanna find out about. Real estate in Burbank, or they wanna find out about a new toy or they wanna do some comparison shopping.

They’re trying to get information on the internet about a, a disease or a sickness or how they’re feeling or [00:25:00] advice. And they haven’t yet picked the brand that they’re gonna go with. And if all you’re doing all the time is advertising your brand because that’s what branding agencies have said to do for the past 50 years.

And they love. Because if I call my company zippity, do I have to spend millions of dollars maybe with them every year to keep reminding people what zippity do does. So they don’t want me to be mattress.com or something like that, but back to having multiple sites. So yes, I may also try to catch customers by having them search for the product or service that I.

Have some rich content and I can start building a relationship with that customer by giving them the information they need. And I’m starting to build that trust relationship. So I think Michele, I think it’s a good point. I’ll I’ll spend an aside on a quick aside, this isn’t new. I was watching a neat show on our history channel here in the [00:26:00] us.

And I talked about, um, the founder of the Benny HANA restaurant chain in New York starts up this idea of this show dinner, where you get your Japanese food prepared by the chef and he’s spinning the knife and he’s making the fire. And it was funny because he was worried about competition. So he ended up starting his own.

Second restaurant chain doing the same thing under a different brand with the idea of, he didn’t wanna let another competitor in. So you might start and have multiple sites doing the same thing, just so you can be the first, second, third, and fourth person, uh, on Google. So I thought that was interesting when you brought that up.

I absolutely love that. That’s quite brilliant. Um, Page, uh, a good way to take up lots of real estate virtually and, um, and on the ground. Right. So that’s a really cool idea. Yeah. Hey, I’ll give everybody a quick tip. [00:27:00] If you’re having trouble generating ideas for your domain name and you think you have some keywords, there’s a neat site out there called lean domain search.

So it’s L E a N lean domain search.com and it’s free. It’s actually owned by, uh, the company that owns WordPress automatic. And what they’ve done is they have a list and it might be dated of the top 5,000 words that are either@thebeginningortheendofdifferent.com domain names. And what you can do is you can take a word like, uh, maybe you think this summer, that cruise travel is gonna be exciting.

And people are gonna want to go to the Arctic. So you can put in the word Arctic and they’ll give you ranked in order Arctic. Plus the words that are used most often in domain names. And you may find a good domain name, but it’s gonna give you a real [00:28:00] hint at what’s out there with your keyword. Now, if you type in metaverse all 5,000 are taken.

If you type in insurance, all 5,000 are taken, but if you have a word that defines your product or service, you might be able to find something that’ll be a two word.com with a really powerful word at the beginning or the. Or at least it’ll start giving you ideas to, again, challenge you to come up with a great name.

So I wanted to bring everybody kind of a, a for sure tip that they can use, and that would be lean domain search.com. That’s great, Page, and thank you for that, Michele. Yeah, actually, Page, um, brought something to my mind that I know that we do when we’re looking at businesses is there’s also some, um, name kind of generators that also look up social media handles.

So I would also suggest to folks like, you know, like, Page said when you’re [00:29:00] looking for that perfect name, you know, just like reach out and also look at what the social media handles are too. It, uh, can save you out a headache. Yeah. I think the one I used to use back in the day was it was, it didn’t have the valves in it, but it was a variation of name check.

I think it was N a M C H K. So don’t quote me on that. Um, but it it’s something close to that, but, uh, yeah, that’s a great point, Michele, because if you can. Corral meaning bring all together. A good domain name with the matching social media handles. Um, it is gonna be make your branding consistent and everything.

And Jeff, back to your comment about the domain name with paw.com, you kind of were cheating a little bit because everyone else just had the name of their company in there. And you had the name and the address of how to get ahold of you. But I think even on your social media page, They’ve got a spot for your URL.

And [00:30:00] if, and if you go to a trade show, you might have a badge that has a spot for your name, your company, and your URL. You might be listed in a directory for a trade show or a list of companies that are speaking. And you’ve kind of got a chance to cheat a little bit by putting something about your company, when it shows up in your URL.

In there, you could even have specific URLs for specific, you know, purposes. So it is a nice little hack there to, and when everyone else is just putting their address, you’re putting in your address that also maybe says something about your business. Absolutely. Well, let’s take a question from Venet and if you want to, uh, ask Page a question or have something you wanna share about, uh, naming your, uh, getting the right domain name for your startup, please raise your hand.

Um, Venet welcome. Yeah. Uh, something bad really happened in [00:31:00] 2010 with me, I made, uh, 200 websites, uh, using same content and, uh, uh, like he said that, uh, it is a good idea to, uh, do same thing on domain, but Google does not like it. So, uh, if you. All the 20 results in Google on some word in on your website. It is not a good idea.

Google hates it. And if same person website, Google really hates it and they are able to find it and they are able to, and it is a lifetime brand. Yeah, it’s a.

Oops, we lost your page. I think Page was good. Oh yeah. Now we hear you. So I think that if I was doing multiple websites today, you have to think about how Google has trained everybody to ask questions. [00:32:00] So I don’t think you’d have multiple, you’d have duplicate content today because you would wanna have a con you would want to have your content.

Around different questions like for domain club, we would have a question. How do I choose the right domain for your startup? So we might have links to domain club that answer that question, but we may also have domain club, you know, have links to a different question. So, yes, I agree. Don’t put, do the same content out there.

Try to be the solution for various problems or various questions. Yeah, I cannot say, go ahead, Jeff. No, I was gonna say part of that is you can use multiple domains and they don’t have to point to the same content, but you can use a clever domain as a deep link into your website. And when you know Michele and I and Colin were working on.club before it was sold to goad last year, we saw this happen a lot.

So for example, The company [00:33:00] swatch, the watch company, their main website is of course@swatch.com. Right. But they also have a loyalty program called the swatch club and that’s a membership program for their loyalty points. And there’s a webpage deep within swatch.com with lots of content about the swatch club.

Um, but it’s not easy to find if you just go to that main page where they’re focused on the watches and everything else. So what they would do is they register. swatch.club. And when they wanna promote the swatch club, or if they were sending out an email or running a campaign where they wanted to drive people, uh, to information about the club, they would use the domain swatch.club.

It still pointed to swatch.com, but it didn’t point to the homepage. It pointed to swatch.com/us/marketing/join the club, which was their page. About the swatch club. Now, of [00:34:00] course, that URL. I just mentioned, even though it’s correct, they could never put that long ridiculous URL in marketing material, but they could easily put swatch.club in marketing material.

So you can use multiple domains, deep linking to different aspects of your website. And that’s especially powerful. If the domains you choose are relevant to the content, people will find when they click that. . Yeah, that’s terrific. You know, I was thinking back to talking about startups. A lot of times you may wanna delay using your best domain name until you’re ready.

And, and the reason I say that is, um, Announcing a new company or announcing a name change of a, of a new domain name, or we’re now known as is the type of press release where you can get a lot of free media because it’s, it’s kind of an announcement. It’s a fact, you know, [00:35:00] you’re not just saying. Hey, remember us, you know what I mean?

You’re actually notifying everybody of something. So I’ve, I’ve seen some companies where you may start your, especially if you’re in stealth mode, you may start your project and, and you could just go get project project 70 three.com and you could run it with that for a little while, knowing that at some point in time, you’re gonna announce.

That you are now for instance, purple.com or you are now this, and you may not wanna give everybody a head start as to what you’re doing. So I think having a temporary domain name is a possible strategy, but what I really wanted to say is get, even if you’re gonna use Gmail for your, for your mail, get your own domain name, there’s a lot.

Funnels a lot of companies now where if you’re getting information on services that can help you help your company. If you’re submitting to do a pitch, they, they won’t take a Gmail address. You know what I mean? So if you’re [00:36:00] running your, your side hustle and you’re running, you know, your beginning stages with the Gmail address, they’re gonna wanna see a real domain name.

Even if you use Gmail to power. That, that domain name, but they’re gonna wanna see a real domain name so that they can look you up, see what your company is, you know, see some stuff on LinkedIn and things like that. So definitely go with a domain name of some kind as opposed to Gmail would be some of my advice for startups.

Good advice, Page. Very good advice. We have Pelli I hope I pronounced it correctly. Pelli welcome to the serial entrepreneur club. Did you have a question for Page? Uh, you know guys? Yes, I do. But first, um, I wanna thank you guys for bringing me up. This is, um, the algorithm must be working so beautifully, cause this is back to back yesterday.

There was another channel similar, but not as, not as. As detail and as professional as [00:37:00] this one here, cause um, Mr. Page here, he, he is a, he’s a true, uh, uh, uh, uh, business maker. He’s a, he’s a true business deal maker. So, um, my friend, I, I am an individual who I constantly, constantly want to learn. I I’ve missed the beginning.

Uh, of the computer era, the beginning of the, of the internet, but it was never too late. It’s been about 10 years that I’ve been just completely engulfed in, uh, learning, uh, learning how to code, learning, how to develop, uh, uh, um, products that are useful, uh, meaningful. But, um, I have two, I bought two domain names and so my question will be this.

I believe that my domain names are, are good. One of them, I already have a website. The other one, I, I still I’m in the process. This is a more, [00:38:00] uh, complicated, uh it’s. I just have to build two, two different stuff, two different systems for, for this other, uh, project, but my website. For, um, uh, just, uh, eCommerce.

I believe that my name has a value and, and it has a, a, a, a good. How kind of like how he was saying that, how it rolls out from your tongue is very important. The, the shortness and the catch, the how catchy it is, how memorable it is for the individual to just hear it once. And. And forever is gonna be there.

Oh my God. This is this name. Oh, I remember, you know, quickly. Um, and I think that I have that with actually both of my, my, my, both of my projects right now. So my question will be, do you think I’m not a, I’m not rich at all and I’m, I’m gonna struggling, but let’s say you think I should invest more on [00:39:00] developing the brand on the name itself.

It has both have the.com, which is, that was the most interesting thing because I’ve been trying to say this to my team, to my co couple of my, uh, friends. And one of them is my, my partner that the.com was very, very important. And I, and I com I, I had, you know, a couple little back and forth with them because I said, if it’s not.com, then I don’t want it.

You know? So, um, yeah, I think I’m gonna jump in. I think that, um, I think. It’s better to build on the best domain name you can have. If your domain name is 17% better than the average domain name for your business. Your, your marketing’s gonna be 17% better. Your fundraising’s gonna be 17% better. Your efficiency’s gonna be 17% better if you’re raising money and you have a domain name that can help you raise money at a million dollar [00:40:00] valuation instead of a $750,000 valuation, just because of the fact that you’re gonna get the prestige of being able to say.

This is who we are. You’re kind of claiming who you are. You know what I mean? You’re becoming that, like I started a. Real timely. Now, back in the first internet bubble called gas prices.com. Now, when I was gas prices.com and I paid, you know, above $10,000 for that name. And we built out a site to compare gas prices.

I mean, I could get a meeting with anybody I wanted to cuz I paid out from gas prices.com and there was something, there was something too. Wow. How’d you get that? Or that’s a great gamer. Yes. We want to be on that site. So I think that whether it’s respect. Whether it’s an appreciation for your savvy, whether it shows that you got in early that yes, sometimes having a good domain name can help in lots of ways.

You still gotta execute. You still gotta have good people. You still gotta have a good plan. You’ve still gotta do everything. But I think a domain name can [00:41:00] help in a lot of those areas. So yes, I would build on your better domain name. The other thought people will say is, well, as long as I’m gonna put in a bunch of time and effort, I can do that on any domain name.

So why don’t, why should I do that on a valuable domain name, but I just think that you can afford to take a chance and be anything less than the best you can be. So yes, I would build on your good domaining. Um, Uh, thank you so much now. Um, yeah, that was, that was actually very, very, uh, um, helpful for me because sometimes, um, you know, when it’s an individual, they just kind of, I’m one of those have a kind of unique, not, not unique in a sense, cause there are individuals way, way, way, way, way smarter.

Quicker, faster thinker, they’re faster, uh, executing and getting. I really feel like I, sometimes I, um, procrastinate a little too [00:42:00] much, I think about too much. And I wanna like be too, too perfect to it. And, and, and that to me, and I do want you gonna take a couple other questions and I have a couple other things to share.

Um, how can I help you today? Is there a specific thing I can answer for. Uh, the, it was it just one more thing I think is the something you said about being able to fundraise with just the domain name? I didn’t know that that was possible. Well, it, you know, obviously it depends on the, the domain name, but, um, I had another site early on when I was doing more building than I was pure domaining it was the beach.com and it was $20,000.

That’s how much they wanted for it. But I didn’t have $20,000. So what I did was I paid him $2,000 to, um, have an option to buy the name and that I would pay another thousand to keep the option going for two years. What that meant was [00:43:00] I could be the beat.com. I could do graphics, I could start operating a website.

And so I ended up, I had a small public company at the time and we actually. Made it, one of our divisions. And we could say that we were the beach.com and everything that that was ever gonna be, which we, you know, thought could be worth millions and millions of dollars, even though I hadn’t really finished buying the domain name, but I thought that if I.

Painted the big picture of what I could be with the beach.com. Then I could raise the money to actually go back and buy the domain name. So whether it’s, you know, especially as we get into maybe a recession time, time with money, be creative, um, uh, you know, use things like that. If you think that having that name can signal exactly.

Your intentions, you know, how do you really tell somebody that we really intend to take over this business? We really intend to be a player in this business. And sometimes by the domain name you’re picking, you’re sending that signal that, [00:44:00] you know, yeah, we’re serious and, and we’re gonna be big. So yeah, I think what Page is saying when he mentioned the investment is that signal you’re sending that authority, that a.

That’s inherent in a good, strong domain name is true for investors too. So if you’re walking into an investor pitch and you’ve already had the wherewithal to get a really strong, memorable domain, that’s gonna send a signal to that investor. And, and Page’s point about doing it on a payment plan or with an option, you know, really gave him the ability to leverage that strength of the.

For drawing his business together for raising money or whatever it might be without having to make the full payment for the domain until he was in a position to do so. So having that strong domain, yes, it can. It, the advantages it gives you with the consumer would also be the same for potential investors, potential business partners, strategic or otherwise.

So there are many benefits to choosing the right [00:45:00] domain for your startup. yeah. Jeff, the other thing is it gives you something to sell. You know, a lot of times, if you start a company and you’re the driving founder and you’re the driving force, you know, you, you name the company after your sell for the company gets identified with you.

And it becomes very hard to sell because whoever wants to buy the company, they wanna make sure you go with it. But if you’re looking for a true. You may wanna be able to sell the company, let a new player, uh, take over, you know, manage the customer relationships, leverage the brand and the domain name, because it’s like the key fulcrum of value that everything’s based on.

You know, every customer list, every traffic, every relationship, every email in the history of the company is tied to that domain name. Every link that’s ever been done, every story that’s ever been written. I just love, I’m passionate about this. Jeff and Michele is tied to that domain name. So what you can wrap [00:46:00] everything that there is, and instead of having to sell it and having to go back and open up your books and say, what’s the cumulative retained earnings of the company, you’re able to sell somebody by transferring ownership of the domain name, the entire business, and then you can exit because someone, when they take over that domain name, they’ve got almost everything that the business.

The business is. And then with a good domain name, it lets someone pivot. When I bought seniors.com, I actually bought it on eBay. If you can believe it, a company had raised a couple billion dollars to be seniors.com in the first internet bubble and the. Founding investors actually personally guaranteed a lease, um, for office space and office space meant you used to have to go into these offices and pay for ’em.

And what they ended up doing was even though the company was defunct, they ran outta money. They. Still had this valuable domain name and they were able to sell it to me to pay off this contingent [00:47:00] liability. So the domain name gives investors that little bit of well, even if they mess it up, at least we’ve got some value in the name.

So that’s what I was thinking of. Jeff. When you mention that. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it’s always good to remember that even though you’re thinking about it from a branding perspective in this conversation, a domain name is in reality, a, a digital asset, you know, it it’s valuable, it carries value on your books and it’s something that can be resold.

Some of the, the best domains that have been acquired in the aftermarket are domains that a company may have bought. Intending to use them for a division for a new product or whatever. And then for whatever reason that division closed or that new product never got launched. And instead of having nothing for their efforts, they can actually go out and sell that domain name and recoup some of their investment in that failed project.

That’s a great point. Jeff, you can also, if you happen [00:48:00] to collect domain names, which. Some of us do compulsively. Um, but if you have some other domain names sitting on the shelf, much like patents or things like that, you may find that you wanna do a joint venture and you may not wanna do it on your main brand.

You may wanna do it on a separate brand. And having the domain name again, puts you in charge of the venture. I know Verizon right now, you know, they, they wanna get me. They want me to pay regular price for all my phones, but then they started this new subsidiary. That’s a discount subsidiary. So, you know, they don’t wanna.

Let people know that it’s by Verizon. You know what I mean? That it’s the same service. And so anyway, there’s lots of ways to use, uh, different names, but, uh, as anyone, what I’d love to talk to is anyone who’s looking right now at making a domain decision and you don’t have to tell us what the domain names you’re thinking about, but.

It’s been a while since I’ve started up a company and, and, and have, have, had to think up a [00:49:00] domain name. Um, most of the time I buy the domain up a company around it, but I’d be interested to know some of the check you’re running into. Um, I will say that. There’s 150 million names taken in.com. You could convince yourself that everything’s taken, but you’ve also got 25 years of people slowly trading in and out of domain names, popularity changes, themes, change.

Um, Even if you’ve got a budget to, to, to buy a premium domain name, you know, look and see what’s out there. Uh, one of the things that that I’ve done for clients is I just charge an hourly rate just to give them an idea of what’s out there at different price points. So you can make a decision. You know, if we spent a thousand dollars, what could we get if we.

$5,000, what can we get and what can we get just for the regular registration fee? So I, I think that, you know, there [00:50:00] there’s lots of options. It’s an important decision, but the last thing, it won’t be the last thing I say, but when patella was names, The things we run into with the name game on Wednesdays.

And my other domain rooms is a lot of times you’re gonna see your domain name as if it’s your favorite child, your pet, your, your creation, and, and you’re gonna see every great benefit for your domain name. And I think sometimes when you’re out there in the real world, you have to. How does my name stack up against all the domain names in the world?

Does it really have punch or credibility? And if you have unlimited funds, you can buy names that have punch and credibility in the whole world. You could get anyone’s attention, but you wanna look at your specific business and say, is the name that I’m using scarce? For [00:51:00] people in my business, would people, competitors, suppliers, vendors, and customers, would, they perceive that of the possible names that somebody could be called in my business or in my geographic area.

That what I have is scarce. So you don’t necessarily need to buy purple.com or crypto.com, but you wanna have something that in the universe of the scope of your total addressable market is perceived to be scarce and of quality. And that’s the best encouragement I can give everybody. That’s awesome. And we really appreciate it.

This has been an awesome session. Um, you have so much wisdom to share with us and we really appreciate it, Page. Um, before we come to the end though, I don’t wanna forget, um, you are on. CIL entrepreneur club. We’re here every Friday at 2:00 PM. Eastern. Also, if you’d like to [00:52:00] be alerted of special events or resources, please go to our website and join our email list.

And last but not least page, thank you again for joining us. Um, Page runs an amazing club where they. Lots of deep dives on a regular basis here on clubhouse called domain club. So, you know, go over there, check out his schedule and join some of his sessions. But Page, I know you have some particularly interesting ones coming up that is going to be addressing some of the new technology and marketing trends.

Can you just kind of give us a heads up of what those are so we can mark our calendar, please. Yeah. In, in domain club, we’ve started, this will be our second week. We, we, we do a room on Mondays. That’s called Monday domains and that’s kind of the news of the. Basic questions all the way up into advanced questions on Tuesdays at 5:00 PM Eastern, [00:53:00] I do a club for outbounding, which is hustling.

You’ve got a domain name. If you’re an investor, this is for domain investors trying to proactively sell their domain names. Then on Wednesday we do million dollar names. We talk about higher quality, rare scarce domain names. But the show that we’re doing today is, is right. When this one ends is about something called web three domain names.

And as part of the whole blockchain ledger, web three people have said, Hey, the domain name system can be improved. Let’s come up with new ideas. Let’s come up with blockchain ideas. Let’s come up with things that look like domain names, but they’re gonna be really cool. And people are really attracted to ’em because if you didn’t get the first position in.com, you didn’t get the first position in other TLDs.

You may reach and say, I wanna be first in this one, but these have been out for three or four years. So what we wanted to do was talk about web three domain names. So we’re gonna do [00:54:00] that here. At three Eastern in domain club, you can follow me and, and you can, uh, look up the show on domain club, but it is a new technology it’s untested.

And in some ways you’re having to pay now for what your domain may or may not be worth in the future. I kinda like the current system where you can use an existing domain name, uh, on 98% of all the computers in the. but that doesn’t mean I’m not keeping an eye on the new technologies cuz that’s where the innovation is happening.

So that’s web three domain names and we’ll start that right here at the top of the hour. So thanks for that choice. Uh, you could also join Jeff and I on Wednesdays, um, along with Sharon and we do a thing called the name game and Jeff, maybe you can tell him about that. Sure. Page, thank you. Yeah. The name game is, is literally a game.

Um, what we ask you to do if you play is come up on stage. And tell us just the name of your business and your [00:55:00] domain name, nothing else. And then Page, Sharon, and. We’ll try to guess what you do just based on the strength of your domain. And then of course afterwards, you’ll tell us how we did and you’ll have a chance to tell us what you actually do, but it ties into a lot of what we talked about today.

How if you have that perfect domain name, That expresses what your business is. That’s easy to remember. You have a greater chance of attracting the right customers to you more efficiently and more cost effectively. So the name game’s a lot of fun. Um, we’d be delighted if you joined us one Wednesday evening, Michele, any final page?

Go ahead. Yeah. Excellent. Well, we’ve come to the end of our time here. We greatly appreciate all the members that have joined. Um, if you’ve found this useful, um, please do follow the folks here on the stage and follow the startup club and domain club. And don’t forget if you wanna [00:56:00] really do a deep dive into cool new applications for domain.

In web three. Oh, follow, uh, page over to domain club. Thank you so much, everyone. And have a wonderful safe weekend. And one final reminder, you can find a recording of this episode over@startup.club, the website. Uh, also we have replay turned on so you can listen to this show again, here on club. And the serial entrepreneur club show is a podcast now and it’s available.

There’s I think Michele, over 65 episodes now close to 70 episodes. That’s right. And they’re available anywhere. You would find your podcast in the iTunes store. Um, cetera, et cetera. So you can listen to serial entrepreneur club everywhere you go.

So Mr. Page real quick, you’re gonna be on a show, right, right after this, correct? Yes. Uh, so, uh, how do we go there? Uh, what’s the name of the channel? Uh, it is [00:57:00] called domain club. So you can hit my profile picture Uhhuh. And at the bottom you should see domain club and you can join domain club. Oh, okay. And then if you follow me, um, then , then I think you’ll get a notification.

That’ll notify you every time I’m speaking in a. Fantastic. Yep. Okay. Thanks everyone. Thanks you. And for asking questions. Thanks Michele. Thanks Page. And we hope to see everyone next week for another episode of serial entrepreneur club. Thank you. Thank.