Morning Folks!!
A marathon entering the final stage is how I look at the next 3 years. The last 3 years of a 20 year plan that not a person on the planet took seriously then and maybe only a couple hundred do today. My job was to fly over 20 years of temptation and still have my portfolio in tact and stronger. Not to sellout during times like this but to fortify and get even stronger in the face of recession, second guessing and the 'Second coming'.
I take things slow and just try and move things in the right direction. This is what I will be doing for the next 3 years and beyond. Always my general plan. Lease, don't sell. Extract as much recurring revenue as possible with an exit strategy that makes sense.
What you have seen over the last few weeks at JointVentures.com has been raw and under the hood. It was the content behind the mask. That's how I think of it anyways. Like a chassis before you put on the skin called the body. So many cars look the same with no body. Slap on a new body and you have an entirely new vehicle on the outside, but what actually runs it inside does not change.
That is exactly what we have done with JointVentures.com. My words, Danny Welch engineering the chassis so my words would work and then Danny Pryor to design the new body unveiled for the first time TODAY! RIGHT NOW! Then we add Howard Neu into the mix and he writes the manuals in the way of the contracts. So that is the foundation JointVentures.com is built on.
Plus my view of the world. My view of what makes business tick and brands made. My view of how history is the road map to the future and the difference between chasing yesterday and creating a pathway to tomorrow and arriving before all others. Knowing the difference between markets and marketing. Lastly, knowing that nothing happens on this planet until the sale is made and companies revolve and thrive because of sales. Sales drives everything. No sales = no budgets. More sales = increasing budgets. Simple! And I will always keep the most complex as simple as possible. It's not about winners and losers. It's about winners and winners.
Let's start with a simple premise and a simple example. My belief and my bet is that it is harder to sell a domain like Rings.com for $3.5MM or $5MM or whatever the owner wants for it then it is to lease for a few grand a month to understand why that domain will command those dollars. To give some business entity the opportunity to take the entire domain and test an idea or experiment for only $5000/month is an incredible opportunity for somebody selling rings or has an idea. $5000. CHUMP CHANGE!!!!
But there is a huge bonus in the way of type in traffic.
You know going in that the domain will receive over 10,000 visitors between Thanksgiving and Christmas with nothing there! Tens of thousands more visitors during the rest of the year. You know Google is charging several dollars for each click. You know the owner of rings.com is making pennies on those clicks. What is in the middle is called 'Opportunity' and some see it and some don't. To me it is like the sun shining in the sky. How exactly can anyone miss it?
See I don't have to convince you. I don't have to convince a stadium. I don't have to do anything but find one sharp business on the planet that sees what I see. I am betting that in time that will happen and I see a candy.com deal happening with Rings.com. That's why I need the BEST domain names. Look guys, before the auction I said flat out I could not use high end domains because domainers were not going to buy them. Well, exactly the opposite is true here. I want the best of the best and together I think there is a path to very high revenues.
We won't try to sell and lease to other domainers. You won't see emails from me touting one domain or another. I will announce domains that fortify what we are doing and if allowed I will exploit the hell out of the leases we write. Our efforts will be invisible to the domain community. We will pursue end users. One on one. Old school. NEED, WANT, DESIRE! Not worried about anything but doing deals. The overhead for this is ME. No extra office. No extra staff. No extra bills. No extra anything but helping to spearhead what I see. What Danny Welch sees. What many others see. Then add to that opportunity at a time of high unemployment. 90% of all of our overhead came with just setting this up. Sweat equity! Time and energy driven by passion and belief. A 20 year plan that gets closer with every passing day and while most may laugh and chuckle, I just stay steadfast to a path that has proven life changing over and over and over again.
This is a pretty simple bet. We are betting that there are 2 guys out there just like the Candy.com guys that have a burning passion to go to the next level and come to the table with some credentials no matter their business or industry. We can create money, it's very difficult to create passion. What a category killer domain does for someone is make them an instant player. They instantly have a seat at the table. Instantly have to be taken seriously if the site is serious.
Rings.com one day won't be $5000/month....it will be $50,000 a month. The world is moving in this direction all though slowly. About 20 years slow. But it is worth opening now. Better early than late to the single biggest boom you have ever seen. But first, they have to pay the price with .whatever.
When they find out the train to nowhere just cost them millions, they will finally see the bargain at hand. The birdie in the mine has died many times. And even a success will result in failure because no entity can lose 35%-50%-61% of ALL their traffic and survive. Yes in time that number will go down But please tell me how many ships would leave port knowing their ship is taking on even 25% water? And this is no short journey. They are doomed to sink before they can even get out of port.
Look, in 100 years it won't matter. But we will all be dead. The question becomes how long will it take folks to adapt to a new .whatever until his leak to .com goes under 10%? (Still huge btw) Not in my lifetime. And even when they have a great success on .whatever, the first stop is to acquire the .com. Why? Because it is in their self interest and it will be costing them plenty of dollars each and every day not to have.
It's the mall on 'Main STREET' Folks. They are building their mall on 'Maine AVENUE' and they are going to take out their anger for their bad judgement and lost business on us. Just ask Marcello.
A mine filled with dead birdies is what is going to be the fuel to propel leasing. Just follow the path. Follow it before them and we can all share a Pina Colada and a Ginger Ale at the beach. And originally it was just with an umbrella. Now it comes with a cabana at the Ritz! We may be on the wrong path as I have been told for nearly 18 years. But I sure as hell like where 'wrong' leads to! Please give me more of that!
My target audience for listings are the 500 domain investors that have one word domains that they know in the right hands could be life changing. These guys probably don't need me to change their life. They did that themselves long ago. What I am asking from this group is to send me 1 or 2 domains to discuss. 1 or 2 domains that are not doing the numbers they should and allow Danny and myself and the team we are assembling to go out and do battle. Like I said, not anything you will see. Invisible. You don't need to change how you are currently using the domain. Just allow us to do some old fashioned door knocking and create leads to follow up and turn them into deals. Long term, complex deals.
It's a slow tedious process as you already know. But in 2013 all we have to do is demonstrate 6-12 deals that are meaningful enough to prove the finesse we have in being able to do COMPLEX deals with all types of options plus current and future revenue streams. Lots of moving parts all designed to take advantage of the future and the risk we are all willing to take.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
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