Video Transcription
Tatiana Bonneau:
So my guest today doesn’t need any introduction to anyone involved with domain names, but for everybody else, I have the pleasure to have Mike Mann as a guest. He’s a serial entrepreneur, founder of multiple successful corporations, including phone .com, domainmarket .com, SEO .com.
Tatiana Bonneau:
He’s also very active on the social scene. We’re going to talk about all of that in a minute. Thank you for making the time, Mike. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
Mike Mann:
Thank you, Tatiana. I appreciate it.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Let’s start with my classic first question for anybody who doesn’t know. You give me a little bit of a background. Who is Mike Mann: and how did you get to do what you did today?
Mike Mann:
Well, I’m mostly a working man and a family man to the best of my ability. And I do a lot of charity projects. And, you know, I started out a long time ago, I was in a different line of business. And I had been studying a lot about the future of business.
Mike Mann:
And really this theme of internet marketing became very prominent in the business periodicals and things I was reading about. So without any actual skills, one day I decided I was an internet entrepreneur.
Mike Mann:
And I did a good job hiring really smart young people, software engineers, network engineers. And they’ve helped me build different people, helped me build a whole bunch of different companies and charities over the years.
Mike Mann:
So I’ve been very blessed in that regard.
Tatiana Bonneau:
When was that around if it’s not, no, it’s not a secret.
Mike Mann:
I just have to remember, around, you know, 1986 probably, I originally started thinking about this stuff and by 88 I had started a company, you know.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Well, I’m asking that because you and we’re going to talk a bit more about that in a second, you, you are very involved with domain names and in the whole, you know, domain name world and that’s the reason why I’m bringing up when you started thinking about the internet and internet entrepreneurship, because I feel a lot of people feel like there’s a lot of discussions about, oh, domain nurse, domain name owners, they’re like, just, you know, you know, they got all those names and it’s unfair.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And I’m like, you had no idea what the internet was, let alone, you know, the opportunities that we now take for granted at the time. So those were the people who actually saw that and took a huge risk investing in those names.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And in your case, you just mentioned that you were not just buying names, you were actually building businesses on the internet.
Mike Mann:
Yes, and actually I kind of got the dates wrong. I started in business in general in 86, but different types of businesses. So the internet was more around 94, 95 when I started doing internet stuff.
Mike Mann:
So at first we started a small thing. It was called an ISP, internet service provider, connecting small businesses in Washington DC, mostly law firms onto the internet. And we were fortunate to sell that company to a group that was buying up all the small internet companies and building a national network and national brand called Vario.
Mike Mann:
So I sold that company and then I managed to keep a bunch of domain names that we had for our customers or for potential customers. We were aggregating some great domains, hoping that certain types of customers would glue onto them and wanna build their businesses around those domains.
Mike Mann:
So, again, I probably had like 20 domains at the time I sold internet interstate, one of which was called menus .com. So one day I was offered $25 ,000 for menus .com and I verbally said, yes, I’ll take it.
Mike Mann:
And then the next day I was offered 50 ,000 for the exact same name, but I had a verbal agreement. So I actually kept my verbal agreement and sold it for 25. And though I’m sort of regretting it, I wish I had taken the 50.
Mike Mann:
But in any event, that highlighted the extreme value of these weird abstract little assets that at that time costed us $35 a year to renew them.
Tatiana Bonneau:
How do you feel has that perception of domain names changed over time, like since you started getting involved with them?
Mike Mann:
the perception, well, you know, it’s a mixed bag. If you’re an owner of great domain names, you think positively about it. But you know, the people that are trying to register them for their small companies, and they realize all the good ones are taken as the expression, which is sort of true in a lot of ways, they have to buy them for their fair market value.
Mike Mann:
And the fair market value is established by a supply and demand and negotiated process. So, you know, other than my side company, accurateappraisals .com, there aren’t a lot of ways of figuring out a domain valuation, what the actual fair market value is.
Mike Mann:
So, people get very frustrated. They want to buy a domain for 10 bucks and they find out it’s actually 10 ,000 bucks. And they don’t have a lot of ways of verifying whether that’s a fair price or, you know, they don’t know how to deal with it.
Mike Mann:
Most of them can’t even afford it. So, it doesn’t even matter if it’s theoretically a fair price. So, it leaves a lot of people frustrated. But on the other side, somebody like me who holds on to them for years and years and years, I let the value of the best assets appreciate over time.
Mike Mann:
And I can sell them and make some money, hopefully.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm. I do feel, and I wrote about it in some articles some time ago about, I feel in a way, they kind of fell a victim of their own success domain names, because I do, I’m a tiny bit younger than you.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So when I got into, tiny bit, when I got into IT in general, actually one of my first jobs was selling websites. So like we would, we had a call center and we would call people and say, do you want a website or do you want to?
Tatiana Bonneau:
And I saw like in my time, how quickly it went from, do you want a website? Basically trying to convince people to have a website at all. Cause you know, some of them didn’t have, like now I don’t think even, you know, a tiny shop on the corner, even if they’re super local, they still do have a website.
Tatiana Bonneau:
They do have a web presence. But yeah, I witnessed how it went from, do you need a website to, you know, how can you improve your website to all of the social media, like you have to be on and present and, you know, manage all of those.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And, you know, even further now, like with content management, et cetera, et cetera. And I’m, I’m like blown away by how domain names have been present since the very beginning, literally of it, like they made, made the internet usable.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Otherwise we’d be, you know, we would have to remember all of those numbers, which nobody can, but up to date, like you say, you have people going like, oh, why can’t I have it for $10 and why are they not like free and available?
Tatiana Bonneau:
And it’s, it’s like, how, how can you not connect the two?
Mike Mann:
Yeah, no, I feel the same way. And, you know, it’d be nice if there was some better education of normal marketing people, small business managers in the general public, because they just don’t understand there actually is a lot of learning material online.
Mike Mann:
You and me, for example, do these videos and, uh, blogs and social media. And then, you know, dozens of other people who are experts do as well. So it’s actually a lot of good documentation, but for some reason it hasn’t been as widely dispersed as you would think, because even all these years later, after domains have been popular, you still find most small business people, they just don’t understand.
Mike Mann:
They just don’t get it. And the ones who do get it generally profit considerably because they take a small business, whatever it happens to be named and they rename it, giving it a super premium domain name and the vast majority of the case studies show those people growing exponentially and getting a lot more profits than they ordinarily do and they expect you don’t really see very many bad case studies of people using great domain names.
Mike Mann:
And the worst case scenario is the domain name itself goes up in value anyway. So even if they didn’t do a good job on their business, for whatever reason, if they bought a great .com domain over time, they keep going up in value.
Mike Mann:
I mean, literally every year for the last 20 years, the average sale price of premium .com domain names has gone up. So there’s no reason to expect that for the next 20 years, every year it’ll keep going up.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Absolutely, what you just said, a lot of those can be resolved, even if you know the worst thing happens, like the business doesn’t succeed, which, let’s be honest, a lot of startups don’t, or it gets acquired, merged with some other business, those names can, in most cases, they can be resolved.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, exactly. So, um, you know, also the people are building value, like the domain itself, if you didn’t use it would go up in value, but they’re building social media around it. If they’re building Google links, again, just the domain goes up in value.
Mike Mann:
Usually the domain and the business go up in value together. But if for whatever reason, the business isn’t catching on, you’re still building value into your domain name, if you’re using it properly.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Absolutely. And yeah, to go back on what you were saying on the education, and I’m very happy there are people like you and me and other people that are in the industry and working more and more on educating people.
Tatiana Bonneau:
I remember when I got into domain names, now it’s coming up to five years, I think, or something. And I think that’s indicative in itself as well, because I came from an IT kind of a background as well.
Tatiana Bonneau:
But I, I was giving bad advice on domain names if I have to be completely honest, you know, I told you I started with it. Oh yeah, I started with the, you know, selling websites then I had my own IT software development company and I was giving bad advice to people because I didn’t know any better.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And the crazy thing is that was like, Oh, my son is going to be 19 soon and he was like two or three when I started so that’s a lot of years.
Mike Mann:
You must have been two or three when you had a baby.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah, no, no, I was 20. Yeah, so, but my point is that was some time ago, and I could say my excuse then I didn’t was you know I didn’t know any better about domain name so you know when people came to me about cycle let’s do this you know we have this idea let’s do that piece of software or let’s do this website and the domain name was just like a little thing on the side it was just like oh get whatever you know put a put a dash like get a .co or get to whatever doesn’t matter like it really was not a huge consideration at all.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And when I started getting into the main names and understanding all that myself. I was like, wow, like, why isn’t everybody like every marketing branding agency person, you know, understanding and learning about that and educating people because it’s just crazy.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And the best you know I got to when talking to those type of companies one of which you know I had myself before I got into domain names was two things one, they don’t know any better themselves. And the other thing was when you start actually opening the door a little bit and trying to understand, okay, you don’t know why don’t you learn then people look into it, and they go hold on a minute like I, I’m trying to get money for myself from those people.
Tatiana Bonneau:
You know I want to get you know 10 ,000 15 ,000 for, you know, whatever marketing job I’m going to do or design job or software development, and you’re telling me they have to put you know 100 ,000 in a domain name.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And so it goes into that full crazy circle of people not getting educated about domain names and even worse actually getting bad advice.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, exactly. Well, there’s a couple of points related to that. One is that there’s millions of companies that don’t have a great domain, but still have a great company. So people try to point those out as case studies.
Mike Mann:
But what they’re overlooking and missing is those companies would have even been much more successful had they been building upon a great .com brand name at the same time, particularly if they’re a technology or web company, you know, if you’re like cutting lawns, you actually can benefit from a great domain, but it’s not quite as important because, you know, you’re more hands on the street, meeting people and doing labor work.
Mike Mann:
So it’s a different scenario, but you run a technology company, you know, there’s overwhelming evidence that a great .com is going to build a lot of value, unless you somehow overpaid, then it would be a great investment.
Mike Mann:
And again, you could pay a lot of money. That doesn’t mean you overpaid. That means it was a great valuable domain. Like you could buy a domain for a million bucks and say, you know, I think I overpaid, but most cases that domain is probably worth two or 3 million.
Mike Mann:
So in fact, they got a great deal. If, if that’s the case, and then they build upon that great deal. So they’re in, they’re getting double the values. They’re getting a great domain at a great price.
Mike Mann:
That’s going to go up in value every year. Then they’re going to build upon it. So they’re going to add value to the domain itself while at the same time adding value to their corporation. So there’s multitude of ways of long -term profit upon a great .com brand name.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Absolutely. It’s just an intrinsic part of the brand. It’s all there is to it. And it’s funny, you mentioned some, and I’m sure because you’re in the business of selling domain names as brand assets.
Tatiana Bonneau:
What you mentioned, it’s very funny. I’m sure you’ve experienced that where people go, oh my God, that’s like way overpriced. That’s just crazy. They buy the name. If you go up to them, it’s not even the day after, like few hours after, and you ask them to sell it, how much would they sell it for?
Tatiana Bonneau:
Most of the time, I think it’s like, it’s not a question like, how am I going to sell it? I’m not going to sell it. It’s my name. It’s my business.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, they take a mental ownership of it very quickly and physical ownership, but, uh, you know, they get engaged in their improved brand. Their whole company gets into it. Their web developers are happy about being able to build on top of a better brand.
Mike Mann:
Another similar point is that you look at the fortune 500. These are the 500 biggest corporations in America, 100% of them use .com domains. There’s only one slight exception. Google alphabet uses ABC dot XYZ.
Mike Mann:
The only reason though is because they couldn’t buy ABC .com because of ABC television. And the bigger point there is 99 .99% of their traffic goes to Google .com. It doesn’t go to ABC dot XYZ. And they probably regret ever buying ABC dot XYZ considering it’s just a stupid brand that nobody remembers, but so my point is, is.
Tatiana Bonneau:
We can afford it, that’s what we were saying earlier.
Mike Mann:
the wealthiest, smartest CEOs in the world, 500 of them, 500 out of 500, a hundred percent use .com and then they have teams of the world’s smartest marketing people, web people, advertising people who are all leveraging .com.
Mike Mann:
None of them are using anything else. So, you know, if the smartest, wealthiest, best people in the world, 500 out of 500 are using it, there’s got to be something to that.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s, there’s been like waves of things. I mean, I think that there was like, what’s it apps are going to kill the domain names like there’s not going to be everybody’s going to be an app that many names don’t matter and that went full circle.
Tatiana Bonneau:
There was like so many things like now, now the latest, I guess, although there was about voice that people are saying, you know, our voice is gonna, you know, nobody’s gonna, who’s gonna go and type things and everybody’s just gonna say things and you know, they’re gonna.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And actually, it’s not, it’s not just that those things didn’t kill the main names actually made them more important, each one of them.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, I mean, it didn’t work. I’ve been hearing this since the beginning of time, people trying to invent methods to go around the domains. You know, theoretically people who were upset, they couldn’t get the .com.
Mike Mann:
They wanted to try to invent all these other ideas. I mean, the one thing that has some effect on it is Google. If people go directly to Google and it’s a popular company or, or app or whatever, they type in keywords and they can still find it in Google and that’s a legitimate.
Mike Mann:
Issue. Um, but going directly to a domain where you know what it is, um, is more valuable. Plus, um, if, if you have a better domain, people are more likely to click through it in Google and more likely to buy from it, there’s a concept called domain bias in web search, Microsoft labs did an exhaustive study that proved mathematically that people with better domains, we’re going to make more money.
Mike Mann:
Partially because of the memory, but mostly because in Google, people would click on those with better domains and people had a higher propensity to convert into a customer and remember it and refer it to outside parties.
Mike Mann:
So, you know, again, there’s a Microsoft lab study. You can look up in Google domain bias and web search. There’s exhaustive paper written about it, how they studied it and how they proved that the great domains we’re going to cause a benefit in your profitability.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm, absolutely. The Google argument actually, and as you said, it’s probably one of the like, most relevant ones that yeah, it’s true, you know, people go and type something in Google. And I’ve always said, like, yeah, but why as a company, would you be, you know, banking on that, instead of saying, I actually want people not to go and type my name in Google, I want them to go directly to my domain name?
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah. Like, why would you want it? It’s, I just don’t get it. Like, why would you put money into the whole like Google machine, instead of saying, no, I don’t want that, I want people to go directly to me, because, like, you would see people do that as well.
Tatiana Bonneau:
I see that with social media, like, they would literally print their social media handles and put them on places. And why are you driving people to a third party? Why not your own website? Like, are you crazy?
Tatiana Bonneau:
You know, are you paying to advertise some other company?
Mike Mann:
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, it, it doesn’t make sense to say, Oh, you want to find my company, go to Google, or you want to find my company, you know, go to Facebook. You want to give them the main name, but the reality of the situation is having good search engine optimization, which gets you highly ranked in Google, having a sophisticated or at least good quality social media presence and the domain name all go hand in hand for better branding, better internet marketing, overall better longevity and more comp competitiveness for your corporation.
Mike Mann:
So you really, you want to cover all the bases, but to me, it starts with a great domain name and you build everything out underneath that.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah, definitely. And I think that’s the main thing. And I keep like repeating it in, you know, interviews. So when I talk to people, or even like when I talk to people socially, like outside of work, if we get to talk about, you know, their, their brands and their business, but it’s always that like, I’m not saying don’t do it.
Tatiana Bonneau:
You obviously have to do everything and it’s tiring and it’s a huge job on it. So, you know, like covering all of those social networks and which ones do you need to be on, which ones do you not and how to manage all that and, and the content individuals and everything, but like your domain name is like literally where the one place that you can control and the one place where, you know, it should all start and ultimately where you want to drive those people and keep that direct connection with them.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And I always give Nike as a good example. I’m sure there are others, but like to, to me, it’s because I’m like a fan of their products as well, but they do that really, really well. And if like, I think they pulled out from like Amazon, even for similar reasons to that, like they want to keep that direct connection with their visitors.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And yeah, of course they have, you know, presence everywhere, but the ultimate goal of everything that they do is to drive you to their website on their mail list, on their, you know, own application where you have like that direct connection with them and they make it enjoyable and like there’s benefits to doing it.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So you don’t go through, you know, third parties to get to them. And that’s, you know, to them, that’s like more profitable.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, they have a very sophisticated marketing process and extensive internet presence. I can still buy Nike shoes on Amazon, but I think they go through a third party.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah.
Mike Mann:
But, I mean, you know, they’re great role models for, you know, global marketing for sure.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm, absolutely. What are some misconceptions do you feel that like still persists about domain aims for entrepreneurs?
Mike Mann:
Well, again, people are pushing, there’s always like the thing of the year. They’re pushing different things. Dot AI is the hottest thing. And it’s in fact kind of interesting in a lot of ways, but there was already a thousand plus other extensions people could use dot app dot web dot IO.
Mike Mann:
And there was also the old school ones .net .org dot info dot whatever. That AI is particularly cool. And it’s probably better than almost all the other ones outside of .com, but it’s still way below the value of .com and you’d be crazy to build a global presence on like, you know, whatever a cool web .ai first of all, you’d confuse the hell out of 90% of the people, but second of all, somebody owns cool web .com and so they’re the value of their domain and their site.
Mike Mann:
It’s going to increase dramatically. Let’s pretend you create this awesome corporation, a ton of traffic, a ton of social media, great product on cool web .ai. You know, you’ve just massively enhanced the value of cool web .com.
Mike Mann:
And those folks could, could have bought cool web .com, assuming it was available. Mostly the cases, again, they’re just too cheap and too naive and they wasted all this time and money on an inferior brand and gave somebody like me all this free value because I usually own the .com when they build on those other things, me and my competitors, at least if somebody didn’t build a site on it already.
Mike Mann:
So the other thing is, you know, they think AI is exploding. It is really cool. And if you were to buy some of the best ones, whatever .ai, they might be somewhat relevant, but again, it’s, there’s no, no competition ever for .com.
Mike Mann:
And if you think about the AI phenomenon, first of all, it’s in a bubble. It’ll be around forever, but it’ll die down. The hype will die down somewhat. And, you know, there’s millions of companies that will leverage AI for profitability for their branding, their marketing, that doesn’t make them AI companies like, can you use the example of Nike?
Mike Mann:
Nike can probably use AI for all kinds of crazy stuff, but they’re not an AI company. Nike .ai is massively irrelevant because they use Nike .com. They’re a fortune 500 company. They don’t want to dilute their brand, confuse their brand, confuse their users.
Mike Mann:
Then there’s the companies that are actually AI companies that provide AI technology services. So let’s say, for example, there’s 10 ,000 of them today, 99% of which just started in the last six months.
Mike Mann:
So most of those won’t be around in the future. When they’re done, there’ll be 5 ,000 of them. Maybe let’s say at the very most 10 ,000, but so let’s say there’s 10 ,000 AI companies in the long run that provide AI services.
Mike Mann:
So maybe conceptually, they could benefit from a .ai domain name, but they can still leverage .com just as valuably. Plus they could already be using whatever .app or .io or something else. So the point is, is these people who are speculating and .ai making a big deal about it, trying to convince all their friends to buy them and register them.
Mike Mann:
The entire spectrum of potential clients over the long run is going to be like 10 ,000 sales .com already has hundreds of millions out there. And as far as the premium ones, you know, probably five, 10, 20 million.
Mike Mann:
So AI is not competing with .com, even though people online like to pretend it does, it is, it will, it’s going to be a big deal, but the math doesn’t support it and the history of all these conceptuals attempting to compete with .com all failed.
Speaker 3
Hmm
Mike Mann:
It’s just not realistic is the bottom line
Tatiana Bonneau:
We had that, we had that, sorry for interrupting you before I forget my third, we had that podcast for the end of the year, I had a mix of guests and we were talking about the AI craze just in general, not just related to domain names, but there was one comment that was basically comparing the AI to what cloud was some years ago.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And it’s the type of technology that like now it’s, everybody’s crazy about it, but once it becomes normalized and everybody’s used to it, you’re not going to want that stuck on your name. I mean, how many companies do you know that that are called something cloud and how many they were at the peak of it?
Tatiana Bonneau:
So yeah.
Mike Mann:
They do have a .cloud extension too, right?
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah, I think there is one.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, but that’s the point is nobody cares about it. Nobody knows about it. And again, it’s back to the general public, 90% of whom are, if you put whatever .ai on your business card, on whatever advertising, they’re still going to type .com they’re not going to understand it and you know, there’s no point in confusing people.
Mike Mann:
Everybody knows what .com is this, this whole phenomenon, you know, reminds me of when I was a kid in school, we use standard American measurements. You know, a mile an ounce, you know, a yard, whatever.
Mike Mann:
And we were told the whole time, well, you know, that’s what you’re using now, but everything is going to convert over to the metric system. You’re going to have to start using the metric system. So, you know, here we are 40 years later and, uh, nobody in the United States uses the metric system.
Mike Mann:
Nobody converted Americans in particular, and probably the whole world are creatures of habit. They’re habituated to using .com in all the biggest companies use .com. There’s no reason to change in the American mindsets, not going to change.
Mike Mann:
People can use other things. And some of the customers can be trained to use some of the other things. There’s no rational reason to do so.
Tatiana Bonneau:
I think you actually hit it on the nail just there when you said there’s no reason to change because change is difficult. We have so many things to deal with. Like the last thing you want is to, you know, have to remember or think about another thing, especially when it’s, you know, usually you’re going to a website.
Tatiana Bonneau:
It’s to either find something that you need or buy something. And in both cases, it’s like you don’t want to, to, you know, spend extra time. And exactly what you just said, that like maybe somebody will end up successfully re -educating people, that costs money.
Tatiana Bonneau:
That’s literally the thing. So whatever it is that you’re doing, yeah, probably you can succeed in doing it, but that’s going to have a price tag on it.
Mike Mann:
Yeah. And again, people are going to complain about the price of cool web .com. If they can’t afford it, it’s usually a great investment. If they can’t afford it, they’re saying, well, why don’t I get cool web .ai?
Mike Mann:
But the answer there is they should get cool web .ai .com is a better name than cool web .ai. And again, you can probably get that one for free or for really cheap. If it’s a dot com. And again, trusting these other registrars to manage your domains in the dot .ai or dot whatever, there’s all kinds of shady operators.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yep, yep.
Mike Mann:
And a lot of the apps and email programs identify all that stuff is spam. So like, you’re never going to see the emails from those people. The websites are going to crash. Uh, those people have these weird policies and they change the, you know, you don’t know, like, again, I don’t know the policies, but just for example, what if the .ai starts costing a thousand dollars per registration next year?
Mike Mann:
Cause there’s, there’s not a lot of rules, but the .com has a longevity of a rule system and the standard people that operate it, it’s still too expensive. There’s some amount of corruption in the system, but, uh, it’s still a much lower risk than any other extension is for your corporate security.
Tatiana Bonneau:
That goes back to education, that it’s absolutely crazy how people that are successful entrepreneurs, that are not even on their first venture, they have zero understanding of domain names to a point where they would build a business, like literally an online business, which means, you know, everything is relying on their domain name and they will get a, I don’t know, a .ly extension without even knowing that’s a country extension for Libya.
Tatiana Bonneau:
And it goes with everything that, you know, you can imagine that goes with it. I’m like, wow.
Mike Mann:
I didn’t even know that one.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah.
Mike Mann:
I’ve seen that LY, but I didn’t realize it was Olivia.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah, and there are, I’ve written an article about it, about country extensions, I didn’t know it until then myself, I was like, Oh, that’s a, you know, because you have that visually or whatever Lee, it’s an ending for many words that in a playful way and people had a period of playing with all of those and they’re literally like legal restrictions even I think it went a bit more public, there was a bit more publications around it and I’m starting to remember which website but there was a website that was an adult ally extension and they had some adult content.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Eventually, obviously, you know, with the legal side of it, Libya obviously is a conservative in that respect. So there was a point in that which nobody read, you know, when they were buying the domain name that you cannot distribute content that would be considered illegal in Libya, that sort of thing.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So the whole business went out. But that that I mean any country extension is a country extension. Yeah, it’s managed and it’s governed by that country so
Mike Mann:
And I’m pretty sure yeah .AI I’m almost positive is actually a country extension and not a expanded domain thing. So I think it’s like some island or something. I forgot exactly.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Now.
Mike Mann:
Apparently they have all sorts of restrictive rules and there’s all sorts of risks surrounding that. So again, dot com is run by all the major corporations in the world. They all use it. They all leverage the system.
Mike Mann:
They have lawyers to keep it in shape. It’s managed under the United States and it’s relatively safe compared to anything else.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm, absolutely. Let’s talk about that. We can talk about my names forever. I’m sure you are mentioned to be being very active on the social side of things, charities, and that’s not very usual. It’s like not everybody does that, not to a huge extent.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So tell me a bit more about that. Like, what’s, what’s the reasoning? How did you get into that? And what are you passionate about on that front?
Mike Mann:
Sure. Well, I was actually in the charity world before I was in the business world. And, you know, I worked hands on with homeless people, um, with disadvantaged youth with all sorts of different things, a lot of it in Washington, DC, where I’m from.
Mike Mann:
And I was actually always planning on having my life in the charity world. And I still do to a lot of extent. And the thing is, is, uh, you know, so I started running this small business. I mentioned a really long time ago called internet interstate.
Mike Mann:
The main purpose of it was, is I needed money to pay my rent, pay my bills in order to do my charity work, because I didn’t have any extra money. Um, but when I sold that company, I made like a million bucks and the company sold for a few million, but my share after taxes was around a million bucks.
Mike Mann:
And interest rates were at 5%. So at that point I was like, okay, I’m going back to charity work. I’m done with the business world. That was a lot of fun. And I was planning on living on my 5% interest for the rest of my life and doing charity work.
Mike Mann:
Um, but literally the venture capitalists that I sold that company to gentleman named Justin Joshki, I had a conversation with him. I’m like, yeah, I’m done. I’m retired. I’m going back to charity work.
Mike Mann:
Thanks a lot for my money. Have a nice life, you know? And he’s like, look, you know, there’s no way you’re going to live the rest of your life on a million dollars. You’re not going to be able to live like that.
Mike Mann:
You’re not going to have enough money to help charity. You’re not going to be able to buy a nice house and a nice car. Like it doesn’t make any sense. So essentially he convinced me that I’m better off being a businessman and creating more leverage through business, making money through business such that I can create more time and more money to be of greater assistance to the charity world.
Mike Mann:
And that actually turned out to work. I mean, I’ve worked really hard and really long hours and built lots and lots of companies, taken lots of risk, made a lot of money for a lot of investors, done our sorts of stuff, but all along the way, I’ve been building charities and donating literally millions of dollars to charities and spending thousands of hours working with charities, building charities, helping charities.
Mike Mann:
So that’s been my strategy all along. So as I, as I mentioned, I started being a charity person. I moved into business slightly by accident. And then when I thought I was done with business, I ended up reinforcing it.
Mike Mann:
Now it gets a little confusing because I spend so much time on business that I’m like more of a businessman, which really wasn’t my intention. But in any case, I’ve done both all along and you can see online, you know, my, I’ve changed around all the different charities stuff.
Mike Mann:
I did one point I built a charity organization called grassroots .org, which helped thousands of other charities. I helped start a charity in Washington, DC called bite back a long time ago. That still to this day, you know, 20 years later has a bunch of computer training centers for inner Cindy residents.
Mike Mann:
It helps them with their resumes. It helps them try to get jobs. Very cool, innovative thing. We started a long time ago and, and I have this fun called make change trust that you can see online at make change .com.
Mike Mann:
Also my website, Mike, man .com as links to my businesses, to my charities, to my social media, to my book called make millions, which is also at make millions .com. But in any event, so we have this charity fund now called make change trust.
Mike Mann:
Um, I, I changed the strategy of where we’re investing our money and who we’re helping and what we’re researching. Now I’m 80% focused on small charities in South Florida, where I live. People that I can actually meet with and talk to and see the results.
Mike Mann:
I had donated a lot to bigger organizations, but it was harder to track where the money was going. It was harder to communicate with the CEOs or the bosses, chairmans of those organizations. So anyway, the strategy shifted a lot, but I still have a very similar commitment to what I had way back in the beginning.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Hmm, that’s wonderful. Something to tie up the two. I do, and you probably get that as well, when you have people talking to you about domain names, you have sometimes people saying, oh, we we’re a nonprofit, we’re a charity, you know, our brand doesn’t matter that much.
Tatiana Bonneau:
What are your thoughts on that? Because you have the two hats, you know, you have the person who is working with the charities, and also the one that’s, you know, working with the domain names and the brands on the other side.
Mike Mann:
Well, because of my charity work, I actually bought all the best .org domain names, which are affiliated with charities a long time ago. I still own most of them. So I mean, I have the world’s very best .org collection right now.
Mike Mann:
And if they’re a legitimate charity, we sell them for cheap. I’ve given some away before, but the charities should leverage a .org domain mostly. The problem is it causes a little confusion. And the correct answer is they want the .org and the .com.
Mike Mann:
So like, for example, if somebody wants homeless .org and homeless .com, I own both of them. They can buy them as a package. They want philanthropists .com, philanthropists .org. I own both of them. They can buy the package.
Mike Mann:
But, you know, again, lots of people who run charities are just buying .coms too. And if they’re a legitimate charity and they show it to us, you know, we always give them big discount. Once in a while we give them away for free, but I try not to mix my actual corporate business work too much with my charity work.
Mike Mann:
I’m like, you’re a charity. You can apply for a grant through my chair, through my charity fund, Make Change Trust. In the meantime, you have to pay cash for this domain name, and my corporate entity that is supposed to make a profit.
Mike Mann:
Yeah. Oh yes.
Tatiana Bonneau:
I think it has to be, it absolutely has to be. I’ve had all sorts of, I’m like, I mean, recently moved to Ukraine, which is like, everybody’s moving out and I moved in, but whatever. And it’s funny that, well, it’s not funny, but do you know, like I’ve had, because people look you up when you, they talk to you, like when they book a call for a domain name, and the number of times I’ve had people trying to leverage that, like say, oh, and our country is sending whatever to Ukraine.
Tatiana Bonneau:
I’m like, really, like, seriously, you’re going to try and bring that up in a conversation about the domain name, like, ouch. Yeah, I hear you.
Mike Mann:
I didn’t see you move there permanently.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Oh yeah.
Mike Mann:
Oh, cool. I knew you were there last time I spoke to you, but I didn’t realize you moved there. I thought you were just visiting.
Tatiana Bonneau:
No, no, no moved. Yeah, been planning it for some time and yeah.
Mike Mann:
Well, that was so again, uh, you know, the last couple of years, again, and we still, we do 80% of our charity work in South Florida, but the other 20%, the last couple of years have been for Ukraine and Israel pretty much.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Yeah, yeah, the world is a crazy place. Becoming. Yeah, well, let’s try and end up on a positive note. What are you looking forward to in 2024?
Mike Mann:
Yeah. Well, actually I’m not interested in .ai domain names, but I am interested in artificial intelligence and AI. So again, my company domain market has like very extensive appraisal system and we have like very sophisticated tools, the best in the world.
Mike Mann:
We have an incredible user interface and we have the greatest ability to understand domain names and understand the value. Therefore we can buy them and sell them at profitable valuations. So again, we have this endless sets of data and endless user interface applications and really cool stuff we’ve been building up like for 20 years of just really great tool set, really great data set.
Mike Mann:
But now there’s tons of different ways we can leverage AI on top of our data set to do a better job at appraising domains. And again, if you look at the stuff I post, a lot of the good sales I do, I post the prices of the domains and the people always say, how did you get such a high price for such and such domain?
Mike Mann:
And the answer is this like extremely extensive data system we have and user interface we have, nobody else has that. So they don’t really have a way of understanding the domain such that we do into the level of detail.
Mike Mann:
So we can take this insanely cool system we have and put a bunch of AI tools on top of all these sets of data and all this information. And we’ll come up with even better domain valuation. So I can use that for buying and selling domains.
Mike Mann:
We’re also creating these new landing pages that are SEO, Google optimized. So our domain landing pages are going to get a higher valuation, a higher ranking in Google, more traffic, more ways of understanding our users and converting them into paying customers at a higher price.
Mike Mann:
We’re going to use all this on top of the domain auctions to buy more names that are people overlooked or at a better price or to know our limitations better. So basically there’s just tons of really cool stuff in AI.
Mike Mann:
A lot of it we already know what direction we’re going and there’s a huge amount of stuff that wasn’t invented yet. So we’re like watching the inventions and waiting for the inventions and going to start testing and applying stuff that isn’t invented yet because people are innovating all over the place.
Mike Mann:
So again, the AI phenomenon is insanely cool. Just the .AI domain names are relatively useless, but they don’t relate to whether AI itself is cool. And it’s a huge advantage to domain name companies.
Mike Mann:
They figure it out and we’re on the very cutting edge of leveraging technology to make money off domain names. So we’re going to push through it by adding AI and remain on the cutting edge indefinitely.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Very cool, very cool. And I absolutely agree with you, but that’s, AI is very, very exciting and where it’s going on the valuation. That’s funny you mentioned, because I was like last year at some point, even before about that, but last year at some point I finished like some formula I was trying to like for myself, literally, because I know as much as you do the problem of like, how do I value the domain name?
Tatiana Bonneau:
And I think you correct me if I’m wrong, I’m more on the like market value of domains and the data that you have. I was more on the, like, what is the value of that domain name for the particular company?
Tatiana Bonneau:
Like for that business, because you know, like, I don’t know, like, Google .com, if I had it tomorrow, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. Like obviously there’s some value to that name, but I would not be able to extract it because I’m not Google.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So that’s sort of a thing I was playing at. And I ended up like I started with a little thing and I ended up with like some Excel sheet with like 10 tabs and like craziness. And I was like, that’s not that nobody can use that.
Tatiana Bonneau:
It’s just crazy. And now with AI, you can actually make that work. You can actually plug that into some sort of a algorithm that it can manage for you and talk to people in a language they can understand and ask them questions and use that formula without it, you know, just making their head explode.
Tatiana Bonneau:
So that is just amazing.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, AI can uncover a lot of information about the value of the domain. At the end of the day, it needs an expert to look at what the computer generated and make some sense of it. My theory is that no matter how great the AI gets in the computer apps, there won’t be a replacement for putting a human on at the end of the day to make sure the value makes sense for a corporation.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Absolutely.
Mike Mann:
Um, but you know, it is extremely confusing and difficult to come up with evaluation. And that’s what we see as a strategic advantage. We can do better than anybody else at it. So that leaves our company in a, in a unique position where, you know, we can get the most value of anybody.
Mike Mann:
We can do the best appraisals. We can do the best at the auctions, buying, selling, whatever. And it just leaves us in a good long -term position of making sense of all that confusion, like the biggest companies in the world, you know, they have domain appraisal apps that are absolutely useless.
Mike Mann:
They’re actually, they’re counterproductive because they confuse people and tell them their domain’s worth a thousand bucks when it’s really worth a hundred thousand or a million, it just, the apps don’t work at all and the humans aren’t good enough trained, and even if you have these really smart humans that are okay or good with appraisals, medium good, they don’t have the tool sets we have.
Mike Mann:
So without the tools and the data, it’s almost impossible to make sense. You could conceptually spend a lot of time studying one domain to try to extract a value, but with our system, we can do a lot of very high quality appraisals relatively quickly.
Mike Mann:
So trying our best.
Tatiana Bonneau:
Well, we’re going to include links to all of that and write up for the podcast so people can reach out to you and check all that out. Thank you so much. That’s been an absolute pleasure.
Mike Mann:
Thank you, Tatiana. I appreciate it. I enjoyed it.
