Mike Mann X Ten with Jen

Mike: [00:00:00] I’ve been through all the standard domain interviews before.

Jen: Yeah, so this one’s a bit different, so we’ll have fun.

Mike, welcome to 10 with Jen, where I ask 10 outta tens like yourself. 10 questions in around 10 minutes to get to know you in a fun way.

Mike: Very excited.

Jen: Okay, so let’s start with a little bit about you. Mike is a domain name pioneer and the driving force behind several game changing companies. His ventures, including phone.com, domain market.com, and seo.com.

Were named among the 2012 Inc. 500 fastest growing small businesses in America. He also founded accurate appraisals.com and authored two books available@makemillions.com. Additionally, he established Make Change Trust, a charitable fund dedicated to creating [00:01:00] sustainable social advancement by supporting charity partners with funds and resources beyond business.

Mike is a Floridian family man. A drum playing visionary and can even speak English backwards. I don’t know what that means. How are you, Mike? Sounds

Mike: like Australian.

Jen: That makes sense. How are you?

Mike: I’m good, thank you. Beautiful day in Florida and uh, everything’s positive. Appreciate it.

Jen: So, Mike, are you ready for your 10 with Jen?

Mike: Yes, ma’am. I’m ready to go.

Jen: Number one, waterfalls or waves?

Mike: Waves. I, I try my best to live and be near the beach as much as possible

Jen: after more than two decades in the domain industry. What is one of your favorite memories?

Mike: Uh, selling my previous company was a banner moment, and I’ve actually sold a good number of small companies, but.

My selling my company by domains was a [00:02:00] momentous event and, uh, you know, changed my life in a lot of ways. So mostly for the better and, uh, allowed me to propel my charities forward, start a bunch of new companies and, you know, buy some nice real estate. So it was a banner moment.

Jen: How do ethical business practices contribute to positive social impact, including on social media?

Mike: Well, that’s a loaded question, I guess. Um, let me see here. Well, you know, for me again, uh, the impetus of starting all these companies is so I could benefit my charity work. Mm-hmm. I’ve strayed a lot in the sense, you know, when I started all this stuff, I had hardly any material possessions and I had no interest in wealth or money.

And over the years I’ve become a little bit materialistic, um, but it’s still the driving force. Um, I’m still deeply engaged in the charitable works and, uh, you know, I think it’s important [00:03:00] to promote that, to keep everybody and and myself on the straight and narrow as far as, you know, what’s, what’s the purpose, what are we doing here?

It can’t just be for, you know, money and glamor. There has to be something, uh, beneficial to society. So. Now I try to keep up to date on, uh, different trends related to, you know, social action, charity, government, and I post a ton of stuff about that mixed in with stuff about domain names and business.

So, yeah, you know, the, a lot of people are seeing me post a exhaustive amount of stuff with a variety of subject matter.

Jen: What is the most surprising lesson fatherhood has taught you?

Mike: How, uh, you know, raising kids is the. Most difficult and most important, uh, thing going on in life. There’s, you’re not gonna get a easy ride or a free pass. You have to stay engaged and, uh, make sure your kids are raised properly and you know, disciplined and [00:04:00] you’re ready for all sorts of surprises, potential difficulties, and you have to constantly circle back.

Uh, sleep is out of the question. And, uh. Free time is limited, but uh, you know, it’s the best thing happening for sure.

Jen: What is the most terrifying animal?

Mike: Spiders. Oh, that’s easy. Ooh. That’s why I can’t come to Australia. I’ve seen the videos and my best friend used to live there and. Not coming to Australia, nothing personal.

Jen: You were at the helm when buy domains.com was sold to Highland Capital in 2005. Can you share how that deal came about and what the process was like?

Mike: Uh, the process was tormenting, uh, Highland Venture Capital and Summit Adventure Partners are like super hardcore. Boston deal maker. So everybody from Boston’s a little rough on and uh, these particular guys are, you know, extraordinarily [00:05:00] skilled deal makers.

Like, you know, the guy Bob Dam, this is a famous world class deal maker from Highland, a gentleman from a Summit Ventures, Marty Manion. So these guys are super bad asses and I was just a kid then pretty much,

Jen: yeah,

Mike: relative to now. And uh, you know, they were really hardcore. But on the other hand, you know, I had street knowledge and I had a really valuable asset.

So, you know, I had to just go back and forth a lot and negotiate around with them. I had super smart people on my side backing me up. But yeah, you know, I had to be the bad cop ’cause my friend’s, attorneys, investors. We’re all, you know, relatively kind and passive and trying to, you know, cater to the big shot rich guys.

Yeah. But you know, I’m a little more scrappy and, you know, I, I, I didn’t want to be discounted too deeply was the main thing. But eventually we had a very amicable [00:06:00] deal.

Jen: Did it take long to negotiate that deal?

Mike: I think it took maybe two months. I don’t remember exactly, but it took a long time. Yeah, because what happens with all these guys?

So I’m not singling them out, is every deal you do, whether it’s big, small, medium, whatever, they come back with a bunch of paperwork with a bunch of Bs in it that was never contemplated in the original offer and the original letter of intent.

Jen: Yep.

Mike: So you have to decide. So you have to start renegotiating the whole deal over essentially based on all these deal points.

And you have to decide to what degree, if any, you’re willing to cave on. This stuff. Meanwhile, you’re getting stressed out because it’s racking up massive legal fees. You don’t know if the deal’s ever gonna close. This is with every deal, every decent size deal. So, you know, it’s super frustrating. Mm-hmm. I don’t really like doing deals anymore.

I like money, but I don’t like playing games. Then, you know, there’s very few of ’em. They [00:07:00] all play games as just in their DNA to some degree. It doesn’t mean they’re lying and cheating and stealing. It’s just. The nature of their hustle is a game. Yeah. And you know, I’m very straightforward in everything I do, so I really don’t appreciate playing any games with anybody.

I, I’ve been working on some deals the last couple years, so, you know, they’ve been a pretty difficult in, in and of themselves at a, even, again, it’s regardless of the size of the deal. You know, you go through virtually the same set of hoops. Yeah. So it’s not worth going through on a smaller deal. It’s, it’s too much process and too frustrating, too many legal fees.
If it’s a bigger deal, theoretically it ends up worth it if you finish the deal, but.

Jen: Most played album?

Mike: Definitely. Uh, the Nirvana live in New York acoustic.

Jen: Oh, love.

Mike: You know, it’s like one take of like the best songs and the best musicians, and it’s really intense to hear [00:08:00] them, um, acoustic A few months after that, I can’t remember exactly the years, but I saw Kurt Cobain Nirvana live in Washington, DC.

It was like the most intense show ever. Yeah. And then he went off for an encore. And everybody’s waiting and waiting and waiting. And half the stadium left because he didn’t come back for like over a half an hour. Oh wow. And then he played a whole additional set for the people who actually stayed around.

But it’s the most amazing show ever. I mean, I’ve seen huge numbers of shows, but that was the all time great. And then it was good timing for me to have seen it because he died a few months after that. So

Jen: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Mike: There’s a lot of bands I love, but. That’s my favorite.
Jen: If you had the power to implement one transformative policy in today’s administration, what would it be and why?

Mike: Well, just for the record, I’m not a Trump voter, but I do like a lot of the stuff that he is [00:09:00] implementing and I don’t like a lot of the other stuff he is implementing. So I would say that I guess the best bet would be do a lot more research with professionals before just throwing out ideas and deals again.

I like a lot of the stuff he’s doing. Probably most of the stuff I believe in smaller government and transparent government. He’s doing a lot of interesting stuff. I actually do believe in moving quickly, but not so quickly where you’re not actually educated on what you’re doing and you don’t know the effect.

Like, you know, he’s making huge number of, uh, economic decisions, but. He really needs to sit with a wide variety of economists and discuss it for a long period before he puts his policy out there before he makes a deal. So I’d say just a more detailed studying,

Jen: you’re stranded on an island with the Sherpa. Who would you eat first?

Mike: Oh, that’s easy I’d. I’d eat Andrew to remove my competition from the planet. The [00:10:00] other guys are background noise.

Jen: Well, they’re all gonna love that. And do you know what? As a matter of fact that he doesn’t

Mike: even have to go to an island, he can just come over and bring some salt

Jen: at the end of your journey, what impact do you hope to have had left on the world, particularly through the charities and causes you are passionate about?

Mike: I’ve studied the charities. I’ve met a lot of the people that operate the different charities. It’s a very imperfect world. It’s very difficult to figure out charities in a lot of respects. But you try to, um, you know, I’ve been doing this for a lot of years and I’ve changed my type of charities I work with and the focus, basically, you, you want to, it’s like picking stocks in the sense that you wanna make sure your dollar goes to the most important causes as far as possible.

It’s not being wasted. It’s an efficient. It’s quote unquote investment. Um, so what I’d, I’d like people, I’d like more people to do more [00:11:00] charity work, to donate more to charity, to potentially, you know, help the charities and the types of charities I’m working with. Um, you know, I’ve, again, I’ve changed around a lot.

The idea is that I was going to saturate Florida to the best of my ability with certain programs and types of charities I wanted to work with, and then attempt to export that model to other cities. I really haven’t had the time and the discipline to do that. I, I’ve been doing it in South Florida the last bunch of years, but I haven’t exported my model anywhere.

So in conceptually, I’d like to refine my model. Export it. Have my children adopt it to some degree, and you know other people that are concerned.

Jen: Mike, thank you for your time today. You’ve now been 10 with Jen.

Mike: Thank you so much, Jen. I had a great time. I appreciate you inviting me. I.[00:12:00]

Same thing. I mean, you probably know I do a very high volume of domain sales, so I go through these small negotiations all the time, but I’m not much of a negotiator. I just usually just give a price. Sometimes I let them come back, you know, if it’s close, I might accept it, but I’m not gonna go back and forth through endless rounds of BS for a domain sale.

Jen: Right.

Mike: Um, yeah. ’cause we, you know, we have to do a high volume, and again, I’m straightforward. We have very high quality assets we’re selling, so we don’t, they’re, they’re priced to be correct from the get go. And the reason is, if they’re too low, I lose money on the transaction. And if they’re too high, I don’t do enough transactions to stay in business.

So, right. I’m basically forced to set the right price. Right. So, you know, I do an exhaustive job of researching. And analyzing a huge swath of data and [00:13:00] comparables and you know, I understand obviously what I’m doing given the volume of domains I’ve sold, but any case that’s less frustrating ’cause they’re small, they’re quick and right.

Most of ’em I just say, no, no, no, no, no.