Video Transcription
Mike Mann:
Okay, we’re about to broadcast live. We might already be broadcasting live. Trying to figure out what I’m doing here on Facebook. Let me just check real quick. There he is. Jordan, how are you? Good, Mike, how are you?
Mike Mann:
Excellent, thank you so much for joining me. I’m gonna kill a couple minutes before I announce you in order to let a few people join up, if you don’t mind. Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Mike Mann:
I’m still learning my software and my video and audio, but hopefully, you know, it’s good enough to get us through the day. Except for having some feedback, I gotta figure out what I’m doing wrong. It’s like, there, I think I killed the feedback.
Mike Mann:
Good, can you still hear me? Let me see, I did something wrong here. Ch -ch -ch, okay. I have to remove LinkedIn from the broadcast. If anybody knows how to make LinkedIn work, I know I submitted a thing to be on LinkedIn, but as far as I know, LinkedIn never approved me.
Mike Mann:
Keeps timing out when I try to use LinkedIn. In any case, I have a great guy here, Jordan Serlin:, who’s a fabulous businessman. And he’s right here in Boca Raton, Florida, where all the cool people are, like myself, and lots of great business people, people who are semi -retired, have good tans, good restaurants, like to work hard.
Mike Mann:
So Jordan, thank you so much for joining me. It’s a special pleasure. I’m gonna let you start by telling your background before you get into all the business stuff, where you came from, whatever you wanna say about, your background, your family, your whatever you wanna say, and then you can get into business, politics, healthcare, anything you say.
Mike Mann:
How are you?
Jordan Serlin:
Well, thanks first of all for having me and I love your live streams I’ve been watching them since the very first one and I think It’s really interesting that you brought me on to this because you and I have known each other for such a long time and We came up in the internet industry together going all the way back to the 90s so you’re always one of the kinds that I kind of looked up to and Actually be on your show right now.
Jordan Serlin:
It’s pretty interesting. It shows you where the old Kind of like the old men of the industry now. It’s a little it’s a little sad but Yeah, I’m from originally from upstate New York and Did my undergrad work at USC and ended up actually in the entertainment industry my brother my older brother and sister Primarily still work in the entertainment industry.
Jordan Serlin:
So I was at Warner Records and then I was at ICM I was a talent agent for a period of time and there was a really interesting convergence of technology and entertainment at that time right in the early 90s, so I sort of took that Back to the East Coast Started working for Brian Cohen at TSI PR agency working on the IBM account and working really closely with IBM Particularly on the deep blue versus Gary Kasparov startup world starting off with companies like micro video learning systems, which you know now know as PC professor and Fortune City comm and then we media and then Tanesh draw Fortune City went public over in Europe Tanesh was sold privately that brought me actually down here to Boca because our largest customer At ten extra was in fact ADT Tyco and That led me after we sold that company to a company called Senuko, which is something I’m pretty well known for and we developed the first true live broadcast Mechanism for cell phones and cellular devices were full motion video and audio.
Jordan Serlin:
So that that company was public also And then we uplisted it on to the American stock exchange and then that company was sold as well or acquired rather and Really since that time I’ve been working with venture capital firms globally as a troubleshooter and sometimes I come in and pinch hit in management roles and As I’ve been doing that I get this exposure to all these different Types of technology companies, but my primary focus has really Sort of been geared towards homeland security cybersecurity type of technologies Financial services and things of that nature because it really dovetails all into all the contract work and deal making that have done over the Last number of years.
Jordan Serlin:
So right now. I’m working with a number of startups as an advisor as well as With a number of venture capital firms all over the country Boston, San Francisco and over in Europe
Mike Mann:
Can you tell us for example the name? I’m getting a little bit back from you. Can you tell her? I’m not sure. Good day. It sounds better now. Can you tell us the ones that you’re allowed to talk about, some of the names of the firms and what type of services you provide for them, if you can provide them for like our viewers who are watching, for example, or you’re all filled up?
Jordan Serlin:
I got to be really kind of careful about that. But as an example, I’ve done a lot of work with companies that have been funded by groups like Bain Capital, Draper Fisher, a couple with Hummer Wimbled, a pretty significant number with SoftBank.
Jordan Serlin:
I’ve done a lot of work with SoftBank over the years. And some of these are active advisory type of roles. So I’m not supposed to say, but let’s say one is a ride -sharing company. That’s things of that nature.
Jordan Serlin:
So everything from corporate compliance, corporate governance type of things, as well as just giving them the benefit of the experience of somebody who’s been down the path a couple times from, as we put it, cradle to stage.
Jordan Serlin:
Whether it’s from the first funding round, seed round, all the way up to multinational IPO with thousands of shareholders, etc. So it’s been really, really, really interesting because in a way, just like you, I kind of fell into this by accident over the years.
Mike Mann:
It sounds like some really awesome and big contracts. And again, I’ve read your bio and your background, which I would encourage the other viewers, just so we don’t, it’s so extensive, we could take all day talking about that, which would be pretty cool, but we wanna talk about some other stuff as well.
Mike Mann:
But back to the point here though, those are large engagements. If there were some small, medium -sized companies, are there any of those with a profile that you would want them to contact you, or you’re too busy with those big contracts?
Jordan Serlin:
I mean, honestly, I probably get between 60 to maybe over 100 inquiries a week, business plans and things of that nature. There was one company in particular here in South Florida, and I happened to know the father of the entrepreneur, and he reached out to me.
Jordan Serlin:
So I’m working with him on a consulting basis. So it’s more, I guess I have the benefit now of being able to pick and choose what I want to do. So if I see something that’s really interesting and can make a valuable impact in the market space, I want to hear about it because at this point, one of the challenges I have since the internet and technologies in general are moving at such a rapid pace, when I hear from these budding entrepreneurs that are either still in school or just have gotten out of school, it helps keep me up to date on what’s actually going on out there.
Jordan Serlin:
So for me, that’s really important because I love seeing the bleeding edge stuff.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, I feel that way too. I’ve fallen behind a lot. I’ve just been so busy with my day job that I haven’t had time to study as much modern stuff unless it directly connects with one of the technologies and companies I’m already working on.
Mike Mann:
But I haven’t really been able to dig in as much as I used to. And but having said that, I’m gonna tie up a few projects I’m working on now and get back into looking at new technologies, these new business plans, leaving the house and meeting people again.
Mike Mann:
It’s like been so crazy with coronavirus obviously.
Jordan Serlin:
That’s been the most interesting thing and it’s really interesting and as you know Mike, I reached out to you a few weeks ago and I just want everybody that’s listening to the broadcast. Mike’s one of the best in the domain market space on earth and if you’re starting up a company and you’re not sure about your brand identity or what kind of URLs you want, you definitely need to reach out to Mike because he really has probably the deepest network of anybody that I know and I’ve been doing this for such a long time.
Jordan Serlin:
I reached out to Mike about an issue that we were having with one of the portfolio companies that I work with. He got back to me with the right resources in about 30 minutes. In an internet time, that’s pretty important.
Mike Mann:
So you’re a workaholic obviously. And in a few minutes you can tell me more about work and business, but let me ask you, when you’re not working, are you traveling? Are you doing cool stuff in Boca? What else is going down?
Jordan Serlin:
I mean, I like to travel. And part of what I do is I try to mix it all together. So I write a lot of research because really my background is finance. So I do a lot of reporting for a number of banks and I have a contract with certain agencies of the federal government.
Jordan Serlin:
But for me to do it the right way since I’m not a true Harvard economist is I get on the road and I travel around the country and I see what’s actually happening on the ground. So like for example, last summer I was on the road for about three weeks and I was just traveling around and talking with business owners and cruising around all the way up and down the East coast and into the central United States just to see what was really truly happening.
Jordan Serlin:
So I could write reports that actually made sense to the person that’s living in Pittsburgh or the person that’s living in Indianapolis because some people make some business decisions based on the research reports that I write which are all on subscription.
Jordan Serlin:
So I try to mix it up as much as I possibly can just so it makes sense to the common man. I think one of the biggest problems that we see right now, particularly when we see all the talking heads on TV talking about the economy and what’s happening with COVID.
Jordan Serlin:
They’re using language that the average business owner just doesn’t get. So I like to try to explain it in a way that people will generally understand because there’s a lot of really interesting things happening right now in this economy.
Jordan Serlin:
And when I talk to politicians and they’re asking me, what should we be doing? I explained to them that there are a couple of really incredibly major issues I think that are coming down the pike. I’ll give an example.
Jordan Serlin:
I mean, Mike, I don’t know if you have kids that are in college or anything like that. Yeah, you’re nodding. So,
Mike Mann:
My daughter’s entering law school with the very highest scores, and my son is a young genius.
Jordan Serlin:
So I mean, you’ve got tuition bills to pack, right? And we’re kind of fortunate and lucky because we have businesses and income that are derived from stuff that we can just do on our own. But when we talk about all the jobs that were lost through COVID, as an example, they’re not all coming back in the way in which the job reports are saying that they are, right?
Jordan Serlin:
And people are coming back at a lesser salary because they’re working remote. So what have people been doing to do that stopgap? They’ve been living on their credit cards. And in a lot of cases, they’re taking out second, and in one case, I’m aware of third mortgages, key locks, on their houses.
Jordan Serlin:
All that’s going to come do at some point. And that’s starting to build and build and build. And I keep telling the politicians that I speak to that at some point, those bills will come do because everybody’s playing the stopgap.
Jordan Serlin:
So we were talking about this this morning before the show. And I said, you know, this is kind of almost like a 2008 setup, but worse because the job market, you know, if you look at the last jobs report, most of those jobs were government jobs, not private sector.
Jordan Serlin:
So I have an increasing concern about what’s going to happen as we get into the late part of the year. And people are no longer able to draw on those key locks or their second mortgages or those cashouts because they’ve already spent the money.
Mike Mann:
Okay, well, let’s look at it from two perspectives. One is what do you think’s gonna happen and therefore who are the winners and losers and is there an economic bet to be made accordingly?
Jordan Serlin:
Well, I think you see what the Democrats are proposing and you see what the Republicans are proposing as far as the new relief bill. And I think there has to be something in the middle because even though these jobs, some jobs are coming back, I’m hearing and seeing that the salaries aren’t the same, they’re lower.
Jordan Serlin:
So I think there needs to be additional stimulus that goes out to everyone that’s on unemployment or everybody that lost their job due to COVID. I also think that there’s gonna be a ratcheting up and some of the rhetoric between the United States and China because of everything that’s happening, but it’s also an election year.
Jordan Serlin:
So there’s a lot of pandering that’s going on and not a lot that’s actually being effectively done at the political party level. Now, that being said, I think what Steve Mnuchin’s been doing and what the Federal Reserve has been doing is dead on exactly what needs to be happening.
Jordan Serlin:
And I’d like to see more PPP program for the business owners because if those small businesses disappear, I mean, I was just in South Beach over the weekend. First time I’ve been down there this year because of everything that’s going on.
Jordan Serlin:
You could not believe the number of storefronts that are vacant in South Beach. And if that’s indicative of what’s going on in Main Street to Pica, Kansas, we got a real problem.
Mike Mann:
Everywhere, I mean, you know, my good friends are in the real estate business and You know getting there people have been still getting paid and certain types of assets are better than other ones obviously, but um There’s definitely a fallout, you know Trump’s been seating it Seating the the recovery with future money that you know, we’ll pay in taxes lower interest, you know, just um I will say
Jordan Serlin:
It’s kind of hard Mike not to sound political When I talk about economic theory and stuff The worst thing that could happen to the recovery right now is to raise taxes income right because Everybody everybody is behind right now Everybody from the federal government To the individual worker that’s making fifty thousand dollars a year everybody’s behind because they’ve been living on credit basically since February March time frame so There has to be a way to pay those bills before Anything else and any any politician that is pushing to raise taxes will not only stifle the recovery But potentially could totally reverse it and that is You know kind of because here’s the interesting thing, you know As we were talking before all four of my grandparents Lived through the great pandemic of 1918 and one of the interesting things that my grandfather Howard used to tell me is The reason why the roaring twenties were roaring Was because of the recovery From World War one and the great pandemic It will and it has to even if there’s no vaccine We have the therapeutics it will end because that’s the way mother nature works How it will end and how many people are going to be negatively affected by it?
Jordan Serlin:
That’s government’s job It’s government’s job to lay the groundwork and I think part of what’s going on in the political landscape right now Which is really really incredibly troubling for me is the lack of cohesive information Coming from everybody at the same time about what each of us should be doing Right here’s a great example masks, right?
Jordan Serlin:
The problem is people haven’t actually read the CDC guidelines now my dad was a physician right the reason doctors wear masks in hospitals Isn’t so they don’t get sick It’s so if they’re Operating on somebody and they happen to have something in them They don’t get that patient sick because we just don’t know who has this thing So the reason to wear the mask isn’t to keep yourself from getting sick It’s in the event that you’ve been infected so you don’t accidentally infect somebody else
Mike Mann:
everybody in the hospitals had surgery and is compromised. So it’s a good sense.
Jordan Serlin:
But for some reason people just don’t seem to understand that so watch a couple episodes of house and the good doctor And you’ll see why doctors wear masks and that’s why the CDC is asking us to I think I think as an American You know we’re all Americans here if we can do anything In case we inadvertently get this thing to protect other people as Americans we should I don’t care what your political party is
Mike Mann:
Yeah. Well, yesterday I spoke to a friend of my next guest who’s a fighter pilot and he said, you know, I’ve been through all this stuff. I don’t wear a mask. Like they kick me out of places once in a while, but I’m not going to wear a mask.
Jordan Serlin:
Hey, look, at the end of the day, it’s still the United States of America, right? We each have an individual choice. But when we talk about technology and social media and everything that’s going on, the stratification of our community as Americans is kind of interesting.
Jordan Serlin:
And there doesn’t seem to be the same sense of civil duty to your fellow American or neighbor as they’re used to be. Yeah. I hope one of the outgrowsts of this whole pandemic is that we can get back to that in some capacity because I just really don’t like how stratified and everything’s become and how everybody’s getting into their own tribes and particularly in an election year, right?
Jordan Serlin:
Where even the pandemic itself is being politicized. It doesn’t help anybody that that’s going on.
Mike Mann:
That’s for sure. Well, let me ask you for a few minutes more before I grab my next guest with respect. Tell me about what you’re doing with fancy cars and you have a competition with another gentleman.
Mike Mann:
Can you explain what you’re doing?
Jordan Serlin:
You did your research, Mike. So Josh Wexstein, he’s rare error 9 -11 on Instagram. He and I have been in the classic car space for a very, very long time. So he’s recently rebuilt. I don’t remember what year it is, but it’s an RS America 9 -11 Porsche.
Jordan Serlin:
I just recently purchased a classic AMG. And we’re talking about doing a race potentially across the country from Long Island out to California. And the end result of that is, and I have to double check this with Josh, that we’ll be auctioning off the 9 -11 RS America for a charity, which I don’t think I can disclose right now.
Jordan Serlin:
But Josh can comment on the feed. And we’re going to be working with a lot of folks to make that happen. So we’ve already started the back and forth banter because he’s got his tuning company that’s working on his car.
Jordan Serlin:
I’ve got my tuning company that’s working on my car. And there are a couple of celebrity folks within the automotive world that are picking sides already and who’s going to win this race. So we’re hoping that we can raise a lot of awareness for that and raise a lot of money with the auctioning off of this really amazing RS America 9 -11 that Josh has built.
Jordan Serlin:
Now, my AMG is not too shabby either. But so we’re just doing a little banter back and forth.
Mike Mann:
That’s awesome. If you have anything about, I’d like you to just post anything about that, anything about projects you wanna talk about, just post them right onto the stream and I can like republicize them and other social media, anything you wanna talk about.
Mike Mann:
I think your little, you know, your competition with Josh is his name, is a cool thing for the times unrelated to being socially distant and isolated, you know.
Jordan Serlin:
Well, we also talked about doing it this way because honestly, we’ll probably stay at campgrounds, right? If we do this. Well, they’re packed now. You know, part of this is showing the world that even with this crazy pandemic that’s going on, we can still do stuff like this and be safe all at the same time because we’re all smart folks.
Jordan Serlin:
It’s when people act stupidly where the spread continues. I mean, everybody’s got to use a lot of common sense, but at the same time, it doesn’t stop. It doesn’t stop stuff like this from happening. It doesn’t stop people from starting new businesses right now.
Jordan Serlin:
I mean, every time we have a major crisis like this, we also see a spike in innovation always every major recession since I’ve been alive. That’s where the true innovation comes from. Always whether you’re talking about Apple computer started in recession.
Jordan Serlin:
Tesla started in a recession. Google started in a recession.
Mike Mann:
Domain markets started in recession. Yeah, Facebook started in recession. I mean, if you look at, I’m just going to say, the domain space that I’m in, I’m a buyer during the down times because all the domains are going for cheap being deleted.
Mike Mann:
So I buy as much as possible during the bad economy and the good economy. I jack up the prices and sell them. I’ve been doing it for so long. I just ride the wave to the best of my ability. It’s not bad at all.
Mike Mann:
All but.
Jordan Serlin:
Exactly. So I’m expecting over the next couple of years that we’re going to see some real true technical innovation because people have had a lot of time and they’ve been at home. So I can’t even imagine what’s gonna be coming out of you know People’s basements and garages over the next year or two because some of the stuff that I’m already seeing and some of the stuff that I’m actually working on right now particularly in the cybersecurity space is Absolutely amazing and off the charts as far as like new With a completely different innovate innovative bent on how people come up with the solution I Think it’s pretty amazing and I think over the next and honestly Mike We were talking about this before why are all these companies going public during this whole why because the true innovators?
Jordan Serlin:
It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the rest of the world
Mike Mann:
There are winners and losers at each point of the economy. There’s when the economy is down, it’s when the people who’ve been saving, it’s time for them to invest and the people who are coming. And so then they’re sellers, they sell high and buy low, including during the economy with the stocks and businesses themselves.
Mike Mann:
So that’s awesome advice and I appreciate you joining so much. It’s great and hopefully you’ll join again in the future and let’s talk more in general about business and share stuff online with people.
Mike Mann:
If anybody has any questions, just ask them right on my wall and we’ll text Jordan and myself and next SOTY will respond in text and links to the questions. So I’m gonna grab my next guest in one second.
Mike Mann:
Thanks again, Jordan for everything. I hope I talk to you again soon. Have a good day. See you soon in holidays.
Jordan Serlin:
Yep, thanks so much, Mike. This is great. And I think this is the first interview I’ve given in like four years maybe. Of course, it was great.
Mike Mann:
was going to be you. I’m honored. That’s all. Appreciate that.
Jordan Serlin:
All right, thanks again.
Mike Mann:
Have an awesome day. Thank you, sir. Sotti, how are you?
Sotti Koev:
Hey, I’m doing pretty well, Mike. How about yourself?
Mike Mann:
Good. Thank you so much for your patience.
Sotti Koev:
Absolutely my pleasure and by the way, can you actually hear me okay?
Mike Mann:
Yeah, I hear you perfectly. Thank you. You’re much better at this. I FaceTime or whatever, phone .com and Zoom with you all the time, but you usually have a different background. Why’d you change your background?
Mike Mann:
I don’t know.
Sotti Koev:
Well, for this one, I didn’t know how to incorporate my traditional background, so I just have what I currently have right now.
Mike Mann:
Looking good. Well, I want to thank you so much for your service to our country and your brother and your friends and the people I’ve been talking to within your network. Thank you so much.
Sotti Koev:
Yeah, thank you Mike. Absolutely likewise. It’s really amazing to connect to the business community and just to see what people are actually doing.
Mike Mann:
Before I start talking to you about business stuff, I just want to reverse to your birth and your family and how you got into the military, whatever else you want to talk about. And then we’ll talk about some business and anything else you want to talk about.
Sotti Koev:
Yes, absolutely. So my background is a little bit unusual. I was actually born in Bulgaria. And my family were actually entrepreneurs there, even during communist times and actually pre -communist times.
Sotti Koev:
And it seems to what happened was our family moved to the US a little bit before 9 -11. So it seems to my brother and I grew up here, went to school here and then I joined the Navy and my brother did army rotsi.
Sotti Koev:
Then I served around the world, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. And then I got back and I actually finished my military service in 2016. And at that point it was about, I had to create a really transition into the business community and do it quickly.
Sotti Koev:
So that’s really how what our background is. And essentially there are a lot of changes happening in the United States that a lot of people are not prepared for. A lot of violence and things like that, a lot of political instabilities.
Sotti Koev:
We have already lived through those back in Eastern Europe. And we can see the, I mean I don’t want this to turn into a political thing, but things are getting very like, it’s not looking good. So people really need to wake up and they really need to see that their rights are being attacked, freedoms are being attacked as well.
Sotti Koev:
And I want to really know about these things and take action early so that you’re now left into a really bad situation.
Mike Mann:
Yeah, well, I mean, actually, I think your historical context is actually really important, and your background’s important to add perspective to the situation. And in general, you and anybody else can say whatever they want on here, as long as it passes the YouTube acceptable use policy.
Mike Mann:
So I appreciate that. But go ahead with that and where you went from there.
Sotti Koev:
Yes, from there in 2016 I got out and essentially I took a different path. So what I did was instead of going to the traditional graduate school route, what I did was I taught myself business and finance.
Sotti Koev:
And what I did was I actually talked to a lot of successful entrepreneurs, businessmen. And this is really discovering what the business world was like, how I can potentially fit in. And that’s why my path is a little bit different from a lot of people going into business.
Sotti Koev:
So 2016 rolls around, let’s see, 2017, essentially from there my path was in the fintech space. So essentially different types of financial services companies, software companies. And then one thing led to another and how I broke into this world of private investments, which is what I’m currently doing right now with my brother, is through all of the college going out and knocking on doors, talking to people.
Sotti Koev:
Essentially, I got together with my mentor, who’s also a military veteran. And then I asked, I can do A, B, and C, is there any way that I can provide value to you and your organization? So this time I broke into private equity and then I brought my brother on board to actually help me.
Sotti Koev:
And then essentially what we did primarily was we developed a technology company that is now, it is really amazing, beautiful, has over 2000 created investors. And really working in that environment, connecting with a lot of investors, a lot of entrepreneurs in investor groups.
Sotti Koev:
This is what actually got us to think, okay, well, how do we connect overall to the big picture? And then essentially, our main thing was building the technology platform on the business development side, and then also getting involved into the different private equity deals.
Sotti Koev:
So that’s really has been very educational. And then that’s why a little over a year and a half ago, we actually created Co -Ed Brothers as a independent entity. So this has been really our tracking in terms of how things got to where they are currently at.
Mike Mann:
It’s awesome. And I’m gonna get more into that in a minute, but just for the record, what’s the best presentation you’ve had recently? Yeah, the best presentation.
Sotti Koev:
presentation has to be last Friday and Mike Yuck presented two companies. So yeah, really amazing. This has been, yes, you touched on a very big thing here and that is actually presentations. It is, you know, look, if an entrepreneur had an unlimited amount of money, business relationships, strategic partners, they can really go anywhere.
Sotti Koev:
Okay. So really what we did was when we created Co -Brothers was one, how do we make that process easier on the entrepreneur and also easier on the person that has capital, wants to put it in a, wants to put it to good use and how do we make that entire process user friendly and how do we just really make it more efficient.
Sotti Koev:
So that’s really the route that we took. Thank you.
Mike Mann:
And you’ve done a fabulous job. You have a very disciplined process, which makes sense for military trained gentlemen. You have a disciplined structure and all the details, which makes, it’s very important to the process of running a business and fundraising, because any of the details that are missed could collapse your entire plan.
Mike Mann:
So I’ve appreciated working with you and your team and the software that you guys leverage. Let me just, I’m gonna ask you a couple of things regarding that same thing. So again, there’s some entrepreneurs watching this.
Mike Mann:
There’s probably a few dozen people watching us live right this minute, but this is gonna be saved on YouTube and there could be hundreds. And if you promote it, who knows, could be thousands of people potentially watching it.
Mike Mann:
So if they wanna work with you and get in your system, and just again, for the record, I have three companies in SOTY’s system in order to meet other investors and entrepreneurs and present companies and look at other presentations and have them help discipline us and people sharing and learning.
Mike Mann:
Plus they have a social network where you can post stuff and learn stuff. But back to the main point here is of the people watching here, they own all sorts of small companies and entities and have done all sorts of crazy stuff.
Mike Mann:
A lot of people in my area, domain experts, search engine optimization, web development, things of that nature. So which ones of those are best suited for your network? How do they get involved with it?
Mike Mann:
And what sort of process are you gonna take them through in order to get them financed and make them millions of dollars?
Sotti Koev:
Yes, so just to actually put a little bit of a background here, essentially my brother and I brought together our investor networks, and we collectively have at the moment more than 300 high -net worth individuals and also investor groups that we actually work with.
Sotti Koev:
And actually, so these are your millionaires, deco millionaires and above, and actually half of them are military veterans. And yeah, I just want to say how this thing works. And yes, you’re absolutely 100% right to actually focus on the process, because I do think excellence in the basics is extremely important.
Sotti Koev:
I mean, if you cannot get the basics right, who’s going to take you seriously? So yes, in terms of actual process, first it involves actually screening the particular opportunity, seeing if it’s going to be a good fit, then it’s going to be diligence of the company.
Sotti Koev:
So we do a deep dive and we want to make sure that this is a legitimate entity. These are all real people. And once that’s happening, then it’s actually pretty easy. Then our onboarding specialist creates a really nice deal tile for the entrepreneurship, helps them with feedback and really ways that it can captivate the investors’ attention.
Sotti Koev:
And then we also do on our own a independent, call it a one -page report of the company, actually stating the risks, the opportunities. And then we take that and at that point we can actually go and run and present it to the investors.
Sotti Koev:
And I don’t want to say how things actually work behind the scenes. So we do really two main things. One, we do company presentations. And by the way, Mike, you participated in those last Friday. And this is where we bring our investors and we present them opportunities on a silver platter.
Sotti Koev:
They have already been vetted. They have already been prepared and we just presented to them. And then the next thing that we do is actually our next event is on the 23rd of September. We do the virtual investor meetups.
Sotti Koev:
And actually my brother runs those. And in this case, we bring them, let’s say, a private investor, venture capitalist, private equity, maybe hedge fund, and they get to speak to the group and they can actually see what they’re looking for, trends that they’re actually seeing, and then they can actually contact them and see if actually something can be created.
Sotti Koev:
So we have a very methodical process and you know, nothing, you know, you cannot make a high net worth investor do really anything. But if you can present them with a very amazing opportunity and at least inviting to a call to meet other high net worth individuals like himself.
Sotti Koev:
Now it just creates a better environment.
Mike Mann:
peer pressure. No, it’s the social network communications, the sharing of information and best practices. I mean, it’s an excellent methodology. You know, I mean, I’m not an expert on exactly what you do, but I’m part of it as a user of the system as your customer.
Mike Mann:
But, you know, it’s an awesome setup. And, you know, the people that qualify, I would encourage them to contact SOTY and see if you can get into the system if you’re trying to, you know, meet high net worth investors.
Mike Mann:
And these people have their family offices, home offices. I mean, just again, just one of the gentlemen I spoke to yesterday, again, was a combat pilot retired who happens to be a great investor and know all these other great businessmen and investors that can help me, you know, teach me stuff, but plus potentially finance my businesses.
Mike Mann:
And if that works, I actually have a slate of business plans that I haven’t been able to touch because I’ve been so busy working on and financing my existing businesses. But if I’m successful with that, I can get back to my next plans.
Mike Mann:
One that the next one on top is called cashless .com to leverage the cashless, you know, touchless economy. SOTY, I wanna ask you then, what is the end goal here? I know what you’re doing right now, but what are you trying to accomplish?
Mike Mann:
Where are you going in 10 years and five years? What do you wanna do with yourself? And what’s the business and goal here?
Sotti Koev:
Yeah, so initially our only business was just the capital introductions, you know, and this has been good. Now, the next level that we actually entered this year was actively participating in the deals ourselves due to our relationship to, let’s say, family offices, private wealth lenders, things like that.
Sotti Koev:
People behind the scenes that are very hard to get to and if you get to them, they’re not going to pay attention to you unless they have a preexisting relationship with you. So really, for example, yes, we are a private investor group.
Sotti Koev:
We do have high net worth individuals, but next step that we actually take it is we’re seeing how can we actually put amazing resources into great businesses from different types, different fields, case in point, for example, making movies.
Sotti Koev:
Okay. That is one thing. Another thing is my brother Marty actually has his own two music record labels, you know, so we don’t want to be just essentially just finance, but what we are doing on a bigger scale is once we provide the right resources to the companies, actually provide them with a home to go back to to get better and get to the next level.
Sotti Koev:
And what that next level is, Mike, at the moment, I cannot tell you, it’s actually being built as we speak. And it’s actually really exciting.
Mike Mann:
Well, I have some great ideas that we could work on together and I want to work on some of your stuff So we have the existing stuff we’re working on and then we’ll work on some large ideas for the future together and Again, there’s a ton of smart people and experts in your network a ton of smart people and experts in my network That conceptually we can leverage to build great business and charitable entities together so I look forward to that and Joining me.
Mike Mann:
What else do you want to any parting words any other ideas that you want to tell the guests?
Sotti Koev:
Yes, so since the big point here is actually domains, I don’t have any, let’s call it web developer background, but I’m currently working on our Coeib Brothers website. It actually should be running in about two weeks, and that’s gonna be very simple.
Sotti Koev:
Coeib, that’s K -O -E -V, is in Victor Brothers with an S .com. So yeah, I’m looking forward to actually launching that and providing people more insight as to what we’re doing and how we can provide value to them.
Mike Mann:
Well, you and I both know a very great expert in web design and search engine optimization. So you should probably try that out. Absolutely. Cool. Well, thanks again for everything. And thanks again for your service and all the people you’re introducing me to are all military veterans and heroes.
Mike Mann:
And I really appreciate that in general. And I like to meet them and talk to them. So thanks again for that. Thanks for your help today. Thanks for your help with our business stuff. And I’ll talk to you and Marty very soon.
Sotti Koev:
Yeah, thank you Mike.
Mike Mann:
Have a nice day. Take care. Have a nice day. Now I’m going to do a live domain name appraisal training. So if people have specific domain names, again, the idea isn’t just to appraise your domains. I’m trying to train you to appraise your own domains and your friends’ domains in order to create a real market because the domain name market is poorly liquid.
Mike Mann:
It’s illiquid. And therefore, there aren’t enough transactions. And the reason is because they’re not appraised properly. So to the extent you’re dealing with super premium dot com domains, the ones that everybody should be using for their websites, for their email addresses, they have to have a good appraisal or else they can’t be sold.
Mike Mann:
Nobody wants to buy something that’s too expensive. Nobody wants to sell something that’s too cheap. So again, in my market space, domainmarket .com, we appraise 300 ,000 domains. And then we start back and appraise them again and again because they’re trending data and information and new data and information.
Mike Mann:
And it’s really hard to get a decent appraisal. Now if we get a bad appraisal, we’re in big trouble because if the price is too high, I can never sell the domain. And if the price is too low, which is what almost all of them are, we sell those constantly and lose money.
Mike Mann:
So the object is to get the appraisals exactly right. Now in the case here where I’m going to appraise your domains and train you, I’m going to do it the way you should do it, using Google, using Boolean operators in Google, using certain defined best practices.
Mike Mann:
The way I do it in the real world is I have a whole system with a whole bunch of data and information, user interface, people helping me so I can give a much better appraisal in my background system.
Mike Mann:
But for this purpose, we’re going to just use Google and I’m going to try to teach you some of the basic ideas. Now the three basic ideas I’ve been repeating on all these live streams are disambiguate the term.
Mike Mann:
In other words, you have to know what it means and think about it in context of the economy, why somebody would want to spend money on it. So you’re disambiguating it, then you’re looking for the breadth.
Mike Mann:
How many companies use that? How many might use it? How many are in proper case in capital letters? How many have logos, slogans, banners, trademarks, et cetera, the things that are actually used in real commerce?
Mike Mann:
So that’s the breadth of the domain potential demand. Again, you’re looking at demand. And then the next is the depth. So out of all the breadth, you take the very top player and you say to yourself, how deep is the depth?
Mike Mann:
How badly do they need this name? How wealthy are those people? And that’s how you sort of get a picture in your mind of how valuable the domain is and you compare it in a comp to all the other sales in the past.
Mike Mann:
Now, you guys can’t do that unless you’ve sold a lot of domains. I’ve sold more domains than everybody in the world. So I have a deep history of comps in my head and in my database to use to finalize the appraisal.
Mike Mann:
And then what we do for our customers who need an appraisal at accurateappraisals .com, we take three appraisals. So we take my appraisal and then we use two other domain name experts and they do their own independent appraisal.
Mike Mann:
That way, if I’m biased and I get something wrong or they’re biased and they get something wrong, we all balance each other out. So accurateappraisals .com is definitely the only place that you can get a super valid domain appraisal where three experts are going to appraise your domain using modern tools and then give you the average.
Mike Mann:
Other people should compete with that, but they don’t. So that leaves accurate appraisals as the only choice. So having given you the background, I’m going to get into the domain appraisals. I already have one that is waiting for me.
Mike Mann:
So I’m going to ismusclesurgery .com that somebody submitted to me. So first I need to figure out how to share my screen. And then we’re going to look up. We’re going to look up musclesurgery .com on its face.
Mike Mann:
Sounds like a pretty good domain. Again, the first order of business is to disambiguate. So we we know what muscle surgery means ostensibly. So we’ve disambiguated it. As far as sharing my screen, that’s a little different because I have to remember how to do it.
Mike Mann:
OK, I think we’re in good shape here. Sharing my screen. So exciting. Just wait one second and I’ll have it down. OK, we did it. OK, we’re done. OK, so musselsurgery .com, I’m going to appraise here.
Mike Mann:
So again, you always use Boolean operators, which is quotation marks pluses, minuses. And I’d recommend you study the Google Advanced Search in general. Now, Google is not trying to give you the best search results, because if they did, they would make a case sensitive.
Mike Mann:
They don’t make a case sensitive because they want you to scroll and scroll and click and click and sell more ads and have you spend more time on Google, which means somebody should build a better search engine.
Mike Mann:
There used to be better search engines before Google put them out of business that did have case sensitivity and other stuff. And even if you use Boolean operators, you don’t want commas and periods and things in the middle of your search string, but Google leaves them in there, again, because they’re not trying to give you the best results.
Mike Mann:
They’re trying to give you the most results, which generally isn’t helpful. You’re trying to get targeted results, particularly if you’re doing domain name appraisal, domain name research, like we’re doing here.
Mike Mann:
So muscle surgery, we know what it means. It’s a great name. It’s in the medical profession. It’s very easy to spell, basically, as long as you know how to spell the word muscle. It’s relatively easy.
Mike Mann:
Clearly, it’s not surgery on the muscles that are at the bottom of a boat that people eat for seafood. It’s muscles that you may pull in a sports injury, for example. And it looks like there’s even eye muscles.
Mike Mann:
Is drabomy less surgery painful? Eye muscle, well, that’s really the most interesting thing I learned here is that eye muscles is the top result, which I would have never thought of. I didn’t really know I had eye muscles.
Mike Mann:
Eye muscle surgery, not that exciting. For one thing, it would need to be more explicit. It would have to say eye in front of it. So this doesn’t represent eye muscle surgery. It represents a generic muscle surgery, which really isn’t terribly exciting.
Mike Mann:
But it does have a lot of hits here. 262 ,000. Very little of it is proper nouns in capital K. So it’s not a slogan, not a logo, not the name of a corporation. It’s just an idea. It’s a big medical idea.
Mike Mann:
Surgeries are very expensive. And if you do medical surgery, we don’t want to look at that, that’s for sure. So the answer is it’s hard to appraise domain names. Is the answer? So I’m going to take a little guess at it.
Mike Mann:
And in this case, we’re appraising muscle surgery. I’m going to type it in Facebook, the answer, as soon as I figure it out. OK, so musclesurgery .com. What do you guys think? The correct answer is 10K.
Mike Mann:
Be nice if it was higher, but it just didn’t have that exciting results. It’s an exciting idea, ostensibly, because it’s in the medical field. It’s easy to spell. It’s a .com. Maybe you could actually get more from a doctor for this.
Mike Mann:
It probably requires a deeper appraisal, is the correct answer. So the next one I have is from Michael Dunner, my buddy. I’m going to look up Vanity Bag. If anybody has any other domains, they want to appraise before the end of the broadcast, type it right in to the Facebook stream.
Mike Mann:
Or if you can figure out how to put it in StreamYard. I’m kind of confused as to why some messages show up one place and some show up the other place. I’ll figure that out in a couple of years. But for the meantime, we’re going to do a research on Vanity Bag.
Mike Mann:
I’m going to go back to my trusty Google here, put it in quotation marks. And again, we need to disambiguate it as the first thing. What in the world’s Vanity Bag even mean? There’s a lot of hits here in Google.
Mike Mann:
Vanity Bag is a designer handbag, I guess. Or it’s a designer makeup bag, designer makeup bag. Pretty sure I’m onto something here. Not sure if everybody knows that or if I’m even correct. Now again, this is a description of a product, but it’s not actually the name of a company.
Mike Mann:
It’s not on any logos. It’s not proper nouns. It’s lowercase for the most part, although there is some uppercase. But that is not necessarily being used as a brand name. So it’s very similar to the last one.
Mike Mann:
It’s a good descriptive term that’s easy to spell. They’re expensive products. It’s meaningful. You have to keep in mind that there’s lots of other ways to potentially say it. You could say Vanity Bag’s plural.
Mike Mann:
Other types of bags, endless other adjectives and descriptors for the word bag or bags. But it does have a lot of activity here in Google. And so it’s just, all these are very hard. These are a matter of opinion.
Mike Mann:
They require a deeper appraisal. And the answer is gonna be, it’s another 10 grand. Those things are expensive. The name’s a little bit boring, but the bags are expensive. So there you go, buddy. 10K, everything’s 10K.
Mike Mann:
Okay, so we have Shahoor, my buddy here, executionphase .com, we’re gonna try this thing out. The next one is statistics portal. Sounds kind of boring, but we’ll look at it. First thing I’m gonna do is executionphase.
Mike Mann:
Back and see what I’m doing wrong here. Okay, we’re good. Doing our domain name appraisals. Hopefully you can all see my Google using Boolean operators. We always use quotes to search Google, which is a crappy search engine, but they wiped out all the competitors, unfortunately.
Mike Mann:
A lot of it works well, but if you really want very specific stuff without a bunch of clutter, it’s too hard. Now, the other good thing in your research and your domain name appraisals is this pulldown menu is pretty cool, because I can see the various topics that people search for.
Mike Mann:
So with respect to executionphase, I can see people look at executionphase of project management, boring. Executionphase of blah, blah, blah. Executionphase of a project. Again, none of its slogans, logos, company names.
Mike Mann:
It’s another case where we have bland generic expression that might mean something in an industry, but it doesn’t mean anything extremely valuable. It is cool and it does mean something. I’m gonna do a little more research here before I give it the same price as the other stuff probably, but we’re gonna make sure that we know what we’re doing.
Mike Mann:
So executionphase, third phase of a project management life cycle, that’s pretty cool. Well, actually it looks a little cooler than I thought, so I’m happy to see that. There’s a lot of people using it in corporate work and they’re using it with proper case.
Mike Mann:
So this is actually pretty cool. And it’s a cute name. It requires more research like any of them to get a more tightly focused appraisal. And again, we usually use three different appraisers. So I personally have a lot more data and I do more research and then I come up with a price and then we have two more people come up with a price and then we take the average, accurateappraisals .com.
Mike Mann:
So I’m just doing a very rough version here for you guys to attempt to copy the main name appraisal training in Google. This is way cool actually. So this execution phase is better than I would have thought and it’s worth 25 grand.
Mike Mann:
Okay. Hey, what else do you guys have here? We have my buddy Anurag, Midnight Sparks, VR Funnel.
Sotti Koev:
Hmm.
Mike Mann:
This sounds pretty cool. I’ll do those in a second. Let me see if I’m missing anything from this other screen here. Ultra Appliances, that sounds pretty cool. Well, that one was there first. So we’re gonna do ultraappliances .com.
Mike Mann:
And we’ll do a couple more after that and we’re gonna be done. So I’m splitting it. This one actually could be tested as two words or one word because it’s not a real word. In ultra, well, so the good news is has a lot of answers here.
Mike Mann:
We could dig into this Facebook page and see what I’m looking for on the Facebook page is if they have a recent post. If it’s 10 years old and they’re not using it, then they’re not gonna buy your domain.
Mike Mann:
But if they have lots and lots of posts and lots and lots of followers, then the domain might be a good investment. So you see ultra appliances right here. Ultra appliances, Nepal. Ultra fast grind, ultra, looks like Nepal is the top one.
Mike Mann:
So again, we’re disambiguating it. And in order to do so, we’re trying to decide what it means and how many people would conceptually use it and how badly they need it. So as far as what it means, it’s just a cute name for an appliance company.
Mike Mann:
We wanna know how many appliance companies in the world are currently using it and how many might use it in the future as a matter of our opinion by thinking about it, looking around. So it looks like a pretty cool name.
Mike Mann:
And again, appliances are expensive. I mean, these guys are selling these appliances. God knows, thousands of dollars each. They should use a good domain name. Of course, we don’t know. Yeah, there’s the name, their domain name they use is terrible.
Mike Mann:
So that implies that they need a new one. Again, it’s like ELGIULTRA .COM. So absolutely horrific domain. They should throw it away immediately and buy a better domain, preferably ultra appliances. So we’ll just check it out for a few minutes.
Mike Mann:
Gonna check it out back in Google over here. Here it is, they come up as the top hit. So we know what it means. And then the breadth is, it’s not very broad. There’s two or three companies in the world that might like it, maybe a couple more in the future.
Mike Mann:
However, it has a nice depth. The depth is this, this one company would be stupid not to buy it. Having said that, most companies are stupid and they won’t buy it. So if you’re counting on these people being smart and buying it at a high price, it’s a very high risk.
Mike Mann:
That’s why we do the breadth and the depth. It’s very low breadth, even though it has a decent depth for one person. If it had a decent depth for a lot of people, then you’d be in the money. So you’re not in the money.
Mike Mann:
It’s a really cool name. Somebody might buy it, but it’s too explicit. And you also have a slight risk of a trademark infringement. Doesn’t sound that trademarky, but in any event, we’re gonna appraise it right here and right now.
Mike Mann:
Dot com. My thing is what’s the appraisal? Having said all that we said there, you know, it’s a pretty cool name. We’re going with 6 ,000. Great job. My buddies, let’s see. I’ll do like two more and let you guys off the hook.
Mike Mann:
So we have midnightsparks .com. I’ll check that out in a second. Let me see if I’m missing anything else exciting here. Okay, midnightsparks. Well, that sounds like an adult commentary. Let’s hope not.
Mike Mann:
Midnightsparks. I will check and see if I got this right here. I’ll answer other questions after in a minute. Gotta figure out what I’m doing here. So yeah, midnightsparks, we’re appraising right now.
Mike Mann:
We’re using our trustee Google to figure out what it’s worth. And I just need to figure out why I have so many screens open and where I am. Okay, here we are. Midnightsparks, good deal. Well, there you go, Victoria’s Secret.
Mike Mann:
You know, so again, you have this slight risk of a trademark infringement, but if your price, you shouldn’t, first of all, it would be a stupid, these people, if they wanted it, should have bought it a long time ago.
Mike Mann:
And, you know, trademark rights are stupid in general because people use it for different products and services and they use descriptive words, you know, generic descriptive words, midnight sparks. So it’s, you know, Victoria’s secret has absolutely no right to the word whatsoever.
Mike Mann:
Doesn’t mean they won’t sue you anyway if they don’t want to pay you. If they wanted it at all and you charged a million bucks, they’d probably rather just pay the lawyer $50 ,000 to roll you. He might lose, but they might try it anyway.
Mike Mann:
Having said that, I don’t care about them. I care about the asset and whether it’s a good investment. So Victoria’s secret, again, let’s talk about the name first. We have to disambiguate it. What does it mean?
Mike Mann:
It means something in the adult line, something about lingerie, certainly with respect to Victoria’s secret. We’re gonna look a little deeper as far as what it could mean to other people. Could be something about race car driving.
Mike Mann:
Looks like music, hip hop music, that makes a lot of sense. The name of an album, and we’re gonna look at it more. So what it means, it’s something like cool stuff to do at night, a lot related to lingerie.
Mike Mann:
And so then we wanna do the breadth and the depth. The breadth is, we already see there’s a handful of different industries and people that might like it. The depth is, is that there’s a billion dollar company, Victoria’s secret, that has a lot of depth.
Mike Mann:
So they’re the best buyer. If they’re not a buyer, there’s a handful of other potential buyers. This is a great, great name. It’ll go up in value no matter what we price it. So that’s the important point.
Mike Mann:
This goes up in value over time. A perfect, properly spelled dot com. There’s a lot of meaning, a lot of sparkle to this particular one. And it’s an exciting expression. Means certain things to certain people.
Mike Mann:
We’re gonna check out the images a little bit. Hopefully they’re not too racy. It’s the name of some kind of makeup line or something. Oh, that’s the Victoria’s secret thing. I thought Victoria’s secret thing, it was closed.
Mike Mann:
Victoria’s secret, it’s makeup line. These people down here, metal art and decor. Again, we could spend more time researching this. But the word itself is cool, spelled right, it’s a dot com. We know all that, we’ve disambiguated it in the sense that it means several things to several people.
Mike Mann:
There’s a good amount of breadth to it. And there’s a lot of depth to at least one client, Victoria’s secret. So what you have is all the great possibilities lining up for a high appraisal. So the correct answer is midnight sparks.
Mike Mann:
Also keep in mind though, it’s diluted by the word midnight spark. So unless that comes with the package, that means it’s worth a little less than it otherwise would be. Again, midnightsparks .com is worth a cool 30 ,000.
Mike Mann:
Congratulations. Okay, we have a born2impress .com. And that’ll be the last one I’m doing. If you guys have any other questions, I think there’s already a couple others on the wall, but not domain questions or not domain appraisals at least.
Mike Mann:
So if you have any other questions, put them up now. We’re gonna end in like five minutes. So born2impress not to express, born2impress quotes. So it’s an expression obviously. So again, the first thing we need to do is disambiguate it.
Mike Mann:
What does it mean? So it’s like a positive inspirational thing for these memes. And it probably doesn’t mean anything else, but it’s on a lot of these, born2impress, born2impress. So that’s pretty cool.
Mike Mann:
But it’s not the name of any company. It’s not the name of any brand. It might make a good name of a company or a brand, but since nobody’s done it before, there’s no reason to presume that they’re gonna do it in the future.
Mike Mann:
The best bet on the future is if they had done it in the past. So nobody used it for a logo, a slogan, a brand, a sign. It’s not on the side of any cars, trucks. It’s really not a brand name, but it could be.
Mike Mann:
It’s actually a good word and it’s meaningful and it’s positive, inspirational, easy to spell. Expressions themselves are very valuable domain names if they’re the right ones. So we can see here, gonna, could dig deeper, but you can see Instagram has some activity, Facebook has activity.
Mike Mann:
And that’s about it. Nothing else terribly exciting. Again, a lot of these meme things, which are pretty hot. So let’s look at it in total here. We’ve disambiguated it. It’s just a cool, catchy expression, positive, inspirational expression.
Mike Mann:
The breadth is that exactly zero companies are using it in commerce. And the depth is it’s actually pretty cool if somebody does wanna use it in commerce. So the answer is born to impress. It is 2000.
Mike Mann:
Could try 3000, could try 4 ,000, but might be able to sell it for 2000. Again, the object is to get Crazils absolutely right. So they can be removed. That one says hacked when you click on it. So I don’t know about clicking on that one.
Mike Mann:
Gonna delete that one. Okay, this is awesome. Does anybody have any other questions not related to domain appraisals? Gonna check my little wall here. Okay, cause we ran 13 minutes over at the moment.
Mike Mann:
So you guys are great. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much to my guests, Jordan Serlin: and Sodi Koev. They did a great job. They’re fabulous guys. We’re doing a lot of very impressive stuff with lots of investors and they work with me on stuff.
Mike Mann:
And so I encourage you to keep an eye on them in the market spaces, add them on social media and keep watching here and adding your friends. Thank you for everything and we’ll see you again soon.
