Marketing Adjacent

[00:00:49] Country Specific TLDs and their impacts
[00:00:49] Mike Grinberg: Mike Gario Harrison here we are back after extended hiatus of marketing adjacent, and we're coming at you with a slightly different episode format.
[00:01:03] Mike Grinberg: We're going to go much, much shorter and we're going to talk about one specific topic and that'll be it.
[00:01:10] Mike Grinberg: We're going to do this, we're going to start weekly and we might switch to multiple times a week and daily.
[00:01:16] Mike Grinberg: We'll see how it goes, but there's always lots of stuff going on.
[00:01:24] Garrio Harrison: This is what it's about.
[00:01:25] Garrio Harrison: Man iteration, content iteration.
[00:01:28] Mike Grinberg: There you go, content iteration.
[00:01:30] Mike Grinberg: So we figured we'd start with something fun and interesting today.
[00:01:36] Mike Grinberg: The topic here is country specific TLDs.
[00:01:43] Mike Grinberg: So top level domains for those that don't know.
[00:01:47] Mike Grinberg: There's an interesting thing happening right now.
[00:01:49] Mike Grinberg: It's the island nation of Anguilla, I believe, getting a ton of money right now from the AI craze.
[00:02:02] Mike Grinberg: So the AI domains for those that don't know the way this all works is I'm not going to go through the whole how the domain name registries work and whatnot.
[00:02:15] Mike Grinberg: But at a basic level, there are kind of your regular top level domains like the.
[00:02:20] Mike Grinberg: Coms nets, et cetera.
[00:02:21] Mike Grinberg: They're managed by ICANN, I believe, and then everything else goes through their individual registrars that manage individual country specific domains.
[00:02:35] Mike Grinberg: So, like us, UK, CN for China, et cetera.
[00:02:40] Mike Grinberg: Those make sense.
[00:02:40] Mike Grinberg: A lot of websites that operate in a specific country want to own those things like that.
[00:02:47] Mike Grinberg: De is pretty popular for Germany, but then you have these tiny, tiny countries like Anguilla that have like, I don't know what their population is, to be honest, but it's small and they make millions.
[00:03:00] Mike Grinberg: There's an article out there that I saw that I think they're slated to make somewhere the ballpark of like 25 to 30 million in the coming year from everybody who wants AI domain.
[00:03:13] Mike Grinberg: So when somebody purchases AI domain, there's a fee that goes to the country that owns said domain extension.
[00:03:28] Mike Grinberg: The fun thing is, I did a little bit of research, I knew about one of these, but there's a bunch of these examples through recent history of tiny countries, relatively unknown, that make a bunch of money with this.
[00:03:44] Mike Grinberg: The ones I knew about were the li.
[00:03:46] Mike Grinberg: So for those of you remember, like in the early two thousand s, the li craze, so like Bitly and I forget that there's some other big name domains out there that use the li ending.
[00:04:06] Mike Grinberg: Well, that's Libya for those that don't know.
[00:04:11] Mike Grinberg: And the interesting, this one I knew about under Gaddafi back in, I think it was 2012, I forget the year exactly, but war torn country, et cetera, and they shut down their internet for, I forget how long and what people didn't realize.
[00:04:32] Mike Grinberg: When that happens, that means the domain registrars can't access the data from the country specific domains.
[00:04:38] Mike Grinberg: And after a certain time, that means all those sites go bye bye.
[00:04:41] Mike Grinberg: So that's an interesting thing of like when you're selecting your domain name, not just your name, but the TLD, most people don't even think about, is this country safe?
[00:04:56] Mike Grinberg: The other thing that happened is this one wasn't as popular, but the sy domains that's Syria syria had sanctions placed against them during the maybe still does, I think.
[00:05:09] Mike Grinberg: I don't even know, to be honest with you.
[00:05:11] Mike Grinberg: I didn't research into that before we jumped on, but when the sanctions happened, anybody that had a sy domain pretty much was in breach of sanctions.
[00:05:24] Mike Grinberg: So if you're a US company that had a sy domain, for whatever reason, you could no longer keep that domain.
[00:05:29] Mike Grinberg: So you have to switch to something else.
[00:05:31] Mike Grinberg: So it gets us into sort of how interconnected our world is from a business perspective.
[00:05:39] Mike Grinberg: Again, people generally wouldn't think of it.
[00:05:42] Mike Grinberg: So anyway, I thought that was absolutely are.
[00:05:47] Mike Grinberg: I was watching somebody post this on LinkedIn and like, oh my God, this is crazy.
[00:05:50] Mike Grinberg: But the reality is it's been happening for decades of this kind of thing.
[00:05:54] Mike Grinberg: This wasn't the first one.
[00:05:56] Mike Grinberg: The other one I found was like a tiny island nation in the South Pacific called Tuvalu, I think.
[00:06:03] Mike Grinberg: I don't know how to pronounce it, to be that's TV.
[00:06:08] Mike Grinberg: Everybody remember, like Justin TV.
[00:06:10] Mike Grinberg: And then a bunch of media companies bought like they made over the decades.
[00:06:18] Mike Grinberg: I forget the exact number, but they're making roughly a million dollars a year from that.
[00:06:24] Garrio Harrison: Yeah, we should try and find some articles and throw it in the comments for this as well, because I think those are definitely interesting to look into.
[00:06:37] Garrio Harrison: The one from Fortune that you sent, I did not realize that that was the case.
[00:06:44] Garrio Harrison: And it is 30 million.
[00:06:47] Mike Grinberg: That's just for the year, which makes sense based on how rapidly the industry is exploding.
[00:06:55] Mike Grinberg: Everybody that has anything to do with AI wants AI domain.
[00:07:01] Garrio Harrison: Right.

[00:07:02] The Importance of Infrastructure in AI and Marketing

[00:07:02] Garrio Harrison: So I guess here's my question for you on this.
[00:07:08] Garrio Harrison: We've talked about AI kind of in general, but this starts to get into a lot of infrastructure type things that people kind of don't realize or take for granted.
[00:07:21] Garrio Harrison: Right?
[00:07:21] Garrio Harrison: Like even that point that you mentioned of a country being sanctioned and it taking down all these domains.
[00:07:30] Garrio Harrison: So when you hear that and you think about these exotic domains in the spirit of being marketing adjacent, what should marketers be thinking about?
[00:07:41] Garrio Harrison: Do we need to start thinking that two levels deeper into any sort of initiative?
[00:07:48] Mike Grinberg: 100%?
[00:07:49] Mike Grinberg: Especially if you consider a lot of these domains are being like, people are sitting on these to sell them.
[00:07:54] Mike Grinberg: Right.
[00:07:54] Mike Grinberg: So I guarantee you, again, I didn't have time to do the research, but I would not be surprised if there are a bunch of park domains, park AI domains that people are sitting on now.
[00:08:05] Mike Grinberg: I don't know enough about the country of Anguilla.
[00:08:08] Mike Grinberg: What does happen if Anguilla all of a sudden goes through a civil war or a hurricane rips through and completely knocks out their Internet or something like you know what I mean, all of these things, like the servers, I believe, have to be local for this, I think.
[00:08:26] Mike Grinberg: Don't quote me on that.
[00:08:27] Mike Grinberg: Right?
[00:08:28] Mike Grinberg: So all these types of things you have to be thinking about when if you're going to spend $100,000 to buy your desired AI domain, for example, I'm sure this isn't the last one.
[00:08:40] Mike Grinberg: Again, there are companies right now that are buying ly domains still.
[00:08:43] Mike Grinberg: If you're going to do that well, you should know that this is Libya you're talking about.
[00:08:47] Mike Grinberg: And it's been and unfortunately, probably for the near to medium term will be a war torn country.
[00:08:56] Mike Grinberg: So what happens the next time they shut down their Internet?
[00:09:00] Mike Grinberg: Maybe it's for a long enough period where it does completely shut down your website.
[00:09:07] Garrio Harrison: All those things, I guess zooming out even a step further.

[00:09:13] Discussing the Value of Domains in Branding and SEO

[00:09:13] Garrio Harrison: Do you think that domains are as precious as they used to be?
[00:09:22] Garrio Harrison: Right, because you're still trying to find the.com for what you're looking for.
[00:09:26] Garrio Harrison: Co became kind of a nice substitute.
[00:09:33] Garrio Harrison: Net is still out there, still floating around.
[00:09:37] Garrio Harrison: But I guess the question is to get some of these exotic domains for your startup or your company's initiative.
[00:09:52] Garrio Harrison: Is it still worth the capital expenditure to go get that perfect domain?
[00:09:59] Garrio Harrison: Is it for branding purposes?
[00:10:01] Garrio Harrison: Is there technical infrastructure reasons why you would need it?
[00:10:05] Mike Grinberg: I definitely don't think there are any technical reasons what's that a domain is a domain from an infrastructure perspective.
[00:10:12] Mike Grinberg: Actually for that matter, I would say from an infrastructure perspective, again, that gets back to the safe bet as a.com or any sort of safe place if you will, because with any TLD at the end of the day you have some level of risk of geopolitics involved even whenever again, do I think anything is going to happen with the UK domains.
[00:10:39] Mike Grinberg: No.
[00:10:40] Mike Grinberg: But CN, for example yeah, now CN doesn't have any other than unless you're operating in China that you want that I don't see value in it of doing that.
[00:10:57] Mike Grinberg: Unlike AI or a Me or IO is another popular one.
[00:11:03] Mike Grinberg: I forget that was a weird one.
[00:11:05] Mike Grinberg: That's like a British island territory, whatever, something like that.
[00:11:10] Mike Grinberg: Those are popular back in the late 90s, early 2000s too.
[00:11:17] Mike Grinberg: But I think there's definitely a branding plan.
[00:11:21] Mike Grinberg: I thought I saw the co founder of HubSpot recently purchased Chat, I believe it was, or was it Chat?
[00:11:31] Mike Grinberg: AI?
[00:11:32] Mike Grinberg: I can't remember.
[00:11:32] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:11:33] Mike Grinberg: For an ungodly money.
[00:11:35] Mike Grinberg: I can't remember how much he paid for it.
[00:11:37] Mike Grinberg: I think he showed it.
[00:11:38] Garrio Harrison: Yeah, that's worth it.
[00:11:43] Mike Grinberg: I know one of my favorite companies that's unfortunately shutting down right now is Gated.
[00:11:53] Mike Grinberg: They bought Gated.com right now you could argue, well, since the company is shutting down, was that a worthwhile investment?
[00:12:02] Mike Grinberg: Maybe not, but I think as you're planning it, I think it was.
[00:12:10] Mike Grinberg: I think it totally makes sense from a branding perspective.
[00:12:18] Garrio Harrison: And maybe it's because we're starting to see more intention put on where capital goes in the lifecycle of an organization.
[00:12:33] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:12:33] Garrio Harrison: I'm thinking it's primarily of like venture backed startups here.
[00:12:36] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:12:37] Garrio Harrison: If you're choosing a domain and you have X amount of dollars, how much realistically should you be investing in the perfect domain?
[00:12:47] Garrio Harrison: Because this sets the trajectory of your entire marketing budget going forward.
[00:12:52] Garrio Harrison: And does this start to have diminishing returns if you start to view it through that lens?
[00:13:01] Mike Grinberg: Yeah, I really wish it's a great question.
[00:13:03] Mike Grinberg: I wish I had the data.
[00:13:05] Mike Grinberg: I would assume maybe someone's done the research.
[00:13:07] Mike Grinberg: But my immediate thought on this is, especially if you're a tech company and your domain is your product, you should invest.
[00:13:19] Mike Grinberg: And for that matter, if you think whatever.
[00:13:22] Mike Grinberg: I think the decision you have to make is I'm going to make this up.
[00:13:26] Mike Grinberg: Let's take the gated example.
[00:13:28] Mike Grinberg: And again, I don't know this for a fact.
[00:13:29] Mike Grinberg: I haven't talked to Andy about this in particular, but if the choice was do I spend I forget.
[00:13:37] Mike Grinberg: I think he talked about how much they spent.
[00:13:39] Mike Grinberg: But either way, I'm going to make this up.
[00:13:41] Mike Grinberg: If your choice was do I spend $100,000 on Gated.com or do I choose Gated net for free?
[00:13:49] Mike Grinberg: To me, it's not even a question.
[00:13:51] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:13:53] Mike Grinberg: Honestly, because if you hear the company Gated and you want to type it in, you're going to type in.
[00:14:01] Mike Grinberg: You're never going to think about net or info or whatever.
[00:14:05] Mike Grinberg: Maybe AI at that point would have been or IO.
[00:14:09] Mike Grinberg: Those are interesting, but even then, most people just automatically revert to and I don't think it matters from an SEO perspective, for example.
[00:14:19] Mike Grinberg: But I think from a branding perspective, it is totally worth it.
[00:14:24] Mike Grinberg: The question then becomes if you're like, I don't know, make this up, like a consulting firm or a manufacturing company and consulting probably doesn't make sense.
[00:14:37] Mike Grinberg: It's unlikely that your company name is not available unless you really screwed something up, I think.
[00:14:44] Mike Grinberg: But take manufacturing company, I don't know, I think the same thing.
[00:14:49] Mike Grinberg: Right.
[00:14:51] Mike Grinberg: I think findability, if you will, I think is critical.
[00:14:58] Mike Grinberg: And if somebody is, whatever, seeing your ads out there, whatnot doesn't click through but then goes and searches for you, sure, Google will highlight the right one, I think, but what if there's a again, this is where you think about, well, is there a competing brand name?
[00:15:16] Mike Grinberg: Like there's a whatever, Gated.com and a Gated net and they're different, completely different products.
[00:15:20] Mike Grinberg: So it's not a trademark violation or whatever.
[00:15:23] Mike Grinberg: Completely different industries.
[00:15:24] Mike Grinberg: That's a big problem.
[00:15:28] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:15:30] Garrio Harrison: I can definitely see it on the SaaS side.
[00:15:32] Garrio Harrison: Of things, right?
[00:15:33] Garrio Harrison: Like, if you're not responsible, if the brand of the product is the actual domain and the usage of it is the actual domain, that's one thing.
[00:15:47] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:15:48] Garrio Harrison: But if you're a company that sells a product or even consulting now, that starts to have diminishing returns, because if I'm going to find you, you should be being proactive in reaching out to me and connecting to the domain.
[00:16:10] Garrio Harrison: Yes, I need to know where to go, find additional information and do the research on my own.
[00:16:14] Garrio Harrison: But your external sales team should be guiding people to that deal.
[00:16:19] Garrio Harrison: I don't think anybody is going to type in threads.com and go, wait a minute, where is threads?
[00:16:28] Garrio Harrison: Right?
[00:16:29] Garrio Harrison: They know that they're probably going to end up going to it from the app itself.
[00:16:35] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:16:35] Garrio Harrison: Or they know that it's going to be this net domain.
[00:16:40] Garrio Harrison: They'll know that because of repetitive use.
[00:16:42] Garrio Harrison: So it makes sense to do it on that side.

[00:16:48] Discussing the Importance and Investment Level in Domain Names for Brands and Startups

[00:16:48] Garrio Harrison: And again, this probably goes back to some of the conversations we used to have or we had earlier about how much do you invest in something like a brand in the early days, and at what point does it start to the ROI is just not there a very good question with this particular conversation, right?
[00:17:18] Mike Grinberg: I mean, is it helpful?
[00:17:31] Mike Grinberg: I had to do it.
[00:17:34] Mike Grinberg: I think it's a good question.
[00:17:38] Mike Grinberg: I think you have to look at it on an individual basis in terms of what's available.
[00:17:43] Mike Grinberg: Right.
[00:17:46] Mike Grinberg: In my mind, there are a lot of factors you have to consider.
[00:17:49] Mike Grinberg: Are you already a mature brand?
[00:17:52] Mike Grinberg: So you mentioned threads.
[00:17:55] Mike Grinberg: Everybody knows Meta and Facebook, et cetera, and they have such a robust user base, and again, people are going to use the app, so the domain doesn't matter as much.
[00:18:06] Mike Grinberg: But if you're a startup and you're an unknown, if you're starting a new category, for example, and you want a category based domain that someone's parked on, I don't think you have an option.
[00:18:16] Mike Grinberg: I think you figure out a way to buy the damn thing.
[00:18:18] Mike Grinberg: Now, of course, I think if you're a bootstrap startup and somebody that's parked on it and whatever you're sitting on, I don't know, something that's incredible in theory, incredibly valuable.
[00:18:33] Mike Grinberg: I can take, like, Gated.com as an example.
[00:18:35] Mike Grinberg: Again, I have no idea how much they actually paid for it, but if that person said, well, you have to pay me $10 million, then it's like, yeah, I don't know, obviously.
[00:18:44] Mike Grinberg: But I don't think any let's assume you raised, I don't know, $10 million round.
[00:18:54] Mike Grinberg: You're not going to spend your entire Series A.
[00:18:58] Mike Grinberg: $10 million for Series A is not typical, but whatever.
[00:19:02] Mike Grinberg: You're not going to spend your entire capital raise on a domain.
[00:19:07] Mike Grinberg: Right.
[00:19:07] Mike Grinberg: That's just nuts.
[00:19:08] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:19:11] Mike Grinberg: Maturity level of the organization, is it a new product within an existing category or brand new category?
[00:19:18] Mike Grinberg: What's your capital structure?
[00:19:21] Mike Grinberg: Are you app based versus Web based?
[00:19:25] Mike Grinberg: I think that makes a difference.
[00:19:27] Mike Grinberg: There are all these factors that you have to take into consideration of how much are you willing to and what you should invest in.
[00:19:36] Mike Grinberg: And then the last point I think in my mind is, well, what's available?
[00:19:39] Mike Grinberg: I don't know.
[00:19:42] Mike Grinberg: For example, with Gated, for those who don't know, gated was a way to pretty much block, if you will, your inbox from unwanted outbound spam.
[00:19:54] Mike Grinberg: So could you have gone instead of gated.com to gated email.com or gatedinbox.com?
[00:20:03] Mike Grinberg: If that was available for free or for significantly less expensive, then yeah, maybe that would have made more sense.
[00:20:11] Mike Grinberg: Sure, it's longer, but I think it's more descriptive and maybe even makes more sense.
[00:20:14] Mike Grinberg: I don't know.
[00:20:16] Mike Grinberg: I'm making this up.
[00:20:17] Mike Grinberg: It's just simply an example.
[00:20:18] Mike Grinberg: I have no idea what was available to them at the time.
[00:20:21] Mike Grinberg: So I think it has to be very situational.
[00:20:23] Mike Grinberg: I don't know.
[00:20:26] Garrio Harrison: That's interesting.

[00:20:28] Impact of Generative AI on Domain Names in the Digital Age

[00:20:28] Garrio Harrison: The other side of this coin, as we're talking, there's two things that are popping in my head.
[00:20:33] Garrio Harrison: So the whole concept that we've been talking about of generational, right?
[00:20:38] Garrio Harrison: So if you're a company and you're spending that much money on a domain today, who is your future audience 510 years from now, right?
[00:20:54] Garrio Harrison: And will they be searching for and looking for your product or service from a path to purchase standpoint on that domain?
[00:21:07] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:21:07] Garrio Harrison: I think of.com is the thing that people know and we're trained to go look for that, right.
[00:21:17] Garrio Harrison: But that's our generation millennial, that's kind of how we learn to search.
[00:21:25] Garrio Harrison: But I look at our kids, they search completely differently, right, and generative AI to loop that back in here.
[00:21:38] Garrio Harrison: The way that they search is going to be completely different, right.
[00:21:43] Garrio Harrison: And you look at something like even restaurant reviews, right?
[00:21:49] Garrio Harrison: Like before, we would go to Yelp and we'd read the reviews and then we'd go to Google and we'd do a search for review if you're looking for a brand new know.
[00:21:58] Garrio Harrison: And I saw an article that Google was nervous because people are starting to search TikTok for information, right?
[00:22:10] Garrio Harrison: Because again, there's so much content on the Internet that we start to trust creators and individuals more.
[00:22:19] Garrio Harrison: And they were worried that people are starting to search that way.
[00:22:23] Garrio Harrison: Right.
[00:22:23] Garrio Harrison: YouTube, yes, and so on.
[00:22:25] Garrio Harrison: But for the first time yesterday, I was at a networking event and I was talking with a guy and he was talking about how him and his wife search for restaurants and he doesn't have a TikTok account, right.
[00:22:39] Garrio Harrison: But she will go to TikTok and search for the restaurant, which I didn't even know that you could do this and see what people say about the restaurant, where, what to try, what kind of drinks to order, when to go, what not to order.
[00:22:58] Garrio Harrison: People are doing these things in reviews.
[00:23:00] Garrio Harrison: And I think as the Internet continues to evolve and change and the way that we find and interact with information, with all this generative AI stuff that's out there, does that change fundamentally the purpose of a website going forward?
[00:23:19] Garrio Harrison: And if so, where's the value?
[00:23:21] Garrio Harrison: Right?
[00:23:22] Garrio Harrison: If you have $100,000, where do you spend that $100,000?
[00:23:26] Garrio Harrison: Is it in marketing to drive traffic to your website?
[00:23:29] Garrio Harrison: Even if it's a funky domain?
[00:23:31] Garrio Harrison: Is it in creating tools and features that create a feedback loop that get people coming back to your website?
[00:23:39] Garrio Harrison: Or is it the brand alignment name that you do?
[00:23:46] Garrio Harrison: The dollar is finite, right?
[00:23:48] Garrio Harrison: So where do you make the investment?
[00:23:50] Garrio Harrison: And I think when I read the article, the first thing that popped into my mind is, wow, if these branding agencies that are spending, their whole value proposition is we will help you find the perfect name and the brand and the URLs and the trademark and protection and so on, that value starts to diminish.
[00:24:12] Garrio Harrison: And then what's coming next?
[00:24:14] Garrio Harrison: And I don't think we know what's coming next, but something's changing.
[00:24:18] Mike Grinberg: That's interesting.
[00:24:20] Mike Grinberg: I don't know that the value of the brand name starts to diminish.
[00:24:28] Mike Grinberg: The question is, what are the elements that need to be associated with it?
[00:24:33] Mike Grinberg: I think the point around not the.
[00:24:35] Garrio Harrison: Brand name, the service of going through all those things is what I'm talking about.
[00:24:42] Mike Grinberg: Yeah, what we know is brand or branding activity as a whole has a ton of value.
[00:24:50] Mike Grinberg: It's hard to prove, but it's there.
[00:24:51] Mike Grinberg: And you can prove it through things like media, mixed modeling, et cetera.
[00:24:55] Mike Grinberg: Anyway, we're going way outside of where we started.
[00:24:57] Mike Grinberg: But I think I do agree with you in and again, this gets back to I think you have to look at it on an individual basis because again, for one company, it might be totally worthwhile to spend the 100 grand there.
[00:25:07] Mike Grinberg: For another one, it's not a complete waste of money, maybe, but it's a waste.
[00:25:15] Mike Grinberg: Again, I think looking at how is it used and what you're describing actually made me think, like, even in our own family, gabby all the time sends me like Instagram reels or whatever, stuff like, oh, we should do these things around Phoenix and we should go to these restaurants.
[00:25:32] Mike Grinberg: And me, I'm like, I'm searching Google Maps and other stuff.
[00:25:36] Mike Grinberg: So I think everyone's got different things.
[00:25:38] Mike Grinberg: But I think going back to domain do, I think there's also a derisking exercise of if you're serious about whatever your project is, you're likely not just buying one domain, you're buying five to ten.
[00:26:03] Mike Grinberg: Some of them are inexpensive because they're not taken by anybody, and some of them are going to be expensive, and one of them is going to be your core domain.
[00:26:10] Mike Grinberg: But I think there's an incredible risk to only buy and say, like the.com and not maybe buying the Ly version if you have a Ly brand name, for example.
[00:26:21] Mike Grinberg: So you might not want your main domain to be whatever.
[00:26:26] Mike Grinberg: I don't make this up like contently.
[00:26:28] Mike Grinberg: I'm pretty sure that's a company I don't even know, but you might want Contently.com to be your main one, but you better still be buying the Ly domain, even if that's the one that's parked down.
[00:26:39] Mike Grinberg: That's going to cost you ten grand.
[00:26:40] Mike Grinberg: Yeah, because I think there's an incredible risk to having something else, either a pop up there it could be a competitor, even.
[00:26:50] Mike Grinberg: Right.
[00:26:50] Mike Grinberg: Like something stopped.
[00:26:51] Mike Grinberg: I mean, that's more of a trademark thing, and there's a bunch of stuff, but do you really want to be going through the legal battle of that instead?
[00:26:58] Mike Grinberg: That's probably going to cost you more than the ten grand that will cost you to buy the domain.
[00:27:01] Mike Grinberg: So I think you have to think about business as a whole.
[00:27:05] Mike Grinberg: What's this going to cost you?
[00:27:06] Mike Grinberg: And if you don't do it, you're likely going to have a legal battle on your hands.
[00:27:09] Mike Grinberg: From a trademark perspective, that's going to inevitably cost you five to ten grand in legal fees or whatever it is.
[00:27:15] Mike Grinberg: So you might as well just bite that bullet up front.
[00:27:19] Garrio Harrison: And there's also, like, the risk of as you're talking about that the risk of nefarious actors, too, right?
[00:27:24] Mike Grinberg: Yeah.
[00:27:25] Garrio Harrison: Everybody's gotten one of those emails from Facebooksecurity@gmail.com, right?
[00:27:33] Garrio Harrison: You're like, okay, you know what I mean?
[00:27:40] Garrio Harrison: There's definitely value in going through the exercise of thinking it all the way through, but just like with any good strategic plan or I'm constantly preaching this idea of fiscal discipline being, like, a thing.
[00:27:58] Garrio Harrison: Now, map it out, put the cost down on paper, and then have a rigorous cost benefit analysis discussion with your leadership team to go.
[00:28:08] Garrio Harrison: Do we spend these dollars?
[00:28:09] Garrio Harrison: Because until you actually cut the check, it's an intellectual exercise and it's an important one to have.
[00:28:19] Garrio Harrison: It's definitely worth it, for sure.
[00:28:22] Mike Grinberg: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Mike Grinberg: I didn't even think about the cybersecurity example, and I totally agree with you on this.
[00:28:28] Mike Grinberg: The last thing I'll say before we wrap another interesting example I didn't know, but everybody probably remembers, like, the me domains.
[00:28:40] Mike Grinberg: Oh, yeah.
[00:28:42] Mike Grinberg: So that brought in at least the article I looked at, which was fairly old, so I'm sure it's way more than that, but it brought in, I think, over $15 million to Montenegro when Montenegro became a country back in 98, or whatever it is.
[00:28:59] Mike Grinberg: I just find this kind of stuff fascinating.
[00:29:02] Mike Grinberg: Yeah.
[00:29:02] Garrio Harrison: I still have my me account from Apple.
[00:29:05] Mike Grinberg: Oh, yeah.
[00:29:06] Garrio Harrison: Icloud.
[00:29:08] Mike Grinberg: There you go.
[00:29:09] Mike Grinberg: That's right.
[00:29:10] Mike Grinberg: I think that's a good place to stop everybody that's listening.
[00:29:13] Mike Grinberg: We're going to be doing this more often.
[00:29:15] Mike Grinberg: Follow us, like us, leave a review on wherever you listen and watch, and we will see you all soon.
[00:29:23] Garrio Harrison: All right.
[00:29:24] Garrio Harrison: I feel like we should do more of these.