Co-founder Specializes in Domain Brokerage

Jeffrey is an expert domain brokerage and building sales teams. Jeffrey most recently co-founded Saw.com, an industry-leading boutique brokerage that specializes in buying, selling, and appraising domains. Previously, Jeffrey was the Vice President of Sales at Uniregistry (recently purchased by Godaddy), one of the industry-leading domain marketplaces, domain registrar, and monetization platform on the net. In his seven years with Uniregistry, Jeffrey and his team quadrupled sales dollar volume, delivered the highest average sale price of any marketplace in the industry, and exponentially increased the number of closed transactions. Jeffrey has contributed to over 350 million dollars in completed transactions while in the industry. His most notable sales include The Guinness World Record-breaking sale of Sex.com for $13,000,000 USD and the highest .Org sale ever, Poker.org for $1,000,000 USD.

• CEO Hack: Creating a money list
• CEO Nugget: Live up to gratitude and give genuine compliments to your team
• CEO Defined: Huge responsibility

Website: http://saw.com/
www.saw.com/sell
www.saw.com/buy
www.saw.com/resources

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreymgabriel/

Forbes Council: https://profiles.forbes.com/members/business/profile/Jeffrey-Gabriel-Founder-Saw-com/7c10c2d8-093f-48c3-a1fc-b3ebe7a3f9a5

Transcript:

Intro 0:02
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you are in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:30
Hello, hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. Jeffrey Gabriel of Saw.com. Jeffrey, it's awesome having on the show.

Jeffrey Gabriel 0:39
Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Gresham Harkless 0:42
No problem. Super excited to have you on. And before we jumped in, I want to read a little bit more about Jeffrey so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Jeffrey is an expert domain brokerage and building and building team sales teams. Jeffrey most recently co-founded Saw.com and industry-leading boutique broker brokerage that specializes in buying selling and appraising domains. Previously, Jeffrey was the vice president of sales at Union registry but recently purchased by Godaddy and one of the industry-leading domain marketplaces, domain registrar's and monetizing platforms on the net. And in seven years with uniregistry. Jeffrey and his team quadrupled sales volume delivered to the highest average sales price and any marketplace in the industry and exponentially increase the number of closed transactions. Jeffrey has contributed to over three contribute over $350 million in completed transactions while in the industry and its most notable sales including the Guinness world record-breaking sale of sex.com for $13 million and the highest org sale ever. poker.org for $1 million. Jeffrey Are you ready for the IAM CEO community?

Jeffrey Gabriel 1:49
Sure am. Absolutely. I'm excited to do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:51
Yeah, definitely excited to have you on and you're doing some phenomenal things and super excited to hear a little bit more on how you get started. So could you take us through what I do like to call your ceo story and we'll let you get started with all the awesome things you're working on.

Jeffrey Gabriel 2:03
Oh boy. So when I first graduated from college, I was supposed I applied, got into law school. And I actually got into In the meantime, in the summertime, I started selling loans. And this was back in 2002 time when the refinance first refinance boom was going on. And by the time the fall rolled around, I was doing very well, selling loans, and I decided I didn't want to go to law school anymore. And that was, you know, something is very disappointing to my family. And I stuck with it. And I did that a number of years. I left that after about five or six years. And one of the things that was one of the things that I learned about sales in general was was when I sold loans was that you need to understand your product, forwards, sideways backwards in every direction possible. And then whomever your suppliers are or those that are supplying You in some way, it's very important to understand their job to the best of your ability as well. And it's frustrating to me now to go out and say go to a store to purchase a cell phone and the salesperson there knows nothing about the products that they're selling. And they're not even taking the time. And really surrounding yourself with the resources that are wrapped is what I first learned in loans. And what I actually did was I used to there are loans that weren't approved. And these to put them in a pile This is before a lot of privacy laws came into place. Now they're gonna lock them up or shred them. But at least kind of put them in a pile and they put them out in storage because I had to save them for a certain amount of time and things weren't quite digital yet. And I used to open them up and glanced at the applications. And I'd say to myself, well, this person could get alone, the salesperson didn't realize that and they put it in the trash pile. So I started taking those ones back to my desk and calling those people and these call me like the trash man or whatever. And then people got smart they'd started asking me before they threw him in the piles. But like, you know, there, if you want to split this, you want to work on this together. And that helped me and then I left there. And I thought to myself, I always wanted to start my own business and do my own thing. So I was kind of at a crossroads where I either wanted to start my own business selling loans or try something else. And I decided to sell like an HR staffing software or actually more of like a access to a site. And that was a company called job Fox. So it was like a monitor. So you know, you put your resume into a monster, it's free. But the companies that are searching your resume have to pay a monthly or yearly fee to use it job box exact same way. There are about 200 salespeople that work there from varying levels of sales experience and salesmanship. And over the time I was there, I was able to get in the top five of the 200 salespeople, and what I realized was is that again, is learning the business, understanding what the problems are, that the people that you're trying To sell to have, and being a human being and not a robot, and just really just talking to them honestly about their issues, their problems, and then going to meet them face to face because I was in the New England region, eating them doughnuts or a case of beer or whatever it is just to make you more human more approachable. And then you can really start to extract the object, the true injections or the issues that they're having and trying to find a solution to find your way in there, you know.

Gresham Harkless 5:28
I guess, take us through a little bit more about Saw.com so we can figure out what we can find there. And what you feel kind of is like your secret sauce for getting yourself in a company that makes it unique.

Jeffrey Gabriel 5:38
Absolutely. So I think one of the things that makes us totally unique as a business is that the experience that we have. Myself, I've been in the domain business for 10 years, you read off, you know, all these accomplishments that I've made. Well, I'm just one of three other people that sell that I consider equals in skill and ability, if not better than myself. I already mentioned Amanda, I have another person I've worked with for close To 10 years been eight years is Brooke Hernandez. She's been in the domain business for all that time, she sold 10s of millions of dollars worth of domains. And then I work with another gentleman, Robert Wilson. He has sold 10s of millions of dollars worth of domains and us coming together. It's a wealth of knowledge. I think the average amount of experience is immense. And I think when clients come, you know, they're some of our competitors are more of a very quick and transactional style of selling. What we would like to focus on are really two, well, three main parts of our business. The first main part of our business is a lot of times in your entrepreneurial show where you're targeting entrepreneurs is that we work with many entrepreneurs, startups, or companies looking to launch new products or services. So companies will come to us and this is one of the parts I absolutely love about my job is talking to somebody that is about to launch, and they don't know the name of what their business should be. And they want particular keywords like they want the word blink or they want the word you know, actually Or go or something involved in it have some sort of action and then or technology involved like the message or something like that. And we'll go out there and hear what their budget is, what their plans are, who they're targeting. And then we can come back with a list of domains from the suppliers that we work with, and come to with some ideas of prices where we can end up on a pricing scale. And then even as sometimes we can work with particular sellers who allow the buyer to pay for the domain over a period of time could be as much as five years. I mean, it really depends. So that's really exciting. And my co-founder, Amanda, for example, she actually worked with the founder of the jet which was bought by Walmart jet was not the original brand or what they really wanted the domain they wanted with something else and that seller and her client couldn't come to terms to make it work. So that was actually a number two that they actually ended up liking more than their first right. And, you know, that's an exciting thing to see. Especially when you get To see the domains on TV, you know, you get to see them being used, you know, in public or you're someone, one of your friends will call you and say, Have you ever heard a jet? I really like it on that website. Oh, yeah, I think I've heard of it. So I mean, there are countless situations like that, that's more one people can truly understand. But you know, this week, we have one selling, that's going to be a dog food company. You know, that's a subscription-based dog food company that delivers on a weekly basis or a monthly basis food for your dog or whatever, kind of like chewy, but a little more upper class or more of a, you know, the better higher-end dog food. So that's an exciting part of the job. The other part of the opportunity we have is we take super premium domains like so right now we're working on belay, calm, cool, calm, ai.com. And we're taking those to market. And we're calling companies and letting them know that those domains are available for sale and talking about why they're valuable, what they can do for their business and how they can get them and you know, the way you They can make offers to make it happen. And then the really the third and other major parts of our business and we have about almost 50,000 domain names that are for sale pointed at our website right now with our for-sale landers on them saying that the domains are for sale as we represent domain investors that own large portfolios. And we negotiate and represent them in the process. And what we do is, you know, we talk to buyers about their budgets, we help them understand why the domain is priced, what it's priced for. We provide comparable sales, other metrics to help them understand why. And I think that's one of the things that I've realized is a lot of people don't know why domains have such price tags and why the price the way they are, and then we can talk about ways that we can make it work for their business because people look at it as this huge expense. You know, when they should really be looking at more like it's an investment. They're investing in their business. They're investing in the marketing of their business. They're Investing to make their brand memorable and sticky. And so people come back. And that's an important thing. You know, if you start playing with, you know, bass dash ball, Boston calm, that's a crappy domain name. And if you expect people are going to type it in and come back to you and tell their friends about it, no one's gonna remember that, especially if you buy airtime on the radio. You know, if you buy other advertising spots, people are just going to type in whatever that service is. And now you're competing like you're brand new business again, and let's face it, repeat business is the best business you can get. Sorry, I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent. But, you know, in essence, those are the three main silos of business that we have. We're working on another one as we speak, but I can't really tell you more about it. Maybe for our second interview, I can I can get into that.

Gresham Harkless 10:48
Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. I wanted to switch gears a little bit. And I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app or book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jeffrey Gabriel 11:01
Something that makes me it's actually really basic. And I tell every sales person this on the planet, I call it my money list. It's probably been in a lot of sales books, but I just kind of found it myself. And every every night, it helps me sleep because you write down the things that you need to do the next day. And I list them in a way that's probably going to make the most money or be the most effective for the business the fastest.

Gresham Harkless 11:26
Absolutely love that. And so, now I want to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It could be around domains and registration and branding. Or it might be something you would tell yourself if you were to happen to a time machine.

Jeffrey Gabriel 11:38
I think it's a couple of things. I think the nugget is and it's going back to happiness and being happy with your family. I think in my younger years, and then when things are coming my way. Now I look at and say wow, if I was 10 years younger, I would certainly act a lot differently about this and I would now and one of the things that I'm really I really picked close attention to, as I make sure that the people that are in my life and working as a CEO, so the people that work with me, so it's not just the or other sales people that work for me. Well, the three and the fourth that's joining me this week, and the support staff of the developers and the lead generation people that help us and the writers that help us, but you know, and then our suppliers and others that work with you know, I try to make sure that I try to understand the I try to lead through gratitude, I guess, is the saying that I want to say, and that I make them realize that what they're doing is important, and it's important to me in a way that is genuine, I don't like in genuine compliments and I don't give them to people, you know, I give compliments when they're due. And when they do a great job. And when someone's struggling or having a hard time with it, instead of telling them they suck or that they're not good at something. You know, you offer help. And you let them know that you understand that the you know the hardship that they're facing and the troubles they're facing.

Gresham Harkless 13:06
Absolutely. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO? And we're hoping to have different clinical CEOs on this show. So Jeff, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Jeffrey Gabriel 13:17
And that's a really good question. And actually, I was thinking about that, because I know you brought up that question before the interview. And I think that being a CEO and when I was also the Vice President at uniregistry, is I feel that being in a leadership position, that means responsibility.

Gresham Harkless 13:35
Jeff, truly appreciate that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best they can get a hold of you and find out about everything awesome you and your team are doing.

Jeffrey Gabriel 13:49
I think the best way to get a hold of me it's the most easy and memorable ways you just email sales at sada calm or you can visit us go to the website and call our phone number or make can increase on any of the services you want. But if you outline what you saw here, that's fine. I'm happy to answer any questions or you know if I'm not available have one of our sales people do it too. So, you know, again, sales at saw.com is fine with us. And we look forward to hearing from you.

Gresham Harkless 14:17
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jeff, we will have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. And truly appreciate that that reminder as well, too, is just making sure that we understand exactly what we're doing when we're starting a business and if you aren't really passionate about it, all of the things behind the scenes that you don't see when you see a business, sometimes I can get up with you if you're doing it for the wrong reason. So I appreciate you for doing it for the right reason and reminding as well. I hope you have a great rest of the day.

Outro 14:44
Thank you for listening to the IAMCEO podcast powered by Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at IAMCEO.CO. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five star rating. Grab CEO gear a www.CEOgear.co This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gretchen Harkless. Thank you for listening

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