Morning Folks!!
Everyone always wants to know how big deals like this happen. I will start by saying that besides having the right domain names it happens by not wasting your time with every person you get an email from. You’ll be wasting your time answering spams from domainers for the rest of your life. A party that is truly interested will contact you over and over again. They will tell you who they are. They will be professional. And, you can’t piss off someone that really wants what you have and it rolls right off their back. They have a bigger mission than getting pissed off. So once they get pissed off, you know there was nothing there from the get go.
So Greg contacts me for the first time on February 8th of this year. Normally I would blow it off. Especially since it was a Hotmail account. But he signed his FULL NAME, his COMPANY NAME and his contact info. So he gets upgraded and at least gets a reply. I tell him we are in Multi Million Dollar territory and he says they have a budget of $500k-$1M. I tell them that I get an offer for $1 Million every month and my price is $3.5M.
Little by little after a lot of 'No's' we find out what is important to each of us. The circumstance that we each face. By March 18th we have a deal. But it is a long way from a deal to a DEAL. As you can see 2.5 months since the lawyers got it. But to hammer out a REAL agreement that PREVENTS future litigation, takes time and patience. Every item needs to be addressed and a remedy provided if you don’t want to end up in court someday. So the hard work is here. While you agree to the major points, the lawyers are the architects. They have to construct a solid agreement that can hold up under scrutiny and prevent any unforeseen circumstance and address what happens. To me, this is the KEY to any deal that is not just a cash transaction.
Besides the 2% off the top, I also have a provision in case Hershey’s or Mars or whoever wises up and acquires Greg’s company or the domain at some point down the road. There are a lot of moving parts in a deal like this. Lots of give and take. But the more moving parts you have the more flexibility you have in places where one can give some thing up that has little importance to one party while having great value to the other party. If price is the only thing you are negotiating with it is much more difficult. Not as much fun either.
When we finally had the agreement setup we still needed an escrow company that could work with us, knew domains, and was secure. Moniker worked up a custom escrow agreement in concert with our lawyers. They were the lynch pin in all this. But we could not worry about that part until we got everything else nailed down.
So from here, we will see. Should be a fun journey.
Have a GREAT Day!
Rick Schwartz
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