UnCovered: A Post I Wrote While Drunk at NamesCon

A few people can attest I drank alcohol at Namecon.  And one night at NamesCon after enjoying some festivities, I decided to write a post.  I actually posted it and let it stay up for a few hours and then took it down.  A few people saw it but most didn’t.  But I figured its all in fun and so I’ll post the unedited edition. This is an attempt at humor from a semi drunk middle aged man.

My Day At NamesCon:  A Humble Recount of Events from the World’s Greatest Nurseryman Domain Investor

The first day started off as planned.  Sitting in my room clicking my ads on Domain Name Sales trying to raise a little money to go out. I figured Frank wouldn’t mind since it’s way cheaper than sponsoring the blog.  But it took me a little longer than usual because I wanted to go out for an extra nice meal the next night.

The beauty of waking up in Vegas is like the casino, you have no idea what time it is.   Black screen over the windows, keeping the place so dark I can’t see my hands in front of my face.  But unfortunately, is also covers up my incredible view of the parking garage and smoke break area. When I finally do wake up, I do what all people in Vegas do, I call my wife and pretend like I’ve been up for hours and that I’ve been to two sessions.  Then I sleep for another two hours. After that I quickly hit the gym, run 4 or 20 miles and get ready to tackle the world.

By tackle the world I mean go get a banana and nutella crepe.  In my mind I need to get going over to the hotel and get to some sessions, but I also am realizing that I sure love this crepe and need to work my way through it slowly.  But I should be at Jeff Gabriel’s talk.  Jeff Gabriel has some great ideas and probably gives a good talk, but this is a fuckin’ good crepe. You know the kind.  A whole banana, not that “I’m going to cut one open and split it into two crepes” set up.  I’m realize I’m just going to have to arrive fashionably late to the session.  On my slow, crepe filled belly walk over to the Tropicana I realize there are some other stragglers heading to the sessions.   I know they are domainers because I see the name tags and skinny jeans.  I wonder what THEY had for breakfast.  I also wondered how their ankles stay so small.  Do you start with small ankles and then taper the jeans to them or do you simply keep wearing skinny jeans and atrophy takes over?  Not important, time to hit the sessions.

I sit in Mr. Gabriels’ talk and it’s very good. During the whole thing I have to admit I keep thinking that the better session would be Adam Dicker and Jeff having a “Who’s a better salesman” Battle.    It would go like this……..Jeff would start out with..”You know what I do when I want to know more about a client?  I ask him” .  Adam fights back with , “You know what I do? I call and leave a message so the wife will here it and force him to do what I want”.   Gabriel responds…. “Yeah well, you know what I do?  I pretend like I’m an Uber driver,  try and pick him up and then ask all kind of questions so that I can target his weaknesses”  With Dicker finally responding……”That’s great, but you know what I do sometimes?  I dress up as a woman and join his mothers book club and tell her that she better have her son buy the damn domain or I’m going to tell everyone that she doesn’t even read the books and just looks shit up on the Internet”   “THAT my friend, is how you sell a name”.  I think it would be pretty good.

Speaking of Adam.  The next session is of my friends and fellow panelist of Domain Sherpa.  The usual witty banter with occasional break to let Michael Cyger put on his makeup.  You don’t get to see that in the taped version but he’s always like “guys, do I look shiny?” .  We say no but he still puts on a little powder and then gets back to taping.  Takes a little extra time but Mike knows the details it takes to put on such an excellent production.  The live version during the session took a crazy twist in the “would anyone like to make an offer on any of the names” section.  Someone offered a motorcycle for one of the names.  Evidently he is a motorcycle dealer and offered the guy a brand new Indian motorcycle for the name.   It was a nice gesture but I would have done it a little different if I wanted the domain.  The name was a new gTLD and the owner was a little older.  I’d just wait for him to die in 30 or 40 years and pick it up on the drop. By then you should only 5 or  6 years until the value of these things really start to pick up.

After the sessions Aaron and I had our first annual Domain Shane lunch. A great event. We took 8 or so guys over to lunch at the Deli in the NY NY and had a nice time.  Good conversation over a good sandwich.  I have to admit there was a bit of a misunderstanding when I refused to pay for Dwayne Walker’s lunch.  He said “are you not paying for my lunch because I’m black?”.   And said “No,  first of all, I didn’t know you were black, you have to tell me these things.  Second, I’m not paying for your lunch because you work for Rightside”   I’m not sure if you know, but Daniel Negari and I combined, are two of the bigger shareholders in Rightside.  I own 500 shares and he owns a million or so, but combined we’re a pretty dominant force. I kind of blame Dwayne and Matt Overman personally for my stock losses but they both agreed to give me 100 pairs of Rightside touchscreen gloves to make up for it.  I’m not sure how many pairs Negari is going to get.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with Elliot Silver trying to figure out where to watch the football game.  We were hoping to eat dinner and watch the game at the same time but everything was so crowded we just sat at a bar and ate some nachos that tasted like they were purchased at an Elementary School girls basketball game.  Great buy Aaron.  Since it didn’t look like we were going to go to dinner,  I decided to put all my Uniregistry “sponsorship” money from above on Oregon. I don’t have to tell you the results of the game, but I’m pretty sure Ohio State got an incredible speech from Urban Meyer because they came out fired up and just kept pounding.   Oregon on the other hand, seemed like they may have spent halftime watching “Frozen” because they turned into little girls.

I won’t got into the WaterSchool party details because there was a lot of personal things I don’t feel comfortable sharing.  When I say sharing, I mean typing out.  I’ll be posting a video of all my conversations here a little later today.  Those small Go Pro cameras are really easy to hide in a dark setting like that.  But I gotta go.  I need to get back to clicking on my sites.