The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - The Most Hands-Off Side Hustle Anyone Can Copy⏐Ep. #227

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Check out my newsletter at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOPOD.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join my new community at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://TKOwners.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠━I sat down with Peter Askew to dig into the story of how he accidentally ended up buying VidaliaOnions.com , and turned it into a direct-to-consumer onion business shipping over 100,000 pounds a year. Peter broke down how he built trust with farmers, set up fulfillment on a handshake deal, and eventually expanded the brand to include Onions.com as a premium domain.We also talked about what makes farming partnerships so unique, the real power of type-in traffic to descriptive domain names, and why sometimes the best opportunities come from simply talking to the right person who “gets it.”This is part two of a two-part episode. If you want to check out the first half, listen to episode #226.If you want to learn more from Peter, check him out here:Twitter / X: ⁠@searchbound⁠Blog: ⁠DeepSouthVentures.com⁠Personal site: ⁠Askew.org⁠Here are some of the tools, resources, and sites Peter mentioned in our conversation:Expired Domains tool: ⁠http://www.expireddomains.net⁠GoDaddy Auctions: ⁠http://auctions.godaddy.com⁠NameJet: ⁠http://www.namejet.com⁠SnapNames: ⁠http://www.snapnames.com⁠DropCatch: ⁠http://www.dropcatch.com⁠Namecheap Auctions: ⁠http://www.namecheap.com/domains/marketplace/buy-domains/auctions⁠Clicky Analytics: ⁠http://clicky.com⁠Shopify: ⁠http://www.shopify.com⁠ShipStation: ⁠http://www.shipstation.com⁠Enjoy! ---Watch this on YouTube instead here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tkopod.co/p-yt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ask me a question on or off the show here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-ask⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn more about me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cjk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Learn about my company: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-cof⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow me on Twitter here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-x⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Free weekly business ideas newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-nl⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Share this podcast: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-all⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Scrape small business data: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tkopod.co/p-os⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠---

What I'm finding here with these great domains is if I get a good descriptive one, it gives me some tailwind right out of the gate. So I don't have to rely on paid search, Google ads, or Facebook ads. Type in traffic's real. No one really studies it that much, but it is real. We've already hit 100,000 pounds shipped. What are the tools in your tool belt that you can't live without? Do you think directory businesses are still viable today in the age of AI? If you keep failing enough, that callus is going to form.

And then the future failures, it doesn't matter. It just flows off in you're right on to the next project. because it doesn't hurt anymore. And that's what I kept doing. I still remember where I was in 2010 when I was surfing the internet and I came across this guy that was selling onions on the internet. I found his blog and I just started reading. I fell in love with this guy. He just did things. Every day he wakes up and he just trolls the internet. He just surfs. He just looks for expiring domain names. And he lets that expiring domain name tell him a story of what business he should start next. Instead of thinking of a business idea and then finding a domain name to go with that business idea,

he does it the other way around and it served him very, very well. Today, that guy, Peter, who I discovered 15 years ago, is my friend. And he has a whole portfolio of websites that he needed very little money to buy and or build and start. And these things pay him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and take him very, very little time to operate. Directory sites, job boards, e-commerce sites. He's selling onions. We talked about bobblehead websites. this is so jam-packed with value, you're not going to know what to do with your brain when it's over.

I asked him how he finds all his best deals, the tools that he uses to validate if these ideas or websites or businesses are any good or not, how he built these things. You're going to love it. Please enjoy. Okay. All right. So let's talk onions. So yeah.

So this one was an accident. I monitor expiring domains virtually every single day. It's just like my morning paper. I just pull it up. I started doing it. I just found I never stopped because they're so fun because it's just like you and I were doing. just looking through the list like, oh my gosh, Chris, Crown molding.

You can do that. That is a legit business, by the way. So when he wants to bid on that, that is a legit. You could go from new or crown molding from a historical home. I may share that on Twitter here in the afternoon. It only, you should.

And it only has eight bids. Eight bids. I mean, look at the, the traffic isn't exact. Scroll up to the top of the page. I can't remember which column. There's age. Look how old it is.

It's 27 years old. It's been owned continually for 27 years. And these, Traffic stats, I think the 20 row or column is reflective of the traffic that it's receiving. GoDaddy isn't, it isn't exact, but it gives you a little bit of an idea if there is some natural type in traffic. People just typing in, looking for crown molding. Crown molding out of historical homes is a legit business. I think people can't comprehend that, that people still just directly type in domain names.

Can you talk about that? But before we go into onions? I got that from Warren Royal. He shares this on his Twitter feed. He was sharing, listen, and no one quite understands how much type in traffic. It's one of his largest traffic sources. And it's what allowed him to get the business off the ground. So when he started it, I think virtually all of his traffic was people typing in the term

bobbleheads into the browser, not going through a search engine and adding.com at the end. And come direct to his site. And when he started, he had three bobbleheads that he was selling by 30s, he's drop shipping him. And it was right before it was before Obama, Hillary and someone else. I can't remember. He had three Bob McCain. Okay. He sold three bobbleheads. And he was selling him out of his basement. And he started selling him out, just selling him out. He was like, holy cow, I got something here. This is quite interesting. He started sharing the fact. And some of the old school domainers always share this. But it was neat to see it because he was sharing live and or just actual screenshots from his Google

analytics on direct traffic from a site that had never been developed, no backstory, no in links. And you can see it was just direct traffic. SEO really hadn't gained any traction yet. And so I was like, okay, this direct is real when I got Dude Ranch right out of the gate. I was getting 30 to 50 visits a day from people typing in Dude Ranch and type. Someone wanting a $5,000 a vacation. Correct. So I was like, wow, okay, what I'm finding here with these great domains is if I get a good descriptive one, it gets. gives me some tailwind right out of the gate. So I don't have to fully rely on paid search, Google ads or Facebook ads.

I can't if I want. But if I want to keep my spend low, I can rely on just the type in traffic from this wonderful domain and figure out. I maybe ask the customers, what are you looking for? Are they? Maybe I'm providing a product and they aren't purchasing it. And I can say, well, maybe they're looking for a service. Let me, maybe offer a service out here. So I got that from Dude Ranch.

And I was sort of seeing it. I was like, wow, this is a longer term. It's not even as good as Bobble has when I'm still getting type in traffic from this domain. I was like, okay, type in traffic's real. No one really studies it that much, but it is real. And when Vidalia came up, it's a longer term. Vidalia is tougher to spell. I realize it might get a little bit of type in traffic, but again, I didn't intend to buy it.

So I was watching it just from, I was curious about it. It was up for auction. I was working on probably working on Dude Ranch. And I had a different browser tab open. and looking at the auction, I thought the domain was going to sell for like five to six grand at auction. So the bid was run $2,000. So I was going in.

I was like, I'll throw in $2,100. So it was like $19,000, $2,000. So I just threw in, I think it was $2,000. Somebody else came in $2,100. I was like, I still think this is worth $5,000. But I posted in 22 and expecting to be outbid and no one outbids me. And I was like, oh, no. I was like, okay, I don't, I really, I don't have $2,000.

I do have $2,000. But, man, I'll be eating peanut. butter and jelly sandwiches for the next month. I was like, oh, no. And so there's a timer in these auctions where it's just counting down. I was like, oh, God, are you serious? Like, nobody else is going to bid on this. And then it counts down and expires. And I win it. And I was like, crap, and I don't have, I don't want to spend $2,000. It may take five years for me to sell this. Was this the most expensive one that you had bought up to this point? Dude Ranch was, well, I bought it direct. So this was after Dude Ranch. I bought Vidalia after.

After Dude Ranch, yeah. Okay, okay, got it. Yeah, so Dude Ranch was one of the most expensive travel envoy. I bought for 10 grand, but it was a fully developed site with a lot of traffic. Dude Ranch was a blank slate, just the domain. And then I built the business around it. But then I bought it and I was like, oh, I'm just going to forget. I just throw it into my portfolio and keep working on.

Maybe I'll let it sit and resell it for a profit one day. Possibly. Maybe I'll put it up for a for sale page. I never, oddly, I never put it up for it. I just try to forget about it that I bought it. And but it kept, it did. this is the only project I had that just kept needling me. It was in my portfolio.

And I mentioned I go out for lunch with some friends in Atlanta at the time. I'm in Savannah now, but I was in Atlanta. I meet a friend for lunch. He's an old startup friend of mine in Atlanta. And I was like, oh, Alan, dude, I thought the Fidelia onions.com at all I didn't mean to. And I'd get the response. So I'm like, dude, that's a big industry. That is legit.

It is like the, you know, the caviar of sweet onions. And I'd see people's responses with the domain. And it was, even before that, I was like, there may be something there, but I don't know, man. So I had it. And I was like, well, I was like, I don't know what this is. But let me just put up a landing page and I'll have just like an email sign up and say, would you like, you know, more information on Vodalia. So it was something rough like that, I think. And then people started signing up saying, hey, and I may have had something, hey, if you are interested in having Vidalia an news delivered, you know, submit your email.

I didn't have any promises. I was just like, hey, if you have any. interest in having them delivered. Submit your email below. And so people started submitting their email. I was like, well, okay, that's kind of weird. It's like, but I'm not a Vidalia farmer. I don't, I don't know how this works. But I was lucky that Vidalia is only about three hours away from Atlanta. What year was this that you put the landing page up? I think it was 2014 or 2015. I don't know if it ever got indexed. You may see the early version of the site because it was short. I put it up and I started getting a few nibbles. And I was quick. And then I was like, well, if I

Videlia is just three hours down the road. I'd love to go hang out in the Bidalia, Georgia, the city. Vidalia, Georgia, correct in the USA. So I was like, let me just go down there for a day. So I just jumped in the car. They have a committee that represents all the Vidalia farmers. So I called them up and said, hey, number one, I just want to make sure you know, you guys know I'm a good guy.

I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to hijack the name of your industry. I'm a real person. Don't mess around with big onion, Peter. Yeah. And it's a trademark term by the state that I almost needed their blessing, use it. So I typically, I thought it was generic, but then I wound up finding out as a trademark term. And I'll go, crap, I sort of need their blessing. But like, let me just go talk to them. And if they get all huff and a puff, I'll just give them a domain or, you know, just give it to

somebody. But I went down to saying, hey, I happen to acquire this thing at auction. My background is building web projects and sometimes e-commerce, sometimes directory marketplace, information-based stuff. I'm trying to see if there's a business. here for possibly shipping, but I don't know any farmers. Like, could you, can I just come talk to you guys, the committee? They were super just welcoming. And so I went down and just met with the committee, met with them. And then they, when they realized it wasn't a huge weirdo, they said, okay, let's

drive around. We'll just introduce you to a few Vidalia farmers. Yeah, this is an old WordPress thing. For some strange reason, the CSS isn't loading correctly with an archive. But this was an early version of the site. I think our second or third year after 26th. I think we were shipping, I think two years at that point. I acquired in 14 and I believe the 15 crop is the first one that we started shipping.

Yeah, because we just celebrated our 10th year of shipping, our 10th or 11th. But this was the fancyish logo. I was still designing the site at this point. I didn't hire it out, but I'd hired a logo. That's the rough onion design that I created. Yeah, it looks like they're planted. Yeah, I did that kind of, that bad design. But it's just rough, the rough.

design that I included. And that's the front. The old name of the site of the farm was M&T. And my partner bought the farm out. So he changed the initials to A and his name's Aries and Megan is his wife. So they changed the farm to A and M farms. So yeah. So they started taking me around just introduced me to farmers.

I met the first farmer. And, you know, they had some reps up front. And then just saying, oh, they were like, oh, direct to consumer. No, there's like, they told me quote. It was like, it was the biggest thorn. their side. They did a little bit of it and they hated it. To you, this is opportunity, right? Yeah, I was like, sweet. I can take that off your hands. That means they aren't really a competition because I know they're going to treat their customer like garbage. But I can see where they're coming from after

running Vidalia for 10 years. This is challenging. I mean, D to C is challenging. But so I go to a second farm. They were standoffish. And then I went to Aries third one. And we met a few others. But I went to the Aries. He got it immediately. He was like, yeah, I get it. And he was the general manager at that point. He was like, yeah, I get it. You want to ship? I was like, yeah, I got the site. I haven't even built a really full version of the site yet. I was like, here's what I can offer you.

I have the name of the industry and I can promote your name, A, M&T at the time. I'll build you a website for free. You don't have to pay me a penny. And then let's just see if we can ship some onions. And I was like, do you have boxes? Do you have storage? I didn't even understand the concept of, because we have climate control storage, which allows us to ship throughout the summer.

I just had to ask me, do you have boxes already? here do we have to order? So we already had boxes, a packing shed and storage. So he has a crew in the packing shed that can pack for us. So I can just focus on front end and operations and marketing sales and social media. He had nothing to lose. Yeah. So we did a handshake deal. And we operated off of a handshake deal for 10 years. And then I had some silent friends in that deal. We had just some fund money where I used to buy and sell domain. So they were in on Fidelia with me in the early days. So Arias and I just bought them out. I owned like 40% at that time. They owned 60. So areas and I came out and bought 100% of it out about a year ago. So areas and I are now 100% on the deal.

But we operate a handshake deal. Whether that's the best idea, I don't know. But it worked great for us. And we just trusted it was, I mean, my job was, you know, with sales generation. If I don't generate any sales, I don't get paid. And I wanted to be no risk to. Aries and I wanted to be, and I still kind of treat it this day, I want to be just some quiet church mouse, just doing my job in the background, where he can focus on growing this very special onion, and I'm doing my job, and he doesn't have to worry about me, and I don't want to give him any drama, but I give sometimes feedback if the customers, and he wants to know if the, if an onion was damaged, sometimes it's tough for us to see if the inner layer of the Vidalia is

rotten. It's tough to see on the grading line. So feedback from, like that from customers is always helpful if we know it's a certain variety of Vidalia. So I always pass that information along. Go ahead. How does the split between you guys look as far as the revenue is concerned? We're still working that out right now. It's just we run the business. I pay all the expenses. And at the end of the year, we figure out what, how much cash he needs and how much cash I need. Because I'm kind of the employee of the business. And so we'll just figure out some spread. I mean, we're we hit. We've already hit a hundred thousand.

pounds, which is a new record for us this year, 100,000 pounds shipped. And it's weird on the revenue side, because I know you're always good on jumping into revenue numbers and stuff, but it's weird for farmers. I rarely share like revenue numbers. Because it's interesting, hang around farmers. It's similar to the Dood Ranch industry. It's, I don't want to call it tacky, but it's like farmers, they don't think in that frame of mind. This is their way of life. That's what makes it pure. And it's such a humble and rewarding, you know, industry. And yes, revenue is very, very important. So what I decided from an early point in that industry, I was like, I'll just share how much we ship every year. And that's, you can share it. Do your own

math. You can figure it out. We ship 100,000 pounds. And we, and we, we've done that just by, hopefully, we are not the cheapest option around, but we try, we try our best to take care of our customers. And we ship, UPS has done a great job with us. So the farm manages all the fulfillment and logistics and stuff. You're just on the website stuff. Quick question. What if there were a private community out there of people that were building businesses based on this podcast? Well, I just made it. And it's only for business starters and business builders. It's called TK Owners.

And it's basically like having me and 100 other business geniuses as your business partner. Also, there's going to be exclusive new trends, growth hacks, business ideas, and a database of everything I've ever talked about. You'll find thousands of startup case studies. You'll have weekly Ask Me Anythings with me while I'll answer your questions directly. You can join now at tkowners.com, link in the show notes. I'm website. I have the UPS. Yes, so I have, yes, websites on WordPress.

And then I have Shopify for the transaction, ship station to manage the boxes going in and out. I have a bad tendency of putting too much on my plate. So next year we have a lot to do in our offseason. We have a crew now in our packing shovel. I'm going to try to deck. I'm still doing customer support, Chris. And it about broke my brain this year.

So I'm going to have to delegate. but I can step away from the screen and go hang out with these farmers that have such a wonder. They're so friendly and just have a wonderful perspective on on the world and what's important and not slowing down, but understanding no farming. You have to slow yourself down. And it slows my somewhat frantic brain. It forces me to slow down. Like most people don't realize that you can have both.

Like business doesn't have to just be business and money and profits and numbers and spreadsheets. It's like you can feel good about what you do as well. And once you, I'm hearing like two big unlocks in your brain. Number one was two decades ago when you're like, oh, I can make money for myself. Interesting. And then it was kind of like, oh, I can actually take pride in what I do and not just move pixels around on a screen all day. Oh, very interesting.

And it just makes for a fulfilling life, right? Yeah. And building kind of these humble projects where I rarely set goals. I'll just build a project that seems to have opportunity and let it. It's very similar to that Bill Walsh book. You know, the score is going to take care of itself. I don't have any goals. I don't have some stretch goal for Vidalia on.

We need to hit 120,000 pounds next year. We just rinse and repeat and start again next season to make sure the crop is taken care of and see where it takes us. If we take care of our customers and we have a fast site, an easy way to order. And if we ship quickly and we give them a great onion, then they should come back. I don't need to set some stupid goal. because some guru told me I need to set goals. I always compare it to almost like nature.

Like, you know, some big redwood isn't setting up some goal to be 200 feet tall by this. It's, it just grows every single year. And when it's done and it's top, it stops. Maybe then the branches start going out. And so we may hit a top for Vidalia and then maybe the branches are maybe some interesting partnerships that we can do. You become more loyal with your customers. More loyal. Maybe there's an interesting social aspect to it.

we could get some customers to the social channel or just growing slow and treating my projects almost like kind of a farming aspect of just slow growth. Let them go as fast as they want to go. I'm just the dork behind the screen that is trying my best to oversee everything and lightly push it in the right direction. And that seemed to work well with me over the year. So I was like, I'm just going to stick with it. There's no reason to change. It works great for me. I think people set goals because it makes them feel like they've already accomplished something, right? So if I set a goal, then I've done something. Well, no, doing something is the goal.

Like that's what you have to complete at the end of it. But just writing something down, it's good. But sometimes it gives us a false sense of accomplishment. And we're like, all right, now I can move on. And then we don't actually do the goal, which is the whole point. Yeah, correct. Or you put some unnecessary stress or pressure on yourself. And then, you know, let's just say your goal was 120.

you only delivered 115. I failed. Failed to hit my 120. I was like, I don't care about these stupid goals. Or one thing I love about this story is you bought the domain name. You spent more than you thought you should have. And you just start talking to people.

And guy number one doesn't get it. Guy number two doesn't get it. Guy number three doesn't get it. With this story, even more than my Texas snack story, it reminds me of my heartland bread story where I had a friend that had a bread company that only sold bread to 200 stores within DFW. People wanted to buy it online.

And I said, Keith, let me just put an ad in your bread because 10,000 Texans buy it every day. Wow. Let's give them an ad so that they can tell their friend in Indiana who was there for Thanksgiving and fell in love with your bread that they can buy it online now. Let's just do it as an experiment. Don't pay me anything. If it fails, it's all on me.

If it succeeds, we'll split it some way. That's fair. And it succeeded. And that led into Send Eats, which led into Texas snacks. And it all started with a question. And it was all possible because I found a guy that just got it. Right. And so sometimes you just have to keep talking to people until you don't have to try to convince anyone because sometimes we think of sales as convincing someone, but we just need to find

the person that just gets it and that just gets us. And they just basically say, shut up. I got it. Let's try to do something here. Right. Yeah. It's a magical thing. And then this another similarity is his online sales from me were like 3% of their overall sales. But it was like 30% of their margins because it was direct to consumer. I have to think in your sense, you're probably a small percent of their total volume, but they're not selling through a distributor and then a grocery store. They're selling direct to consumers. So they love you.

And we have a direct relationship with our buyers. So they lose the customer when they sell through the chains. And they sell millions of pounds. Yeah. And yeah, much higher margin. And we have a direct relationship with them. And that's been tons of fun. But it is just, yeah, trying small things and not beating yourself up as something

doesn't work as what you learned. early when you start doing this iterative process and building projects. I sometimes call it, you know, some failure callous. It doesn't hurt anymore. You keep doing it enough. You keep failing enough. A callus is going to form. And then the future failures, it doesn't matter. It just flows off and you're right onto the next project because it doesn't hurt anymore. And that's what I kept doing. I kept building and things would break or get burnt out or like, oh, it would get de-indexed or it just wouldn't work. It wouldn't make any money. And I wouldn't necessarily. I was like, oh, let me just try another project, see where this one goes.

But then, like, slowly a pass started to emerge, but it took years. I mean, it was 0-4s when I started. I got a dude ranch in 09. So that was five years of just tinkering and figuring out what models might work well for me. And that I didn't buy Vodilia until 2014. What was the story of finally buying onions.com? How much did that cost and did it move the needle much on your traffic? it was more of a vanity.

So my friend Warren at Bobbleheads, at first, it went up for auction. So I saw it, I'll try to get the short version of this. So this was, Vidalia had already gotten some traction. And I was tweeting about it saying, just sharing what these weird projects and sharing it on Twitter, just to share it.

And the domain went up for auction. Somebody had it. And I think they put it on Flippa. And I saw it and I was like, I don't sell onions. I sell Vidalia. It's a boutique product. You can only grow it and ship it and sell it and sell it from here in Georgia. I don't sell onions. I sell Vidalias. It's, I don't sell a commodity. I sell this, you know, boutique product. And I was like, eh, it went up for auction. So I just didn't buy it. Somebody else bought it with the idea that I wasn't washing the auction, that they could get it and flip it to me. So they buy it for,

I can't remember. It was 17 or 18,000, maybe 18,000 bucks. It's in name bio on, but they bought it for 18. Like a day or two later, they email me. Hey, Mr. Aske, we just happened to own this, this high end domain name. And I was like, yeah, I was watching that auction. Yeah, I'm not interested. And then I'm like, dang it. That was my whole business plan.

They were like, I'm sure they were like, dang, I thought I was going to be able to flip it to him for 50 or something. Yeah. So it sits on there. And so about six months later, it goes back up for sale on Flippa. The highest bid it gets is like five grand. It doesn't even hit the reserve. I see it. And I'm like, okay, that's interesting.

They put it up for sale, I think on BizBicel, almost no takers. They put it back up again on Flippa, Flippa with a high reserve. And that's when my friend, I was at a Domainer conference. And I passed my Warren Royal. And it was like, hey, you see that? Onyus.com? And I was like, yeah, Warren, but I don't sell onions. I sell Vidilius.

He was like, I get it. He was like, I get it. But I understand. there's one time in our lifetime that domain is going to be for sale one time that in this reasonable range of price right now the next time it's for sale it's going to be $100,000, $200,000. Yeah. If you have an interest in that domain, this is your opportunity to get it.

And I was like, yeah, I guess I didn't think about that. I was like, you're right. I was like, I don't have a purpose for it right now. And that's what was holding me back. And I was like, I don't have a purpose for it. What do I do with it? And then my answer was, I don't care. I was like, who cares? Just, just see if I can buy it. Maybe I get it for a little bit less than 18. He bought it. So he'd reached out to me. So I just emailed him direct. I was like, hey, I saw your thing on Flippa.

I'm interested, but I can't make the numbers work. Can you do whatever, like 10 or 12 on this? It was like, ah, I can do, you know, what he did the negotiation thing. And he came down to 15. I was like, hey, if you could do like 15, 14, 14 or 15,000, I think we came to 15 and he paid escrow fees, which are 200 bucks. So it was 14,800. And so I bought it for 14. And I didn't really have an idea what I was like, let me just buy it. See what happens. I'm pretty sure it's going to have solid type in traffic. And it does. It's 50 a day, maybe more of people typing, but it's a little bit of everything. It gets some from the satire website. They own The Onion. They own Onion.com. I own onions with a plural. So I get a little bit of from them. But honestly, the biggest purpose of that site, it may have a further purpose two or three years from now because we may branch out into organic Peruvian onions.

But honestly, the biggest thing that it's served right now is Ares. So Ares has his email is Ares at Onions.com. And I purport. That was the first thing I did. I was like, Aries, his first domain, the domain they had used for their farm before they had a website was M and A-D-T-Farms.net. And I was like, A-N-D-T-Farms.net. I was like, areas, I hate your email address. Let's get you a place. Let's get you a better email.

I'll get you areas and onions.com. And so we set them up account at Fastmail and hooked it up to onions. com. And then, you know, I'd go over probably at least once a month and season, probably two or three times a month. And he was like, Peter, Peter, I went to a conference and somebody, a farming conference, somebody asked my email. And I said, Aries and onions.com.

And the other person, they didn't have an answer. Then they said, how did you get that domain? And he was like, I got a web guy. He's got me the domain. He said, a hundred percent of the time, it floors people that he as a small, medium size farmer, we have this gorilla.com domain that allows him. We're not the biggest Vidalia farmers, but that domain allows us to look like the biggest strongest Vidalia farm out there.

And we primarily use it for email right now. everybody at the pack and shed has their own custom email john at onions peter at onions.com and we have our own custom but right now it's like a landing page that just gives an overview of the farm i have a big thing for our youtube channel like if they want to go subscribe to our youtube channel i guess background but we may eventually build it out to sell other potentially other farming project we may go down the citrus path we may plant some citrus trees and we may just kind of take even though it's onions.com, we may just say, you know, we farm everything under the sun, onions included.

Just like Monster.com used to me, didn't have anything to do with jobs. It was just Monster.com. And onions is like, as we sell, we do everything farming. But it's primarily for email right now. And we'll figure out another purpose for it down the road. It's hard to put a dollar value on that, but it's valuable. Yeah, yeah. It's fun to showcase and put around.

It's easier to put in my Twitter profile, just put onions.com versus Vidalia. even like if I'm talking to a customer on the phone who is trying to visit our website, if it's an elderly customer, sometimes it's tough to type Vidalia. Yeah. And sometimes they spoke with an A, V-A-V-A-D-S-V-I-D-L-A. And I just tell them, go to Onions.com. I got a big button there. Just click the button to go to Vidalia.

And they'll take you right to Vidal. Then you can click the big green button on our homepage. You can go place an order. And we'll get a, we'll pack and ship tomorrow the day after. Well, one pattern I've seen with all your stuff is. is you always work with partners, critical partners that you couldn't, you know, you couldn't make this project work without them. And I didn't always give them that. I don't want to interrupt you, but you're right. I didn't, I always thought I was a solo builder. I'm a solo bill. I'll do everything myself. I'll put all this on

my plate. And then lo and behold, I did Dude Ranch and then I wound up partnering with somebody. I found Vidalia. I partner with somebody. I only found ranch work because of my partner. And I have found. I do look for that now. If I, it's more challenging. I sorry to interrupt you, But you're exactly right. I was fooled into thinking I was a solar builder and I'm not. I work really well with a partner. It's tough to find a really good partner, though. If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together. Yeah. But what I was saying is you're like, you're much better at sales than you might give yourself credit for because you're selling your partners on this opportunity. And you're doing it in like a no brainer offer way, right? Good salesman offered no brainer offers. With Dude Ranch, it was,

I know they didn't go for the pay per lead. aspect, but that was one of your first offers. It was like, don't take any risk. I'll find you a lead and then you buy it from me, right? And then that evolved over time, but that at least got your foot in the door. And then with Vidalia, it was, listen, like, let's just split this and I'll do all the online stuff. I'll be the distribution.

You be the fulfillment. Yeah. And then with ranch work, it was 75, 25, 25. You take no risk. Keep your domain name. I don't need it. Point it here, but keep it. And let's just see if this works.

And you had to find the right people, but you also had to give them the right. offer and you were able to do that. So it worked. Yeah. Yeah. This is accurate. All right, Peter. Well, thank you. This was awesome. No, I appreciate the invite. Hey, guys. If you're still listening to this, it's probably because you haven't had a chance to take your AirPods out. You're still mowing the lawn. You're still driving. What have you. If you're still here with me, I would really, really love and appreciate a five-star review on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. It would mean a lot. If you want to go the extra mile, share this episode with a friend that might have an interest in starting a business. It would mean a ton. Hope you have the best day of your life today.