Grit Brokerage Discusses the Domain Acquisition of BrightWatch.com w/ CEO - Eric Aronson

In this episode, Grit Brokerage discusses helping GetBrightWatch.com acquire the domain BrightWatch.com with CEO Eric Aronson. He shares why they made decision to go after the domain, the process to acquire it, and the immediate benefits of owning this domain. Enjoy!

Brian: All right. Well, hello you guys! Welcome to today's episode of the Grit.org podcast!

Today we're going to jump into the nitty gritty and talk about Grit Brokerage and one of our clients. We help secure a premium domain for them.

So, Eric, Maureen, welcome to the show!

Maureen: Thanks for having me here!

Brian: Good deal. So a little bit on Eric's from. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, lives in Austin now. He's been in digital marketing for over a decade and has 20 years of driving sales and growth in the technology industry and has been the president and CEO of BrightWatch for the past eight years.

So, before we jump in, just wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor for today, Escrow.com with over 7 billion in protected transactions. Escrow.com is the world's most secure online payment method. From automobiles to electronics to business sales and more. Escrow.com makes it easy to confidently conduct business online. Visit Escrow.com today to learn more about how you can achieve trust, security and certainty with every single transaction.

So, Eric, just want to jump right in. So for our listeners, tell us about brightwatch.com and what you guys do there.

Eric: Sure. BrightWatch is a physical security technology integration firm. I founded it in 2017 with an intent to get on, or ahead of, or somewhere on the curve or the wave of what technology was doing to physical security technology, the changes in the landscape really, the webification of security systems and kind of pegged it right. Had some good timing and got on board with some of our security vendor partners and we are experts at implementing the latest and greatest physical security technology.

Video security systems, access control systems, intrusion systems for mainly enterprises of all shapes and sizes. That'd be city and county governments, large private enterprises, education or a lot of K through 12 education, entire school districts. We built security systems for… And so that's what we do and we're proud of being 8 years old and we do a good job of staying on that cutting edge and continue to try and innovate and try and find the best technologies to bring to bear on our clients problems keeping people and their places safe.

Brian: And eight years ago was a great time to enter that space for sure.

Eric: Yeah, a lot has changed in that time.

Brian: And I'm curious too. How did you come up with the name BrightWatch or how did you decide to go with that name?

Eric: Interestingly enough, we held an online contest. We were… I kind of started the business as a sole proprietor and had a lot of background, as you said, in marketing. I founded a marketing agency and I thought I had some good ideas for naming but I couldn't land on any of them and so I decided to hold an online contest. Somebody came up with that idea. We sort of, or something similar… we tweaked a little bit. They won the contest and we had our name. We did a search for any trademarks on it and decided that was who we were going to be.

Maureen: So as the CEO, what was the tipping point of when you knew it was time to start the process of upgrading the domain from Get BrightWatch, which won the contest, to brightwatch.com?

Eric: You know, it's a great question. I think for us, so the company's matured a lot in eight years. I started in, did everything. I was, you know, I was my own attorney. I built my own website. I, you know, started the business, was really a sole proprietor and since then we've grown a lot. And it's, you know, I looked at the domain at the very beginning. It wasn't available. I have, you know, I had periodically kind of, you know, tried to, you know, peel the covers back and see if there was, you know, anyone underneath… and didn't really have a lot of success with it.

And I guess, you know, the answer to your question, Maureen, is I felt like, you know, we were, we were at a point where, you know, it made sense for us to try and get that real estate. I wanted to have the real estate and I didn't, you know, I didn't have a budget in mind for it, but I kind of felt like it was time for us to take it seriously. And so that's kind of why I went the route that I did.

Maureen: That's great. So how was the process of buying the domain through us? Was it something that you felt was an easy process or why did you end up coming to grit brokerage?

Eric: Well, I think that's two questions. One is it was an easy process and I'm really pleased with the way that it went down. There weren't really any hiccups and I didn't have any surprises or get thrown any curveballs.

So I'm pleased with how it all went down and the reason why I decided to go with you guys because I wasn't having any success on my own. And I felt like, you know, if this was going to happen, I needed to get a pro involved. And I think I had some initial conversations and it felt to me like you guys knew what you're up to. And that's how I want to make my clients feel when they call me or prospects or whatever.

Hopefully I'm doing the job of getting them comfortable with what we're up to. And so far, so good. And y'all did that. And so, you know, was… And the process went, you know, a lot faster than I thought it would, which was also something that was pleasing. So, you know, kind of in hindsight it was a no brainer.

Maureen: Great.

Brian: And one of the things we noticed too, Eric, as soon as you bought the domain, you immediately put it to use. Was there any immediate feedback or immediate benefits that came from switching over from get brightwatch to brightwatch.com?

Eric: You know, we've been get brightwatch.com for a long time, so we're, we're probably always going to be. And you know, we'll always, you know, I think immediate benefit, I'm not, I'm not sure. I think that it will bear out over time. I think that, you know, for a company like ours, with our kind of brand and our presence, it makes sense to have gone through the, you know, the minimal trouble and the reasonable expense to secure that asset.

How it'll benefit us, how it's benefited us… you know, today it's made it… I don't know. Good. It's a good question. I don't know if there's a whole lot there just yet. I think it's yet to come. I don't have a strategy yet on how to deploy brightwatch.com on email. That's really the biggest, the big challenge.

We've been emailing customers, we have customers for eight years that we're doing business with and vendors and so everybody has that email address. I don't know how to go about going out and saying, hey, you know, I've got a new email address for everybody on my team. We all have it set up so you can get, you know, you can get to us at either domain. Maybe you guys can shed some light on a good strategy for that or somebody who's done it previously.

Brian: Yeah, no, it's a valid concern for sure. Like you said, you've been using the other one and I think like you said it, of having it set up at both is helpful. That way, even just to catch all to make sure if a customer accidentally emails the wrong one it's still going to get to the right place. But I know sometimes that email transition can take a little bit of time to fully switch over.

And I was curious too. Did you ever have any experience in dealing with the premium domain? When I say premium domain, anything that's not hand registered or anything you have to actually proactively go out and buy, or was it kind of a shock to you in terms of, you know, even just the cost of domains and typically they're more expensive than what people are typically expecting when it comes to buying a domain?

Eric: No, I didn't really have a lot of shock about it. We, when I was doing marketing and we had a marketing agency, we did procure a few domains for some of our clients. And so for me, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't some strange magic like I can imagine it might be for a lot of people. You know, I've been dealing with domains for, you know, a long time. Never negotiating for a domain that somebody had previously registered though, that was kind of a new one. Maybe I did, but it was, you know, nothing, nothing high profile.

Maureen: How did you know that upgrading your domain would propel your company forward? Like why now versus five years ago or…

Eric: Well, you know, I mean, I have, I had up until the time that you and I got going, I think, you know, maybe once every year or so, kind of lobbed an email to the supposed owner of the domain and it always went into vapor. It was never a response. And so I didn't want to get, you know, seem too desperate or hungry. So I didn't spend a lot of time on it and didn't make too many inquiries.

And then, you know, I guess it was last year when we, you know, we got in touch that I finally said, you know what, let me just get this in the hands of a, you know, of a professional, right? So if I'm going to go buy a piece of real estate, I'm going to talk to a real estate broker. You know, I was… and you know, I decided that I wasn't going to be a real estate broker in this circumstance. I know how to buy a car truck, but I don't know how to buy, you know, domain. You guys do. That's why I went to.

Brian: And Eric, I'm curious too, just knowing what you know about the business. I know you haven't had the domain for terribly long, but where do you see the most ROI coming for you? Is it in terms of client acquisition? Is it just marketing dollars going further? Is it… I don't know if you go to trade shows and just the simplicity there and easy for people to remember, just the instant credibility, or where do you foresee the most long term value coming for you? Especially over the next, you know, three to five years?

Eric: Yeah, I think it'll be in marketing and just the ease of, you know, and the luxury really of being able to, you know, say, you know, all you need to do is go there and so I think that'll, it'll bear itself out and for me, for what we spent on it, it'll definitely get ROI. Probably already is.

Brian: Yeah. It's interesting too. I always love to ask clients because we were talking to a guy a few weeks ago that we had helped him secure a domain about a year ago and I just asked him, I said, hey, if somebody reached out to you and wanted to buy your domain, how much would you want for it?

And he said he thought hard about it and he said 100 but realistically 200x what he paid for. And I think, you know, there is something that comes with, you know, the value of owning it, being able to use it. I'm sure you probably feel the same way of that. You know, it's worth almost immediately significantly more than what you paid for. There's very few things that you can buy that immediately gain that much value? I guess. Would you agree with that statement?

Eric: I would. And, you know, as you're asking me the question, I'm thinking about and doing a little math in my head and wondering what some kind, what some kind of silly offer would have to come across the table for me to take it.

Brian: Yeah. And even you know, at some point if you do position the company to sell, you know, it's definitely an asset that goes with the company. That's just going to continue to grow in time for you.

And then yeah, anything over the next five to ten years you feel like with BrightWatch, any specific plugs about the business or where you feel the direction the company is going or where you feel, you know, growth is going to be coming for you guys moving forward?

Eric: Sure. We're in big diversification mode right now. We're recently became distributors of a really cool solar product called PowerStack. It's a mobile, sorry, it's a modular solar pole. So kind of think tall solar panel with batteries internal. And I think that's going to do a lot for us. We have a lot of need to put security devices, mainly cameras in locations where we don't have power or network and we can do that with one of these poles really readily in a lot of places and just diversification in general with some of the security products that we choose to sell and diversification in our client base as well and growth geographically.

So we're looking at probably opening a couple more remote locations. We're currently in Austin and Houston. We're looking at some other markets that might make sense for us. So we're going to continue to do what we do.

We're, you know, I'm proud to have a really great team of folks here that I work with every day who are dedicated and serious and fun to work with and up to any challenge and are great problem solvers and our clients have been our biggest asset and are really great representation of, you know, people and companies and enterprises and so we, you know, we're really appreciative of those relationships and so we're good at fostering them and we're going to kind of, you know, going to do more of what we do and hopefully, you know, continue to improve and do it better and just keep tracking.

Brian: Love that. And I had to ask you too, you've got quite the collection of bourbon and whiskey behind you. What's your favorite one back there?

Eric: Oh, I don't. Those are just for show. I don't ever, I don't ever get into that. Any of those….. No, a lot of them are gifts, I think. You know, I got a couple of good things. I don't really have a favorite. I just, you know, probably maybe, I like a good. A good rye whiskey. So, how about you? You ever get to Austin? We were actually on my own.

Brian: Yeah, they…. there's a domain conference that's been in Austin the past couple years that I've been to. Austin's a great town. But, yeah, it's definitely some good whiskey, for sure.

Eric: When you get down here, you got to come over here and help me drink some of it.

Brian: Absolutely. For sure.

Eric: Because the invitation extends to you too, Maureen.

Maureen: Thank you!

Brian: Well, Eric, we really appreciate you being on, and again, we just really love the opportunity to not only help clients, but be able to see them put to good use, you know, the domain that they've acquired. And you've done just a really smart and thoughtful job of going through that process, acquiring the domain. And so, you know, thank you for your business and you know, look forward to continue to watch BrightWatch continue to grow. So, thanks again for being on the show today!

Eric: It’s been my pleasure and on both accounts, being on the show and having the pleasure of working with y'all and getting this thing done so tidily. And I would say if anybody out there has considered, you know, the concept of going after a domain that's important to them, you know, my experience at having used you guys was extremely professional, easy, quick, and, you know, in hindsight, was just an all around great experience. So thank you!

Maureen: Thank you!

Brian: Thanks!

Maureen: Same to you. It was great working with you, Eric!

Eric: Appreciate that! Maybe we'll get to do it again at some point. I don't know how many more BrightWatches I have in me, but who knows?

Brian: That's right.

Maureen: Even powerstack.com, something like that, you never know. Just keep us in mind.

Brian: Well, thanks again! And that's a wrap for today's episode of the grit.org podcast. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you guys next time!