Digital Social Hour - Microdosing, MySpace, Overcoming Depression & Owning a Bugatti I Ted Dhanik DSH #443

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Ted Dhanik comes to the show to talk about Microdosing, MySpace, overcoming depression & owning a Bugatti APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We didn't see them as a threat at the time, you know, like we looked at them kind of like as another friendster, you know, because it was so small and we're like, it's just, it's just schools, you know, it's not really anything, you know, it's not anymore. And it looked so boring compared to, you know, compared to what we had. The old Facebook was very boring. Yeah, it was really boring. I mean, the new Facebook is still in it, right? Like, my mom's on it, you know. It's for moms and dads now. Yeah, it really is wherever you guys are watching this show i would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe it helps a lot with the algorithm it helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team truly means a lot thank you guys for supporting and here's the episode all right guys welcome back to the show ted danik today. We got a lot to talk about, my friend. Let's go. You've been going viral. So right now you're in an interesting phase of

your business career, right? You're buying up companies at the moment. Well, I was. And so I just got out of a public company. I took a company public, ran it for seven years and then exited about a year ago. So I was buying a bunch of companies during that time and then um i'm kind of on a sabbatical right now so yeah the whole buying companies thing i've been doing that for a long time and doing it with mostly without cash and so creative financing not even not even it's really just selling dreams you know and um you know leveraging the concept of public vehicle eventually interesting just buying with private paper and selling a dream and then eventually just rolling it up and taking it public, you know? Yeah. So I've, I've heard multiple people try to do this and it seems like you, you really need the right team to pull something like that off, right? Yeah. I mean, you need to,

you need a good mentor, someone who's done it before several times. And I have, like I have a really, I had a really great mentor great mentor who you know just introduced me to the concept and I talk about this a lot with people to people all the time it's like you got to be really careful who's around you you know the five or seven people that are around you because they're going to either determine what you do next you're going to either take a company public or you're going to end up you know working at Walmart right so you know and luck luckily for me i ended up with um this gentleman around me was his name's robbie lee and he took a dry cleaning company dry cleaning roll up public it was the largest roll up in history for dry cleaning and

he was running around buying mom and pop dry cleaning operations with no cash just you know in a private vehicle issuing private paper which is stock you you know, in a private vehicle, issuing private paper, which is stock, you know, and equity in a private company, which was worth nothing, you know, and convincing them just selling them the dream really well, convincing them that we're going public, you're going to take this thing public, and it was a multi billion dollar exit for, you know, and, and everyone won and did well, you know, and so he was showing me how to do all this stuff you know and so i figured it out took you know i started acquiring stuff and then took it public and did it again as well so so yeah now i know you know it's like yeah you have cash which is like typical currency which could come from debt or you know um or you know whatever is on the balance

sheet or you can um you could leverage equity and if you do it the right way with the right team um you can you know you can paint a picture that's way more attractive than cash because you know you could set a future valuation as well too and then you could achieve stuff that you can't right now you know like all these guys are like oh we can't do anything without raising money and all that. And I came from the creative world of like, hey, I don't want to give up board seats and I don't want to give up control. And I don't want to, you know, I don't want dilution and I don't want to end up in a coup situation. Right.

So we leveraged it in a really creative way. Yeah, that's smart because when it comes to just leveraging cash, that kind of caps you, right? Some people don't have any money. Absolutely. Yeah, that's smart. Because when it comes to just leveraging cash, that kind of caps you, right? Some people don't have any money, absolutely very little. But when you're able to find other leverage, you can scale quicker. Yeah, it's a tough time right now for cash, you know, because leverage is really expensive. And, you know, cash is king, because everyone's liquidating assets to generate cash, essentially. And then they end up with cash, and I don't know what to do with it. But at the end of the day, you know, the markets are kind of the way they are. It's, it's, it's always kind of a good time, you know, cause there's nowhere to go but up. Right. So there's a lot of markets and a lot of exchanges where your valuation could be a lot stronger than the comps

here in the U S and that's what I learned actually too. So if I'm going to do another roll-up and take it public, I'm going to look at all the global markets and all the exchanges and see where the comps are the best, you know, the revenue multiples, or is it a multiple EBITDA, or is it revenue, depending on the sector, and choose the exchange from there because it doesn't have to be here. Because I filed an S-1 here in 2016 to go public here, then the comps ended up I mean they were great they were like 25 times revenue at the time in like 2014-15 when I paid ey like years for years to audit my financials and spent millions of dollars and then by the time we were done the comps went to shit and went to

0.1 0.1 times revenue there's yeah and it was like a 10th times and it was just like i can't go public here you know i can't do it didn't make sense so i found an exchange where it made sense and it was australia and you know i got you know i got like six times revenue or something like that over there and then yeah then we just grew it but um yeah it's just you know like you just got to figure out where the valuation is where the comps are strong yeah a lot of people are just kind of stuck to the u.s markets and then once you list somewhere else you can actually cross list within you know like 60 days back here with the same valuation that you have over there twice the money yeah exactly and then and then

when you operate that eventually you deprecate the internationalist thing. So you could just end up here, back here, when it makes sense and the volume's strong. It's cool to see this way of making money with stocks, because most people just think of buying and trading stocks. But this is a whole other level. Yeah, and there's a lot of great arbitrage. You can look at companies from a comp standpoint. Where are the valuations? is it a revenue multiple? Is it an EBITDA multiple? Like what is it?

Like you can turn around some companies too and you can look at them. If you're an operator, you can take some assets that are potentially distressed or slightly distressed, you know, like maybe you have a management team that's not proficient. Or you could bundle, like classic roll-up strategy is what we want to do is leverage resources together. So we'll have like one accounting team, you know, like one core operating team. And then you'll have like different business units. You know, you can put it all together and just eliminate those costs. That's why roll up is really smart.

Usually. Yeah. You can share resources. And then, you know, and then that alone might, you know, tip it into positive EBITDA then um you know and then that alone might you know tip it into positive EBITDA strat you know territory and then you'll get you know like just clearly have a better multiple um just from that alone absolutely what were you doing prior to this so this company that um I ran I started I basically ran it from I launched it founded it and it was 2009 so I'll start like from the mid launched it, founded it, and it was 2009.

So I'll start from the mid-90s is where I started my career in the Silicon Valley. And I was working for a lot of dot-coms and startups back then that disappeared or did well or whatever. And then I ended up in LA. This company called Lower My Bills. And it's still around. And I was one of the early guys there. Built a product there to go after lending tree. Lending tree was the biggest, um, consumer finance or, or mortgage and, um, and, and, uh, real estate lead aggregate or lead develop generator essentially online. And so I said, you know, that's a great business. Let's replicate, replicate it,

fast follow it. And we did that and we scaled it and got to you know like over a million bucks a day in revenue sold it to experian and then um you know i said hey like i don't want to work anymore i'm done you know for a while i felt like my background's in sales and business development so i felt like you know sales just sucked the soul out of me you know like i'm selling nothing that makes any value in this world you know at the time it's like the opposite of spirituality it's like selling leads we're gonna dive into that too yeah yeah i'm heavy in that world so and i said no i can't do this anymore and then tom myspace tom and i we're all like you know friends because we all were in the same office at the time too they sub we the subleased part of our office to one of their previous businesses before you know

it's called a company called Response Space. Tom's like, hey, we're going after Friendster. Let's go. I said, I don't really want to work, dude, you know. And he's like, let's throw some parties. And so I said, okay, cool. Let's go. Let's throw parties.

And we did. We threw parties to launch MySpace. So we launched MySpace in 2003 and continued to grow it and sold it about 18 months later. But our earn out ended in 2008. Wait, it sold in 18 months? Yeah. Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

I thought it was around for years. Well, it was around for years. It was. But then we sold in 18 months and then we really lost all strategic control of it because there was a hiring freeze and everything that's why myspace failed this is the hiring freeze immediately after acquisition rupert murdoch destroyed it so why did they put that freeze where the book's not good so we were losing a ton of money because we're in growth right so we're like 18 month old company had more traffic than google growing like user acquisition was like like it was like a half

a million users a day or something crazy yeah it was insane we weren't spending a dollar on any of that you know and so um you know we were a lot of engineering costs and a lot of infrastructure costs you know at the time there was no cloud computing got it so we created our own cloud in the you know in memory a mesh network of memory across across the world and data centers you know and servers we had our own servers and stuff so we created this so it was really expensive you know from you know bandwidth and all this stuff standpoint we weren't like mature from a monetization perspective yet either so you know we were losing a lot of money and it's typical you know it's kind of

like Facebook lost you know billions of dollars before it you know generated even a dollar of revenue which was smart So when we got acquired Rupert Murdoch, classic, you know, media operator and thinks like a private equity shop, this company can be profitable right away. Right. And so are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest, we'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories stories cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life Click the application link below and here's the episode guys Smash these, you know the platform with ads like so many more ads like so many more ads is insane and then

hiring freeze at the same time so we got blasted with spam and We couldn't keep up you know with the growth you know it's just like the user experience was degrading fast and there's so many ads and spam and you know all this like malware was coming through so you know he was trying to lean it out cut the cost and at the same time increase the revenue you know like this is what like a classic you know media operator would do right but didn't realize that this was like a different situation this was like the biggest thing the world has ever seen you know, media operator would do, right? But didn't realize that this was like a different situation. This was like the biggest thing the world has ever seen, you know?

Anyways, so yeah, I started to like fail. And then as far as, you know, from a user experience standpoint, and then shortly after, like I was like 2006, 2007 is when Facebook started to really like leverage the opportunity and they say, let's open it up. So they opened it up to outside of schools and just everyone, you know, and that's when, you know, they, they kind of like blew up and then they didn't have any monetization in place and they had no ads or anything. So, you know, user experience was, was great, even though Facebook

was pretty boring, you know, there was no ads for a while. Yeah. There's no ads for a long time. And so that, um, yeah. And, and they basically just wanted to gain market share and then eventually monetize it, you know, which was really smart. Did you see them coming at all or did you? We knew who they were and we had opportunity, you know, we had discussions with them. There was an opportunity to acquire them at one point too very early. Wow. So you met Mark? We just didn't see them.

No, I didn't meet Mark. It was Tom and chris but you know i didn't see we didn't see them as a threat at the at the time you know like we looked at them kind of like as another friendster you know because it was so small and we're like it's just it's just schools you know it's not really anything you know it's not anymore and it looked so boring compared to you know compared to what we had the old facebook was very boring yeah it was really boring i mean the new Facebook still is. My mom's on it.

It's for moms and dads now. Yeah, it really is. And so, yeah, there was a lot of that. And then 2008, when we were leaving, I said, hey, we have a big problem. We have about 7 to 10 billion ads a day on MySpace. Huge volume, right? A lot of traffic still. Undermonetized. We're going at a penny my space, huge volume, right? Like a lot of traffic still

under monetized. We're going to like a penny CPM, like really, really low cost per thousand impressions. And so, um, I wanted to build a technology to make sense of it and monetize it and, you know, help my space generate incremental revenue. Right. So I left the blessing of management and say, you know, like, Hey, we're going to're gonna build this technology um it's basically an ad mediation platform so i left and launched my next company yeah and then so like within the you know uh first three months we were profitable in the first month it was crazy and then eventually you know like we never raised any money until the ipo like we did hundreds of millions in revenue before we raised a dollar but no debt or anything either was crazy

and then within the first three months we started getting other other publishers and then within six months we had comm score top 500 publishers the top 500 publishers like weather.com dictionary like all CNN all of them you know as clients of ours so we're doing monetization optimization for them and so it was like a monetization optimization technology it was just the margins were crazy we're crushing you know and it was it was refreshing because we didn't have anyone on the board it was us on the board just these three of us you know and that was it you know and we had hundreds of employees and you know within the first

couple years and then it just ended up, just kept growing. And then we evolved and then turned into a programmatic ad exchange eventually. And then, yeah, that was that business. That's huge. So how was it able to identify monetization strategies with these big companies? It was a technology? It was a technology basically that tracked monetization. And the challenges were that these guys were just

giving away ads you know like on a on an honor system and then the they would have to report at the end of the month what kind of revenue they generated from it like on a rev share got it and so we said no we want that on every impression we want to know at the end of that impression like that one ad that was served we want to know on at real time what it generated. I need to know. So here's a pixel, fire this pixel and give me a value. Oh, so you had a pixel before Facebook?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So give me, here's the pixel, fire it and put a value in there dynamically. Tell me what that impression generated as far as revenue. And so we did that. And so we would prioritize the advertisers you know and we prioritize them and based on um the yield right so we we'd give more impressions to the guys are generating higher revenue and less impression of the ones and we phase out the guys that are like you know basically not generating anything for us

and so that made a huge difference you know um it was really early in the game now it's super sophisticated but that's like the early you you know, early part of it. Yeah, you were very early because Alex Becker with Hyros. I mean, that's a nine figure company, too. And it's all just tracking. So you never realize how much money is in tracking until I guess you're in the weeds of it. Yeah, the attribution world is, you know, it's really great. Like he's especially in ads because then you can spend more money on the stuff that works you know and and from a performance advertisers perspective and most advertisers

today are tracking performance anyways you know so um it makes the biggest difference absolutely i want to dive into the spiritual side of things this is where i like to talk about um i saw you on another podcast talking about microdosing actually so you are microdosing psilocybin right now sure so you know like i am so i grew up up Hindu and my parents are Indian. I'm from India. Everyone thinks I'm like either black or like Brazilian or something like that. You know, it's kind of crazy, but I grew up, I grew up Hindu and you know, like I, my parents are practicing. So I'm like sitting there like really young, like chanting these Sanskrit mantras in my head and thinking I'm meditating. I don't know what it was. It was like prayer or something. And then eventually learned tm and i learned that okay that was actually meditating and i get in

this like really deep meditative state you know with transcendental meditation it's really awesome and then like four years ago three years ago i i discovered so you know so microdosing psilocybin i have never really done any other drugs like it was just weed that and mdma and i haven't touched mdma for like over 20 years and psilocybin i didn't want to it's like oh it's a drug you know and then one of my friends he's a really smart guy he took um he basically sold the company facebook several years ago built another three four billion dollar business and he told me that everything that he told me everything that he learned in the last 15 years or built the ideas came from mushroom journeys and so i'm just thinking like wow that's really

incredible but i don't do drugs you know so nice try you know yeah he said okay you're a smart guy i'm gonna send you a bunch of shit to read it's like i go ahead you know send me double blind placebo control studies of the effects of psilocybin on your brain but neurogenesis like how it's you know spawning neurogenesis which is like creation of brain cells while you're on it which is profound because if you think about it everything you do alcohol weed anything else that feels good you're killing brain cells right but this is different and then in addition to that um the neuroplasticity and then the um the neural network connections you know like learning complex math or a you know a new language that's really profound you know and so i got a lot of

benefit from it so i started learning um about this the effects of this before i even tried it and then i tried it and you know i thought it was fantastic i i haven't had any alcohol in like four and a half years um i don't drink because i can't process alcohol well i get migraines right away i'm allergic actually i get red as fuck like yeah Yeah, so I feel like it was never the right thing for me, so I just wanted to be able to say I'll never drink again, you know? And I feel so much better, and I'm leaner. I never really drank much anyways. Anyways, the psilocybin, what it does for me,

what it has done for me that's so life-changing, it's changed my life. It taught me how to be present. And I'm probably one of the most present people you'll ever meet. I remember every word everyone says. And my memory is incredible, but it was always really bad. Really? It was super bad. I couldn't remember anything, couldn't remember people's names. And now I remember every word everyone says. And the reason why it's not about the brain chemistry stuff, it's primarily because I was never present.

So it taught me how to be present permanently. And because I'm present, I'm actually here and I'm listening, you know, that made a really big difference for me. And so now you cannot actually, you cannot practice gratitude until you're, you can, until you know how to be present. Wow. Because the problem with it is, you know, when you're present, that's when you can, okay, I'm healthy right now. I'm breathing. I have all my limbs. I live in a first world country. All this stuff.

That's what you can really think about when you're here right now. Generally, when you're not here, you're surfing between the fear of the future and the regret of the past. That's kind of like all of us entrepreneurs are kind of in that zone. But yeah, Soul Sibling actually taught me

how to be in the middle of it, which is right now, you know, and, um, it's made a profound impact for me. Um, and we're all like mildly depressed, you know, as entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs, you know, so this changes that a lot significantly. It makes a pretty big difference for me, but, um, from a spirituality standpoint, um, it helps me, you know, it helps me get closer with myself and understand it. And, you know, when you're present, you can truly express gratitude. And then you realize that moment that everything is internal. There's no none of this ex and learning how to be present i learned that my you know the real things that define my character are not related to my businesses or my work at all is primarily

my family my friendships um cultivating new relationships with new people and you know the health wellness and fitness that's all it is any of this other stuff is it doesn't matter to me i caught myself when i was running a public company specifically in the beginning when i was getting smashed sometimes by these trolls and and you know in the forums and then also the they're writing articles about me you know and smashing my stock it was like collaborated you know like it's a really crazy thing that they do. Um, they'll write, you know, this guy's driving around a $2 million Bugatti, super overpaid and smash my stock that day, you know, like crazy stuff. Um, I would find myself like hiding in a corner somewhere,

physically changing, you know, I would actually physically start morphing, you know, and from the stress, you know, and it was so bad. And that's when I realized that I had to make a change, you know, in my life. And, and a lot of it, the progressive, the, the, the fate, you know, the path that I was on led me to psilocybin. So it is had a profound impact for me. And I'm happy that people are really trying to discover it. And so the difference I try to explain to people, microdosing is not mushroom journeys, you know, it's very different, you know, and you don't even feel high, you know, if it's a real microdose, you don't feel high, right? You just feel mood enhanced, and you feel a little bit happier and very social. So a lot of people that I've recommended it for, they quit drinking, they quit most of their other vices and they just

do this. And, um, it's helped them. It's helped them so much. And it opens them up, like actually truly makes them extroverted and social. Whereas like alcohol, they think that, you know, it's helping them, but it's actually making them sloppy, not sharp and okay. They can be social, but it's like, you you know it's different or shrooms are just it keeps you really sharp you know it's changed my life man microdosing i've also done some full journeys have you ever done like a full trip or no i have i've done a couple of them but not with you know not like a shaman a journey right but i've done them before and um and they're you know they're really interesting for me they're very profound and i

get the benefit from it later on a lot of times i end up with like a bad trip and it turns into a good one you know but you know so i kind of like feel confined in the journey i haven't done it right yet um with a shaman and that's like that's i'm gonna do that this year but i have done other journeys so one of my friends owns a company called better you care and um they're a telehealth company they do this all around the country and they have this ketamine therapy i've heard of those yeah and so it's a lozenge so you put it in your mouth and you swish around your mouth about 12 minutes it absorbs in your cheeks and you spit it out you don't you don't um you don't swallow any of it and you have these you have this

blindfold and uh the specific playlist and you and you're laying down for like an hour an hour and a half and um it's profound so you can get so deep so the analogy i give people is you're on the autobahn with no other cars going 150 miles per hour. And you're directing yourself because you take about 30 minutes before the journey to write down all your intentions for the journey. So it's all like embedded in your brain subconsciously. And you remember the whole thing. You're pretty aware, you know, the whole time. It's not like a abstract journey where like a mushroom journey, you're just like seeing shit, you know, this is not like that this is like very controlled and then um and yeah you're flying on this on this autobahn like in processing thought the analogy of that

like the opposite of that is us processing thought in natural time which is we're driving around west hollywood or new york city fully interrupted every you know stop and go stop and go lights alarm bells phones ring ring, like just nonce. I got this meeting, you know, nonstop, right? Well, what the ketamine does is disassociate us, disassociates you from everything from the alarm bells, from your body physically. So you're just, you just have the screen and nothing else interrupting you. Right. Wow. Yeah. So like I could process like two or three months worth of scenarios in an hour and a half um and it would take me two or three months in normal time because like there's no way we could process that like you know clearly without interruption in normal

time like how are we going to do it so we're doing that we're actually like microprocessing all the time but it's there's so much going on that it's impossible to actually get through a situation so you know when they say do the work you got to do the work i want to do the work inside i need to like you know work i need to get closer to myself people saying all this stuff right so that's usually comprised of like hey i got a therapist you know or i'm journaling which is fantastic it's really i you know i i respect people for doing both of them because they're doing something, you know. The therapist thing for me, it doesn't work for me,

but other people, I'm sure it works great for them. I like, instead of a therapist, I like mentors, you know, like kind of talking about stuff for them. They suggest things to me, but therapists are just like really just trying to understand your thoughts and spit it back to you. It didn't work for me. Didn't you? Yeah, like what's my interpretation of what happened in your head?

You know, like kind of like, first of all, I don't even know if I communicated what happened to me, the correct way to this person. And then they're going to like spit it back out to me. Right. So that's that,

right. That's like the one end of the spectrum. I call that like the beginner level. Yeah. And then like the expert level is like these medically enhanced meditations right so it could like however you get in that meditative state could it be a ketamine journey could it be a mushroom journey could be like something like that people are doing this in ayahuasca right so you're in this like deep meditative state and you're doing the work now

i'm not like a fan of any specific medium right like it could be ketamine mushrooms or whatever it is but to get in that meditative state like get in that meditative state however you can because that's where the work happens that's where you can actually see stuff and understand it and by the way you you remember every single part of it you don't forget any of it you remember the whole thing yeah i remember all of it so you're hallucinating no i're not hallucinating actually not seeing anything you're just thinking feeling so my last one i did um it was uh my fourth one academy therapy it was like right after i just had a breakup recently yeah and it was a really hard one for me and um i went through you know like i was really upset at this person and then i went

through this k journey and then i was you know for an hour and a half I was just crying the whole time you know like my pillow was wet and my face everything was insane and then I came out of it fully flipped 180 degrees wow and I just like came out of it because the whole time I put myself my intentions were like I want I don't want to be in this perspective I want to see her perspective I want to I want to put myself in her place and I want to change. I don't want to feel this, these feelings, you know, I want to feel like hate and I don't want to, you know, be in that place. So my, that was my intention.

So then I ended up, um, basically flipping 180 degrees, understanding her perspective, putting myself in her place. And then I flipped to being empathetic like fully empathetic and like you know like reaching out to her i blocked her i unblocked her and i unblocked her and then i i went into like i say i need to do whatever i can to help you you know this is all about you so like let me do whatever it takes and i said you know at the end of this like i want to break the cycle for you i don't want you to feel abandoned like your ex-boyfriends they're all bad guys and they have all done all this kind of stuff to you

but i don't want i want to break the cycle so i'm not going to be that i'm going to be extremely supportive i'm going to give you everything you need and i'm going to be friendly and i still love you but you know we can't be together right so but yeah so it completely changed and i'm still that way with her now and she tells me she's like this is so hard because you're so kind to me and I've never experienced this before. So, yeah. And I did it for her, but I did it for myself, you know, because I feel great being able to, you know, like flip like that. And I couldn't have understood that perspective without being in that deep meditative state. Yeah.

So whatever it takes to get in that place, you know. That's so powerful because it takes some people months, years to get over breakups you gotta get processed and so like the way to process that is to have uninterrupted processing time you know essentially like to put it in a real technical way yeah and you very rarely like you said we're so busy all day i don't even think i have an hour a day where i'm just thinking. You know what I mean? Exactly. So these breakups take like sometimes a year or longer, right? I want to like cut the curve. I want to shorten it, like abbreviate the whole thing. Because like why does it take a year?

Because there's like all this thought that has to be processed and all this process. You got to go through. And it's called doing the work. You got to do the work, right, to get there. But why don't we just pause time and do the like do big blocks of work you know yeah like in these meditative states and like all we're doing is just that we're forgetting about everything else we're just focused on that and then you process through it way faster so like yeah i mean you could do like two or like you know two or three of these like in a span of like a

couple months and then you're done with it where whereas it could have taken a year you know i love that because there's people that are in long relationships three five years they break up and then you're like oh you shouldn't date for a few years right to get over and right that could be damaging because women can only have kids between you know 8 16 and 35 or whatever so that could be a long amount of time yeah exactly and the reason why they say that is because they think that normally it takes that long to process through it normally yeah it probably does but with this method i'm excited to try it honestly because we have a lot of traumas that we don't know about from childhood as well which i'm now uncovering because my parents got divorced i thought that was normal

so growing up without a father you know i had some trauma for sure yeah you know i learned a lot like in my first couple uh academy therapies that I and I did the way and by the way, I have like a to do list at the end of it. Like in my head, I know like all the stuff I have to do. And I said, I started attacking it like right away, like right after my first one. It was really interesting. I had this like I was a bad kid, you know, growing up and I put my parents through a lot of pain and I was just around a lot of bad kids, you know, and so I was getting trouble all the time. I was we're kid growing up, and I put my parents through a lot of pain. And I was just around a lot of bad kids, and so I was getting in trouble all the time.

We're stealing cars and shit as kids, like dumb shit. I lived in the Bay Area. It was really bad. So I was always getting in trouble, and my parents, they didn't deserve to feel that. And then I ran away at 16. Wow. And I never went back. Yeah.

It's crazy. You didn't talk to them? No, not for a couple years. But then you know what? My parents are so you didn't talk to them no not for a couple years but then you know what like my parents are so close i talk to them every day you know like i love them they visit me like four or five times a year uh we have an incredible relationship the last 20 years or more you know like it's really great they're my best friends you know and um but i put them through a lot of pain growing up and i didn't you know and i always knew that but i didn't know it was a thing until i did this k therapy and i'm like you know i, you know, and I always knew that, but I didn't know it was a thing until I did this K therapy.

And I'm like, you know, I was, you know, it's crazy. Like I've done four and I'm always like, I wake up just crying, you know, like it's, it's a lot, you know, and I don't normally, I'm not usually like crying, you know, like, but you need to, like, I think, you know, in the right, in the right venue. But it, um, and I, and I realized that there was a lot of unresolved guilt for me. And so like I reached out to my parents, you know, I was talking to them like, yo, hey, guys, I caused you so much pain, you know, and you didn't deserve any of that, you know, and I need to I need to make it right. So like I've been working on that. And then I had some stuff with my brother, too. Like he's like there's some stuff between us that because his girlfriend and i didn't like her and he's with her still and just all this like stuff and so it

kind of pushed him away and oh wow and i and i realized that i i didn't realize that i did that and that's why my brother was distant from me you know and so like i've been working on that trying to fix all that stuff that takes a big man to own up to that yeah yeah yeah for sure you know and so i mean i've always been super protective of him, you know? And I just needed to realize that, like, yo, I need to step away from that and really just be like, you know, time is limited. I love you. Another, the third one I did was really profound.

It was really interesting. I realized that time, and I was understanding, you know, and I've always been a fan of this, but, time is the only real, uh, real, um, currency we have. Right. And it's the only one that's not replenishable, right? Like everything else you can get back money, you can get back like gold or whatever it is, but the time is gone. You know, you don't, you know, you don't get it back. So then I was thinking like, okay, like what would I, what would like the natural progression of this conversation be? It would be like, Hey, you know, um, my time is so valuable that I got to spend it wisely. Right. It didn't end up going that way.

It actually went the other way, completely opposite, which was my time is not that valuable. My time is infinite because my time will always be here for the rest of my life. But what is finite is the people around me their time is finite like my parents and my brother and all these people right their time is limited because I'm gonna be around still you know for the rest of my life whatever however that long or however that is so I need to spend my time improving other people's lives interest so when that happened when I started realizing that a lot of others start after like couple days, things started epiphanies.

You start getting these epiphanies. It's really cool how that happens. And I realized, you know what? Okay, if that's the thing, their time is finite. I need to be spending my time to improve their lives or helping them win or helping these people get to the next stage. And it's just all people around me, not just my parents or my brother or whoever. Then in that case, then why is that? It's because what?

Because I get real fulfillment only out of helping other people win like i only get fulfillment from that i don't get fulfillment from doing anything for myself and i look back and i'm like what did i do i bought a car another car bought another house what does that do for me like i don't feel shit you know it does nothing at all but every time i see someone win or help them get to the next level of their life or whatever it is that's when i remember all of that and that's when i get the best feeling because i'm adding value to people's lives so then i realized okay my time you know needs to be spent on there and that fulfillment really comes from them that oh this is going to be a

new path i need to spend the next 10 years of my life just focused on helping other people win. And by the way, this came from a ketamine journey. Insane. So now, yeah, my next 10, 12 years of my life are going to be based on, it's a completely new path. I have a book coming out in March. It's called Winning by Osmosis. Should be done soon. And I got another book at the end of the year which is uh the microdosing guide how to

dose out of any situation um completely unrelated but um two areas that i talk a lot about but yeah i think that yeah that's the new thing like i really just want to focus on helping people get to the next level so powerful man it's so relatable i mean you could give a homeless man a five dollar sandwich it'll make your day and then you could buy yourself a car i mean you pulled up in a bugatti and you won't feel as good yeah i don't give a shit about any of that stuff anymore man it's kind of ridiculous and like yeah my whole like my whole like vibe has been changing you know i don't wear like jewelry i'm wearing like hindu hindu prayer beads you know like you know and i you know like i'm not like i don't wear watches or any of that stuff i don't want to be intimidating

to anyone i don't want any like you know preconceived notions of me i want to people to talk to me as if like i'm just some like you know they don't want to be intimidating to anyone. I don't want any preconceived notions of me. I want people to talk to me as if I'm just some, they don't know anything about me. I'm just some guy. Let's just talk. Whereas if I'm wearing a half a million dollar watch, it's intimidating. That's not me.

I don't want to be that guy. Yeah. Yeah, the cars, I'm just a car guy. Yeah, cars are fun. I just caught the G-Wagon. Oh, that's great. Yeah, I i held out as long as i could but needed that tax write-off man oh yeah 6 000 pounds yeah so that materialistic phase was that a big part of your life in your early years no i was never materialistic i was just a car guy okay so you know like it's hard to explain because i know we had a conversation outside usually you don't know a conversation outside. You said you don't really care about cars.

You don't really know about cars. But see, the people that are car guys are, like, really into, like, you know, we're kind of like car nerds, you know. So that Bugatti is like an engineering marvel. It was the fastest production car, you know, when it was made. It was, like, 1,000 plus horsepower. So it's really interesting. And by the way, there's 40 of them in the country. That's it?

Yeah, it's 40 in the U.S. And there's 400 made. Damn. Worldwide. So, I mean, it's a unicorn. And by the way, there's 40 of them in the country. That's it? Yeah, it's 40 in the U.S. And there's 400 made. Damn. Worldwide. So, I mean, it's a unicorn. You know what I mean? It's like really rare. It's an asset.

It's doubled since I bought it, you know? And so, yeah, it's on its way out. I'm trying to sell it right now anyways. But, you know, so it's kind of like all the cars I have are like really interesting, like a bunch of old Porsches and stuff, you know? It kind of like it's like you know when you drive around an old porsche nobody really knows what it is it's just like the porsche guys that know like oh that's a special porsche you know um the bugatti most people think it's an audi tt or something like that yeah the guy asked what the hell yeah the guy was like what is that i have no idea what that is

you know um so yeah that's like never really had a real materialistic phase. Like I wear stuff, no brands, everything I wear is from Japan though, you know? So I'm like into fashion and stuff like that, but like never been a materialistic dude. Nice. Just, you know, I think that we're a lot deeper, a lot smarter than all that stuff. Because like the people that I've been around are always bigger than me. And I always did that right. You know, I've always been around guys that are, you know, much bigger than I am.

And I look at them and I see how they are. So my best friend is MySpace Tom. Tom's the simplest dude, you know, like you see him today, you see him tomorrow, you see him the next day. He looks like he's wearing the same clothes, but it's the same clothes like 10 times, you know, 10 copies of them or whatever. Right. Real, real smart. I'm the guy. I know best dude, highest morals and ethics. Um, I learned a lot from him. My core values are shaped after his, you know, so we have, you know, we've been, we've been best friends for a long time, like over 20 years. So,

um, you know, those are the kinds of people that have shaped me, you know, and, um, and I'm, and I'm happy that I've been able to add value to their lives to be able to attract them. That's the key. It's like a lot of people are like, I want to be around great people too, but like how come I can't find them? It's because, you know, you have to be able to add value to people's lives. Now, I have an example. So I have an assistant right now. He's a 26-year-old kid. He came, I found him four years ago.

And, you know, I've been working on him for a while and he, you know, um, when I found him, he was super depressed and suicidal and I helped him get back, get back into it, you know, like snapped him out of it. He was drinking, got him off that, got him on psilocybin and he flipped, I flipped and I've done a bunch of K therapies with him too. Like when I do them, I have like five or six people in my house and, um, and they do it anyway. So he's, do it. Anyway, so he's on a great track. And he's like, you know, eight months ago, he came to me. He said, I want to work with you somehow. You know, this is kind of like a mentorship in a way. He's like, I want you to mentor me.

But I'm like, yo, I don't have time. And most mentors won't have time to mentor people. You know, it's like people come to you all the time. It's like, I don't really have time. But like, we could work together somehow. So the kid said, hey, I want to work for you. You don't even have to pay me. You know, it's like pay me the bare minimum whatever i'll work 12 hours a day and i'll work seven days a week for you what do you have for me that i can do and i want to learn

your business and i'm gonna add as much value as i can i said well okay i do have some stuff that you can do so i i gave him some stuff to do and within two or three weeks he was doing everything wow it's crazy yeah so he's adding so much value to my life he's taking so much stuff off my plate he learned so fast he's running he's working 12 13 14 hours a day seven days a week no complaints nothing just wanted more work just wanted to learn now the kid is doing really well i mean he's making like 50 60 000 a month for himself damn in in one of these businesses that i taught him you know i have a short-term rental business we have about you know 30 properties and and it crushes and airbnbs uh with airbnbs like 10 of our business but i'm on you know proprietary software

integrations with like 50 different platforms online traveling agencies through apis and um and so like yeah that's where all the demand is it's not on airbnb anyways so i taught him that business he's running all of it and he's doing really well. He's got his own properties now, you know. So he's growing. And that's kind of like, you know, he attracted me by adding value to my life. So a lot of people, you know, are always like, how do I get these people to mentor me? You know, it's kind of like you got to figure out how to add value to their lives to attract these people.

Absolutely. So when you were 16, you said you were a troubled kid and you ran away. Yeah. What was that value you provided to that first mentor to get you out of that slump? Yeah. So, you know, I was always a smart kid. I was always getting four, like 4.0, like really great grades. And I finished high school early at 16.

I went to community college, you know, and I was in college and I started, you know, this was around the time, like 1994, you know, where the Silicon Valley was just starting to like, you know, the was around the time like 1994, you know, where the Silicon Valley was just starting to like, you know, the dot-com boom is about to happen. And then two years later, dot-com boom happened like 1996. And, you know, there was a shortage of like people, you know? And so I started working for, in 1995, 1996, I started working for tech companies in their call centers. It was really crazy. So we're working sales, you know, selling software on the phone.

It was really crazy. And then I crushed, crushed, crushed, and then I kept growing, kept growing. Then I moved into business development and, you know, for these enterprise software companies. So I was selling like Oracle. Got it, got it. I was selling Oracle back in 1997. Wow. It's crazy.

That was when I was born. Enterprise, yeah, enterprise software. I was selling Oracle back in 1997. Wow. It's crazy. That was when I was born. Enterprise. Yeah, enterprise software. Yeah, and it started growing and crushing and then moved into other roles in other companies and just kept growing from there. But the way that I attracted these people, I always had mentors at every company I worked for. It would be like someone in senior management would take me under the wing because they

see how sincere I was. They see that I was willing to do anything and I did not complain. I did not have any entitlement. So the entitlement is the thing. It's like I worked for you. I'm entitled to this. But it's like if you have an opportunity that's golden,

you don't need to have the entitlement because that opportunity is worth so much more than the money you're getting paid for. And a lot of times you shouldn't even get any money because that opportunity is so great. Right. Right. And there's, there's places like that, you know, like, um, for example, Chad, we talked about Chad. Yeah.

Chad worked for me from 2004 and Chad did this to me too. Like same, same kind of thing. I met him at a MySpace party in 2004 in Chicago and he was stalking me on Myspace for like six months. He said, I wanna work for you, I'll do whatever it takes. You know, like whatever. I'm like, hey, we're throwing a party in Chicago. You can help us out. You know, so he said, I'll do whatever it takes.

And he basically ran the whole thing, you know? And he did everything he could. And I was like, oh, this is a good kid. And then I gave him more stuff and he crushed it, crushed it. Just like did not even care if I paid him or not. He just did it and then I just, he became a right hand man. Nice.

You know, at that time and then I brought him to my next company which, you know, the one we took public in 2017

and he was in business development. He didn't know sales. I taught him sales. I taught him business development and he crushed it and yeah, we did that for a long time so yeah,

it's always about adding value and forget about like to a job or a mentor, but like my mantra is add as much value that as you can to any partnership, friendship, customer, relationship without expecting much in return. Because what happens is it comes back to you. Because when you're adding that much value,

guess what? You're valuable. That's facts, man. I love it yeah and starting off in sales that's that's another common story here with successful entrepreneurs too being able to sell is such a powerful skill yeah i could sell anything um to anyone and it's not hocus pocus it really is just showing them the value of whatever it is you're doing right it's like at the end of the day like we don't want to sell anything that's not valuable to anyone and just showing them the value of it you know whatever it is you're doing, right? It's like, at the end of the day, like, we don't want to sell anything that's not valuable to anyone. And just showing them the value of it, you know, whatever it is, is is how people are really successful. Yeah. So it sounds like you're taking a step back from business this year to focus on some personal stuff. Yeah, I am. And actually, it's a sabbatical

from enterprise businesses, you know, like that the bigger stuff that I've been doing, I have, I do have a tech company still, it's in it based in ukraine um it's a mediation platform basically monetization solution for publishers app publishers specifically in a connected television space so we're like apps on smart tvs like samsung there's an app store in there yeah app uh developers are creating content for that like streaming apps and stuff like that but see the size of that screen yep it's huge right so the the commercials or the ads on that or commercials basically but they're you know the same kind of commercials you're seeing a linear television except you could target that user because you have an ip address and you can track the performance

of that and usually they'll have the qr code so when someone scans that qr code you'll end up with a landing page on your phone and you can do you know you get sell shit or generate a lead or whatever that's smart because tv ads were dying but this sounds like it's oh it's it's the biggest it's the fastest growing um media in history media channel and um it's the best performing it's the biggest screen you know so anyway so i have a business i have a company that does that and then it's in um you know it's in stealth still it's, it's growing. And, um, yeah, and we have a short-term rental business that we are going to scale to a hundred properties in the next year. Is that all in LA?

Uh, it's a lot in LA, but we have, um, we're opening up Tulum and Miami in the next few weeks actually. And on the financing side, are those creative? Are you putting down 20%, whatever percent for those properties? So, you know, I'm a buyer, right? So we have a bunch of properties here that we own. And the kind of, because when you have over 10 mortgages, you can't really get a conventional full dock loan anymore.

It just doesn't make sense. So you have to get this kind of loans. They're called DSCR. They're the debt service loans, loans right and it's based on the cash flow of the property it does not based on your assets or anything it's based on the the rental survey of that house got it and you know like okay this rent this house is going to do you know like 25 000 in like a long-term rent 25 000 and the mortgage is 20 done you know like you're approved and whatever you put that 20 typically 20 right on those on those loans uh the problem is 20, done. You know, like you're approved and whatever you put that 20%, typically 20%, right?

On those loans. The problem is those are 8.5% right now. Right. Okay, or 9%. You know, like any of you are for like 8 to 9%. It's a very high in its interest only, but it's very high, you know? So, I mean, we could still cash loan,

but I prefer not to do it right now. So we're doing this thing now. We own a bunch, but then we're also like in other markets, we're doing rental arbitrage now. So we'll just rent them and basically make a difference, re-rent them, you know, rent them and re-rent them. Because right now, like for example, in LA, there's more rental properties in the market than there have been, has been in 27 years. Damn. It's flooded right now. And the reason why is because all these people that have these great loans, like 3%,

2% loans, they don't want to give up those loans. Right. They need to sell their homes, but they don't want to sell their homes either. So they were putting them out in the market for rent. So it's a great opportunity because landlords are like, Hey,

as long as you're going to destroy my house, I'm, you know, like I'm cool with it. Uh, the permitting is a bit tricky here. I heard that. Yeah.

We have figured it all out so vegas just got wrecked i don't know if you heard about this dude like new york city is shut down you know yeah same with vegas they just took down every single airbnb that's crazy it's not you know it's the hotel mafia you know yeah out there in vegas it's got to be rough yeah yeah it's really it's really crazy so you know like instead of like playing in this like this liberal bureaucratic nightmare world that we're and vegas is not liberal, but, you know, whatever. It's like kind of like a nightmare everywhere. We're just going to other countries.

Fuck the US. We have we have no problem in Mexico. You know, like Tulum, we're getting, you know, like no cartels. One thousand fifteen hundred bucks a night. Now, there's no cartel issues right now yet. A thousand fifteen hundred bucks a night for some of this stuff. It's damn. It's really great. Yeah. There's no cartel issues right now yet. Yeah. 1,500 bucks a night for some of this stuff. It's really great. Yeah. And, um, you know, like we'll find other markets too, that are great that don't have regulation, you know, that are, that are fully open and, and that are not non-commercial. So absolutely. Ted, it's been a pleasure, man. Where can people

find out more about you? Um, you could add me on Instagram, Ted Skilla, two L's. All right. Thanks for watching guys. Thanks for coming on my man. man great episode and we will see you guys tomorrow thank you