Microdosing, MySpace, Overcoming Depression & Owning a Bugatti I Ted Dhanik DSH #443

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 got.

The old Facebook was very boring.

Yeah, it was really boring.

I mean, the new Facebook still is, right?

Like, my mom's on it, you know.

It's for moms and dads now.

Yeah, it really is.

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And here's the episode.

All right, guys, welcome back to the show.

Ted Danik here 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.

It 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

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,

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 really 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 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 luckily for me, I ended up with this gentleman around me, his name's Robbie Lee, and he took a

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 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 were going to take this thing public, and it was a multi-billion dollar exit for, you know, 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, 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

you have cash, which is like typical currency, which could come from debt or, you know,

or, you know, whatever is on the balance sheet.

Or

you could leverage equity.

And if you do it the right way with the right team,

you can, you know, you can paint a picture that's way more attractive than cash because

you could set up 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 we leverage 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 people have 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 they don't know what to do with it.

But at the end of the day, you know, when the markets are kind of the way they are,

it's always kind of a good time, you know, because 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.

If I'm going to do another roll-up, I'm going to, 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 of EBITDA or is it revenue depending on the on the sector and uh and and choose the exchange from there because it doesn't have to be here because I filed an S1 here in 2016 to go public here and 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 EEY 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 times revenue.

Yeah, and it was like a tenth times.

And it was just like, I can't go public here.

You know, I can't do it.

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, and then we just grew it.

But yeah, it's just, you know, like you just.

You got to figure out where the valuation is, where the comps are strong.

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 when you operate that, eventually you deprecate the international list thing.

So you could just

end up here, you know, 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 nother level.

Yeah, and there's a lot of great arbitrage.

you can look at um companies that you know in in from a comp standpoint where are the valuations you know as far as is it a revenue multiple is it an ebita multiple like what is it and 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.

It's because share resources.

And then, you know, and then that alone might, you know, tip it into positive EBITDA strategy, you know, territory.

And then you'll get, you know, like just clearly have a better multiple just from that alone.

Absolutely.

What were you doing prior to this?

So this company that I ran,

I basically ran it from, I 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, you know, 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 consumer financer or mortgage and

real estate lead aggregate or lead develop generator, essentially, online.

And so I said, you know, that's a great business.

Let's replicate it, fast follow it.

And we did that.

We scaled it and got to, you know, like over a million bucks a day in revenue.

Sold it to Experian.

And then,

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 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 getting into that, too.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm heavy in that world.

So, you know, 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.

We subleased part of our office to one of their previous businesses before, you know,

a company called Response Space.

Tom's like, hey, we're going after friends, too.

Let's go.

I said,

I don't really want to work, dude.

You know, and he's like, oh, 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 earned out ended in 2008.

Wait, it sold in 18 months?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Sold in 18 months.

I thought it was around for years.

Well, it was around for years.

It was.

But then we, you know, we got out and 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 Murdock destroyed it.

So why did they put that freeze?

Were the books 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, it was like a half a million users a day or something.

Yeah, it was insane.

We weren't spending a dollar on any of that, you know?

And so,

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 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 um 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 cool entrepreneurs to talk to about business and life click the application link below and here's the episode, guys.

Smash the, you know, the platform with ads, like so many more ads, like so many more ads.

It was insane.

And then hiring freeze at the same time.

So we got blasted with spam and we couldn't keep up with the growth.

It's just like the user experience was degrading fast.

And there's so many ads and spam and all this like malware was coming through.

So he was trying to lean it out, cut the cost, and at the same time increase the revenue.

This is what 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?

Anyways, so yeah, it started to like fail.

And then as far as, you know, from a user experience standpoint.

And then shortly after, like, I was like, 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 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.

Yeah, there's no ads for a while.

Yeah, there's no ads for a long time.

And so that,

yeah, 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.

We had opportunity.

We had discussions with them.

There was an opportunity to acquire them at one point, too, very early.

Yeah, but you 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 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 the old Facebook was very boring.

Yeah, it was really boring.

I mean, the new Facebook still is, right?

Like, my mom's on it, you know.

It's for moms and dads now.

Yeah, it really is.

And

so, yeah,

there was like a lot of that.

And then in 2008, when we were leaving,

I said, hey, we have a big problem.

You know, we have about seven to ten billion ads a day on MySpace.

Huge volume, right?

Like a lot of traffic still.

Undermonetized.

We're going to like a penny CPM, like really, really low.

Cost per thousand impressions.

And so I wanted to build a technology to make sense of it and monetize it and, you know, help MySpace generate incremental revenue, right?

So I left to the blessing of management and say you know like hey we're gonna build this technology

it's basically an ad mediation platform

so I left and launched my next company yeah and then so like within the you know first three months we were profitable in the first month it was crazy and then eventually you know like we never raised any money to the IPO like we did hundreds of millions in revenue before we raised a dollar but no debt or anything either it was crazy and then within the first three months we started getting other publishers And then within six months, we had Comscore top 500 publishers, the top 500 publishers, like weather.com, Dictionary,

CNN, all of them, you know, as clients of ours.

So we were doing monetization optimization for them.

And so it was like a monetization optimization technology.

It was just,

the margins were crazy, were crushing, you know, and

it was refreshing because we didn't have anyone on the board.

It was us on the board.

It was just three of us, you know, and that was it, you know.

And we had hundreds of employees and, you know, within the first couple of 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.

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 an honor system.

And then 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, like, so here's a pixel, and 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 a pixel, fire it and put a value in there dynamically.

Tell me what that impression generated, you know, as far as revenue.

And so we did that.

And so like we, we would prioritize the advertisers, you know, and we prioritize them and based on the yield, right?

So we'd give more impressions to the guys that are generating higher revenue and less impressions to the ones.

And we would phase out the guys that are like, you know, basically not generating anything for us.

And so that made a huge difference, you know?

It was really early in the game.

Now it's super sophisticated, but that's like the early, you know, early part of it.

Yeah, you were very early, because Alex Becker with Hirosh, I mean, that's a nine-figure company too, and and it's all just tracking

so you never realize how much money is in tracking until you're i guess you're in the weeds of it yeah the attribute the attribution world is you know it's really great like because especially in ads because then you can spend more money on the stuff that works you know and and from a performance advertiser's 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.

I saw you on another podcast talking about about micro-dosing, actually.

So you are micro-dosing psilocybin right now?

Sure.

So, you know, like I am, so I grew up Hindu.

And my parents are Hindu.

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 Hindu and, you know, like 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 I learned TM and I learned that, okay, that's actually meditating.

And I get in this like really deep meditative state, you know, know, with transcendental meditation.

It's really awesome.

And then like four years ago, three years ago, I discovered

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.

I was like, oh, it's a drug, you know?

And then one of my friends, he's a really smart guy.

He took, he basically sold the company to 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 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 about 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, good, you're killing brain cells, right?

But this is different.

And then in addition to that, the neuroplasticity and then the

neural network connections, you know, like learning complex math or, 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

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 haven't had any alcohol in like four and a half years.

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.

Yeah, so I feel like it is, 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 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.

You know, I live in a first world country.

Like, all this stuff, you know, 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, you know?

And that's kind of like all of us entrepreneurs are kind of in that zone.

But yeah, Silicon actually taught me how to be in the middle of it, which is right now, you know, and it's made a profound impact for me.

And we're all like mildly depressed, you know, as

entrepreneurs, you know,

so this changes that a lot significantly.

It makes a pretty big difference for me.

But from a spirituality standpoint,

it helps me, you know, it helps me get closer with myself and understand it.

And, you know, when you're present,

you could truly express gratitude.

And then you realize at that moment that everything is internal.

There's no, none of this exogenous stuff is out there.

And

while I was practicing all of this and learning how to be present, I learned that

the real things that define my character are not related to my businesses or my work at all.

It's primarily my family, my friendships,

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 two million dollar bugati super overpaid and they'll 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

a lot of it, the progressive,

the path that I was on led me to psilocybin.

So it has had 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, micro-dosing 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.

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

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 it's helping them, but it's actually making them sloppy, not sharp, and okay, they could be social, but it's like you know, it's different.

Or shrooms are just, it keeps you really sharp, you know.

It's changed my life, man.

Micro-dosing.

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 journey, right?

But I've done them before, 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 a journey.

I haven't done it right yet with a shaman and that's like let'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 they're a telehealth company and 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, you swish it around your mouth for about 12 minutes.

It absorbs in your cheeks and and you spit it out.

You don't swallow any of it.

And

you have this blindfold and the specific playlist and you're laying down for like an hour, an hour and a half.

And

it's profound.

So you can get so deep.

So the analogy I give people is you're on the Audubon.

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, 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, like just non-stop, I got this meeting, you know, non-stop, right?

What the Akademine 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.

And it would take me two or three months in normal time because, like, there's no way we could process thought, 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 just 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 the 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 with them and 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 gonna 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, 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.

You know, that's where you can actually see stuff and understand it.

And by the way, 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 hallucinating.

Nah, you're not hallucinating, actually, not seeing anything.

You're just thinking.

So my last one I did,

it was my fourth one, ketamine therapy.

It was like right after, I just had a breakup recently.

Yeah.

And it was a really hard one for me.

And 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

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 it you to feel abandoned like your ex-boyfriends are 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, so yeah, and I did it, 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 sometimes.

You got to wake up.

You got to 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, you know, I want to shorten it, you know, 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 and then you're like oh you shouldn't date for a few years right to get over it and right that could be damaging because women can only have kids between you know eight sixteen and thirty five 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 academy therapies that I and I did the work.

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 started, 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 in trouble all the time.

I was stealing cars and shit as kids, you know, like dumb shit, you know, and like I lived in the Bay Area.

It was like really bad.

So I was always getting in trouble.

And

my parents, like, they just, 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?

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.

We have an incredible relationship for the last 20 years or more, you know, like it's really great.

They're my best friends, you know.

And,

but I put them through a lot of pain growing up.

And i didn't you know i and i always knew that but i didn't know it was a thing until i did this k therapy and then 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 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 right it um and i and i realized that there was a lot of unresolved guilt for me and so like i i reached out to my parents you know i was 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

I realized that 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.

It takes a big man to own up to that, honestly.

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, you know, to like 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, I was understanding, you know, I've always been a fan of this, but like time is the only real

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 like the natural progression of this conversation be?

It would be like, hey, you know,

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 going to 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.

Interesting.

So when that happened, when I started realizing that, a lot of others started.

After like a 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 if that's the thing of time their time is finite i need to be spending my time to improve their lives or helping them win or get 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 right um 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 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, I have a new 10 like 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 um and i got another book at the end of the year which is uh the micro dosing 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 you pulled up in a bugati and you won't feel as good yeah i don't give a shit about any of that stuff anymore man it's just 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 pe people to talk to me as if like i'm just some like you know they don't know anything about me i'm just just some guy, you know?

Let's just talk.

Whereas if I'm wearing like a half a million dollar watch, it's like, you know, it's intimidating.

And I just, that's not me.

I don't want to be that guy.

So yeah, the cars, I'm just a car guy, you know?

Yeah.

It's a little different.

The cars are fun.

I just caught the G-Wagon.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah.

I held out as long as I could, but needed that tax write-off, man.

Oh, yeah.

6,000 pounds tax write-off.

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.

So, you know, like it's hard to explain because I know we had a conversation outside and 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.

So it was the fastest production car, you know, when it was made.

It was like a thousand 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, you know what I mean?

It's like a really 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's 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 very special Porsche, you know?

The Bugatti, most people think it's an Audi TT or something like that.

Yeah, the guy asked, what the hell about that?

that?

Yeah, the guy was like, what is that?

I have no idea what that is, you know?

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, 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 I've been around are always bigger than me.

And I always did that right.

You know, always been around guys that are, you know, much bigger than I am and I and I look at them and I see how they are so my best friend is my space Tom Tom's the simplest dude you know like you see him today see him tomorrow I 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 smart I'm smartest guy I know best dude highest morals and ethics

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 kind 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 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 is a 26 year old kid he came i found him four years ago and um 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 he's on a great 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 i i could work 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 going to add as much value as I can.

I said, well, okay, I do have some stuff that you can do.

So 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 learns so fast.

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.

And he's making like $50,000, $60,000 a month for himself

in one of these businesses that I taught him.

I have a short-term rental business.

We have about 30 properties and it crushes.

Airbnbs.

Airbnb is like 10% of our business, but I'm on 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, 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.

What was that value you provided to that first mentor to get you out of that slump?

Yeah, so I was 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 dot-com boom was 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, which is really crazy.

Started working sales, you know, selling software on the phone.

It was really crazy.

And then, 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.

You know, I was selling Oracle back in 1997.

Wow.

It's crazy.

That was when I was born.

Enterprise, yeah, enterprise software.

And

yeah, and it started growing and crushing and then moved into other roles in other companies and just kept kept growing from there.

But the way that I attracted these people, I always had mentors at like every company I worked for.

It was be like someone in senior management who'd 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 work 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 it 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 kind of thing i met him at a myspace party in 2004 in chicago and and he was stalking me on myspace for for like six months he said i want to 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.

He just 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

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 rocks, man.

I love it.

And starting off in sales, that's another common story you hear with successful entrepreneurs, too.

Being able to sell is such a powerful skill.

Yeah, you can sell anything 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, 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

how people are really successful in sales.

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 the bigger stuff that I've been doing.

I do have a tech company still.

It's based in Ukraine.

It's a mediation platform, basically monetization solution for publishers, app publishers,

specifically in the connected television space.

So we're like apps on smart TVs like Samsung.

There's an app store in there.

App developers are creating content for that, like streaming apps and stuff like that.

But see the size of that screen?

It's huge, right?

So the commercials or the ads on that are commercials, basically.

But they're, you know, the same kind of commercials that you're seeing on linear television, except you could target that user because you have an IP address and you can track the performance of that.

And usually there'll have a 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 could sell shit or generate a lead or whatever, right?

Because TV odds were dying, but this sounds like it's

the reinvention.

It's the biggest, it's the fastest growing media in history, media channel.

And it's the best performing.

It's the biggest biggest screen you know right so anyway so I have a business I have a company that does that and then it's in you know it's in stealth still it's it's growing and yeah and we have a short-term rental business that we are gonna scale to a hundred properties in the next year is that all in LA it's a lot in LA but we have we're opening up Tulum and Miami

to net

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 convent like 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 right and it's based on the cash flow of the property it's 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 gonna do you know like 25 000 and like a long-term rent 25

and the mortgage is 20,

done.

You know, like you're approved and whatever, you put down 20%, typically 20%, right?

On those, on those loans.

The problem is those are 8.5% right now.

Right.

Okay.

Or 9%.

You know, like anyone from 8 to 9%.

It's a very high and it's 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 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.

But they need to sell their homes, but they don't want to sell their homes either.

So they're putting them in the market for rent.

So it's a great opportunity because landlords are like, hey, as long as you're not going to destroy my house,

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 nazi 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 it's like kind of like a nightmare everywhere we're just going in other countries.

Fuck the U.S.

We have no problem in Mexico.

You know, like Tulum, we're getting, you know, like

$1,150 a night.

Yeah, there's no cartel issues right now yet.

Yeah, $1,1500 a night for some of this stuff.

It's really great.

Yeah.

And,

you know, like, we'll find other markets too that are great, that don't have regulation, you know, that are fully open and

that are not non-commercial.

Absolutely, Ted.

It's been a pleasure, man.

Where can people find out more about you?

You could add me on Instagram, Ted Skilla2Ls.

All right.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Thanks for coming on, my man.

Great episode, and we will see you guys tomorrow.

Thank you.