Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the money mondays we are here inside of an rv motorhome parked in beverly hills california nearby where our next guest lives and has built multiple companies out here as you guys know these podcasts run for under 40 minutes because the average workout is 45 minutes and the average commute to work is 45 minutes so this episode will be between 34 and 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.

Why do I say that? Because we have a 93% listen through rate. I think our guest likes that because he loves mass statistics.
He is very data analytical as he's built some of the most impressive companies on the data side and paid media side, et cetera. So we cover three core topics here, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.
And with these topics and with these podcasts, what's really truly important is for you listening at home to have these discussions about money with your friends, family, and followers. We all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money.
I think it's rude not to talk about it because people need to understand taxes and credit scores and loans and leases and rent and just actually understanding why they're getting a salary, how much they should budget, etc.

And we thought it was rude to talk about it our whole lives.

And so we're trying to change the narrative.

That's why this podcast has stayed in the top five for over 84 weeks in a row because of you guys finally having these discussions.

So without further ado, I'm going to give it up for Mr. Ted Danik.
And what I'd love for you to do is give a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money. Two minutes, we have like 34 minutes, 34.5 minutes left to go.
You know, let's go. There's no pressure here.
Thanks, Dan. Dan's been doing this to me for a long time, many, many years.
We've worked together for like, I don't know, like 15 years now or maybe something like that. It's been a long time.
Anyways, so yeah, so I started my career in the mid-90s in Silicon Valley. Worked for a lot of companies back then.
They were called the dot-com boom. Some went boom, some went burst, and some did well and some didn't.
And so ended up in some good ones and then moved to LA and ended up in some really good ones. One of the early original guys, their company called Lower My Bills.
Sold it to Experian. Did really well.
Interesting company because it was the largest lead gen company or creator of, developer of leads for the mortgage business or personal finance in the world at the time. Sold to Experian.
They thought it was a really interesting business. Shortly after, jumped on MySpace at its early days and stayed stayed until about 2008.
2009, I wanted to solve a problem that MySpace faced. It had about 7 billion ads a day.
They're going under-monetized, so I built a company, an ad tech company, to service that. Just MySpace, and then within six months, we're servicing the top 50 publishers on the web from CNN to dictionary.com, reference.com, etc..
And then, uh, took that company public in 2017 and an IPO ran it until about two years ago, sold it, merged into something else. And then I've just been out of tech for two years.
So, you know, I got non-tech businesses, not so elegant, but you know, I don't have the itch yet, but I will. When I get the itch to enter tech, it'll be somewhere that's not super consolidated not saturated somewhere there's you know it's kind of wide open so that's that's who i am so along the journey when you're talking about companies like lower my bills myspace recruiting was a big thing how do you inspire people to want to come work with you at a company like that especially startup companies yeah so at the time you know it was interesting because my space didn't really have to attract talent the way that lower my bills and some of the other startup companies that I worked for did.
I mean, they'd have all kinds of really interesting gimmicks. Like somebody's coming to massage.
It was kind of like a poker game, right? They didn't look like the masseuses in the poker game though. I'll guarantee you that, but they were, you know, they had things like that.
They had a massage room. They had like these really cool, like these really cool like you know weird things you know and we cater lunches every day and we had really great benefits and all that stuff and that was interesting there and then I was like lowering my bills and then on the other side or for MySpace it's like MySpace blew up really fast so people just really wanted to be part of rocket ship you know so you could be a rocket ship and people are attracted to your energy because you're crushing and people always want to be part of something that's crushing or you can be part of a company that's, you know, got a lot of perks and a lot of really interesting things.
You can attract employees that way. I always feel that, you know, the CEO and the executive team should be able to illustrate the core values of the business and the mission really well and that can attract the right people.
Initially, we have a lot, you know, we always had really pretty deep interviewing strategies. So we did like seven interviews for a lot of candidates and, you know, that we'd find the right people.
We use Craigslist a lot, you know, back in the days. And, you know, there are a lot of recruiters that you'd hire.
We hire recruiters in-house. We generally would hire recruiters in-house,

and that would be the best way to attract talent.

But typically, we'd go after competitors

and people that work for competitors that have a track record

or people that have existing experience in the same industry

because we really don't want to pave roads again

and teach people the whole framework of the business

because we wanted to run fast, right? And when you want to run fast, you want to hire somebody that knows what you do already. So with both those companies, they both eventually had exits.
How do you know when a company, it's time to pass it on to either a private equity group, a venture capital firm, a competitor? How do you know when it's time to make that sale? Well, there's two states of mine states of mind. Like one, one, one person will say, and I've talked to a lot of CEOs because I'm in these really awesome masterminds that you created and a keynote at some of those.
So it's really exciting. So I met, you know, we were mentoring these seven figure and eight figure company CEOs for years.
And, you know, they had asked the same question. When is it time? A lot of times people say, you know, when you hit this apex or when you hit this wall of revenue and you need more financing or something, instead of raising financing, you could sell a company.
That's one. But I like the other side.
When you are in rocket ship mode and when you're growing as fast as, or faster than you ever have, I think that's a good time to consider a sale because you're adding a lot of value to someone by giving them a rocket ship instead of giving them something that's potentially going to become stale over time. So as you go from this, you know, lower my bills to my space, why decide to, you know what, I'm going to, instead of being an executive at this huge company, decide to become an entrepreneur.
I'm going to start up this business to help facilitate for MySpace. You know, it's a natural progression.
I didn't anticipate doing that for, you know, it wasn't my like mission in life. It was really, I saw an opportunity and I had the experience and background.
I built self-serve kiosks and monetization solutions. I was head of business development and revenue at Lower My Bills.
So I did that stuff there and I did really well and monetized well and it drove it to, you know, over a million dollars a day in revenue. And then at my space towards the end, I was tasked with something similar.
We had 7 billion ads a day and we needed to build a self-serve platform. It was called my ads.
And I had a lot of input on that as well. So from that standpoint, I saw, I, you know, I saw the opportunity and I said, you know, there's another way to monetize this better and I know how to do it.
So I'm going to leave and I'm going to start this business. You know, I didn't voluntarily leave.
We got left, you know, at the end of that, you know, because our contracts expired in 2008 and it was time to go, you know, at MySpace, you know, we had a run and now Rupert Murdoch's, you know, continued destroying the business and he did. And then, so we, you know, we started, you know so we started doing whatever we all needed to do.
A lot of us retired. But I said, there is a huge opportunity here.
I have the experience. Let's build a business out of it.
And that's what I did. And within 60 to 90 days of starting the business, we started to crush.
So it was a good opportunity. And then from there, I learned a lot too.
You know, I always look for places where I have some intelligence, when I have some experience, and I can see an entry point, I can add some value here. My whole mantra in life is about adding as much value as I can to every customer, client, relationship, partnership, friendship, you know, whatever it is, as much value as you can add without expecting a lot in return.
Now, I don't look at it like, yeah, what can I do to make a bunch of money? What can I do to add a bunch of value? And where I could add value, you know, eventually I'll become valuable, right? That's the, that's really the key. That's why I've been able to win so much.
So these companies have exited and you start to build some personal wealth. How do you decide what the heck to invest into? You could do stock market, real estate, some cryptocurrency, et cetera.
I remember you were doing some really cool houses and you were remodeling some houses. Like how do you decide what to invest into once you start building some capital? So you look at your business, right? So if you have a, you start generating revenue, you start generating business for yourself or some sort of asset, you know, like some personal net worth and you start looking at opportunities.
And I get this all the time. Like, where should I put my money? Yeah.
Crypto, altcoins, like real estate. Like, what should it be? Well, you start looking at the returns now i i you know we've we've been in

crypto we've you know we've done i've been in crypto since 2014 or 13 and i bought a lot of stuff then and never sold any of it so it just kind of sits there i never looked at it as a revenue stream that the investment side you got three things right yeah one you got to generate revenue for yourself or generate income second you got to save and third you have, right? So, and that's really, it really is that the investing side should not be something that you depend on in terms of income. It has to be something that if you lose your fund, if you generate income from that, it's fantastic.
Now, the rate of return, I weigh everything to looking at like Bitcoin and looking at real estate investments and other opportunities, even my own. So I could go out and raise money for my business or I could take my own cash and turn it.
And what kind of return do I get from my own business? What kind of returns am I getting? So for the last few years, my personal businesses have been returning me much more cash than anywhere I can put it. So, I've been just investing in my own business, you know, from that standpoint.
Now, you should diversify for sure. I have real estate portfolio.
It does well, but it's not typical. It's not what most people have in terms of real estate.
They're leasing out their properties for long term. I do the exact opposite.
I run my real estate portfolio like a hotel we rent them out every single night short-term rentals and I return a lot more profit and revenue that way it just it's just been a better business for me from that standpoint so you know it's a bit different for for everyone but I look at it very differently so what about investing into yourself into, into your health, into your mind? What about that part of it? So we have coaches for everything, you know, and it's kind of funny because people are always hiring us to, to coach them into something and some sort of consulting and we have the experience. So why not? Right.
We've done some things and we've been successful at it. So we are qualified to be a consultant, right.
Or, or, you know, a coach of some sort. Right.
So it's fantastic. Now, who got me to where I am today? A bunch of different coaches and mentors and people that have been really successful at what they've done.
I have a book. It's called Winning by Osmosis.
And it literally talks about how you should be aligned with people that are bigger than you and very, very specifically aligned with people that are better than you at the exact things that you want to be good at. Now, you and I have been doing this religiously forever.
We literally align ourselves with, I want to be really good at short-term rentals, so I'm going to go find the guys who are crushing it and I'm going to try to add some value in their lives and align myself with them. Now, whether it is some sort of an exchange and I'm mentoring them in something, they're mentoring me in something, or I'm paying them for their time to coach me, you know, it is critical.
That is, I would say, you need to, we spend a lot of money on coaching ourselves, you know, a lot of mentoring and coaching, whatever it is. Our time is money, whether I'm contributing my time to add value to somebody's life so they can teach me the game or I'm literally paying them.
But I would tell you that that is the fastest way to get in any game and win. The and win part is the most important part.
So as you're building up your business, you had the decision to decide to go public and also kind of like a roll up and pick up some other companies along the way. Why go public? What is the benefit of going public? Sure.
So this is funny that Dan asks me this because he's the youngest guy to take a company public in history. And he told me not to do it a long time ago, but I did not listen to him.
And I don't know if I should have listened to him at this point, but I will tell you one thing. I'm going to do it again because we have this unique talent and not a lot of people do taking company public going through the fire walking through coals it's like not tony robbins schools the coals are actually on fire you're walking through that and then you know you're somehow you feel accomplished even though you get beat up every single day you feel really accomplished it's really hard to do but you do gain this thing called accountability which is like unparalleled No one has the kind of accountability that we do because of Sarbanes-Oxley and Sox Compliance and all this other stuff and auditing and everything else.
So it's really interesting. But to answer your question, yes, I would do it again, but I decided to do that because there's a gentleman who taught me the game.
He taught me how to acquire companies without any capital, without any cash at all, selling a dream. And he had the biggest dry cleaning operation in history.
It was called U.S. Dry Cleaning.
He did a big roll-up and then eventually did dry cleaning. I mean, eventually did grilled cheese truck.
Really? Yeah. So anyway, so he needed some value from me.
So he wanted me to help him market grilled cheese Truck. And so he came to us as a client and I learned everything from him.
And he taught me how to sell a dream. And basically what it was was basically I was acquiring companies.
Sorry, LA Times article about this many years ago. But I acquired, I rolled up $100 million worth of tech companies for zero cash.
And I did it with selling a dream. So I went to these

companies, these startups and a variety of different companies and basically said, Hey, we're, we're looking to go public. We're going to, we're going to roll this whole thing up.
And all of us are going to share the upside and a public exit. And, um, and it worked and it did really well.
So without me being able to go public, selling the dream to acquire anything, that was private

is kind of impossible

because they don't have the ability to liquidate their shares whenever they want to. So there is a purpose for that and a world for that.
A lot of times people prefer to stay private. There's some really huge businesses that are private that will never go public, which they'll be a right fit for that too.
But yeah, we ended up going public and I learned a lot, got my ass kicked a bit, you know, and then we won and then, you know, lots of things, you know, it was pretty crazy. But I did learn one thing that was really great was when you're public, you can raise money in 24 hours, which is you can't really do that in a private business when the markets are weird, whether markets are weird or not.
If you're trading and you have a share price and you have some volume you can issue you know issue shares at a small discount to a broker and you can raise as much money as you want overnight you know we're just kind of crazy you can have an ATM machine so the atom at the market facility and you can literally issue yourself shares and liquidate them on market which is really crazy so to go to go public it's a lot I know how to do it. You can reach out to me.
You can hire me. I'll teach you how to do it.
And there's lots of alternative markets too, like Australia, Canada, Frankfurt. All those markets are great.
And then you could graduate pretty quickly within three to six months to the NASDAQ. That's also very easy too, instead of filing an S1 here to go public here but yeah i mean it's great i mean i think that um a lot of companies that are going public would not be able to survive they're going public because they're trying to survive they're going public because they're almost dead that's what happens a lot of times and so it is a it's a it's a way for companies to survive through a bunch of um times.
So as you were scaling the tech company, one of the biggest focuses was on paid media, eyeballs, click-through rates, getting impressions, serving people across the top 500 websites in the world. Why should brands invest in marketing through that format of, let's call it the top 500 sites? Why should they be buying ads there? So that's a great question.
And that was part of my pitch too, because, you know, everyone's buying media on social media, right? So you have social media and you have saturation, you have bad days. And a lot of people have a lot of bad days.
And so it's kind of like, you know, my CPMs are really high, my click through rates are really low and conversion are really messed up. And I can't spend a lot.
These are all typical conversations with the buyers that are buying social, right? So buying Facebook and Instagram and even TikTok and, you know, other platforms. They have this, like, it's variability and inconsistency and things like that.
But hey, that's just one world, right? That's one world. How about this whole other world, right, that exists, the apps, right? There's so many, there are millions and millions of apps that are great places to buy media, like ads and, you know, and a variety of different types of placements.
Also websites, crushing still, web still crushing. You could buy, you know, you have a diet, you know, you have like supplement products and diet products and whatever you have, skincare.
You could buy literally on the exact type of sites that you're marketing you know the kind of products you have websites like webmd and like so many other places right there's so many sites and i would say that that really diversifies your revenue stream because you're not relying on the walled garden which is facebook and the other places right now relying on them you could distribute your your your spend across, you know, 50 different places, if five of them go down, who cares, you know? It's not going to really affect your revenue as much. So it's for whenever you have a distributed revenue model, meaning your revenue is coming from a lot more than, you know, 10, 15 different places, meaning the ideal situation is never have a client or a revenue stream or a marketing source that's generating

more than 10% of your revenue, right? And if you do, then you're going to wake up fucked one day and you're like, fuck, I lost half my revenue. It's like, dude, this common business sense, all these guys that end up like, you know, building businesses and, and stuff and skipping college and skipping business school and all this other stuff, you get really lucky and it's really great.
But fundamentally, business school will teach you that you never, you never live in a moment where your revenue stream is distributed, you know, anywhere more than 10%. You're fucked.
So for these large companies like household name brands, why is it important for them to still be marketing when you're McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Netflix? Like why should they still be spending money on ads? Relevance, right? So we like stuff that's relevant to the culture. I think there's a lot of products that are consumed every day and it's not like a one-time purchase, right? You're going to drink Coca-Cola every day.
You're going to drink, you know, like whatever it is. Olipop is on fire right now, right? Not only is Olipop great, not bad for you, like Coca-Cola and all the other things, but they know how to market.
They're marketing in all the right places, right? They're reaching the demographics that care about that stuff, you know? So how do you market, how do you like differentiate an Olipop from a Coca-Cola? What if Olipop started marketing in all the places that Coca-Cola was? Those people would not care really so much because people that are drinking Coca-Cola, I guarantee they don't give a fuck about their health. You know, they don't really care as much drinking Coca-Cola.
Sorry. I didn't mean that.
Um, but anyways, but what I mean is, um, Olipop has a very specific demographic. It's people that care about health, wellness, fitness, right? And maybe even spirituality.
Those are the places that they're going to market. And it makes a lot of sense, you know, from that standpoint.
So they have to continue to market because you got to stay relevant. You got to spend the money.
And if you could figure out how to track your revenue based on your marketing spend, then you can scale those marketing streams and you continuously have marketing pay for itself. But tracking is really key.
So we're not talking about direct response marketing or ads or any of that stuff that click through to a landing page you can buy but you could do demographic you know reasonably on a reasonable level you can put up billboards and tv and like whatever else you're doing in a specific region and understand hey we're spending x number of dollars in this region this region is generating x number of dollars in revenue if you basically understand that from that standpoint then you can even mark you can market anything so why do you think that corporations these brands should have a charity component to them i think it's a huge thing you know from a from the standpoint of what's you know like from a moral perspective i think that giving back is really key and i think the people the way people perceive it is really important but i think the biggest part of this whole thing and i'm sure daniel agree with me is that understate like the tracking of the marketing dollars these we need to understand where the these charities are deploying the dollars or how they're spending them and how much of every dollar is going towards the good versus the management you know what i'm saying so all that stuff is really key and i think a lot of us are scared of of um philanthropy because we just don't know where the money is going and it's very hard to understand that way there's a dollar here and at the end of it we hear stories like we end up with like 10 cents you know like towards the cause and the rest of it is just all like managing and marketing and stuff like so if we could get a better understanding of that i think it'll make a big difference and i think the brand spending money or contributing money to these causes and the educator saying that hey but it's like 80 of the every dollar is going to go towards the good you know then it's like oh great awesome that makes a lot more sense so you've been on health kick. You've been very focused on it over the years, and now you're getting more and more deeply integrated.
So let's say it takes another 100 years before you pass away. You're 140, 150, 160, 180 years old one day with your bionic arms and you're surviving on.
But along the path, you take seven more companies public and you accumulate billions of dollars. How do you determine how to split up that empire that you build cash-wise? You know, it's an interesting question.
And because I'm not the, you know, the living beyond, you know, the years thing, because I see that eventually happening anyway. Some of them are doing with cats, right? A cat can live to like 35 soon with this injection.
You you know it's really it's it's kidney related it's only a matter of time before they figure it out we'll be in like 125s and you know before our lifetime's over whatever it is i'm not sure if that's a good thing or not you know but um but i think that you know from the standpoint of like dividing up your you know your empire or your legacy at the. I really, I don't really have a lot to say about that because I think that, um, you know, once you identify, it's kind of like going back to the last question.
Once you identify where the best places are for, you know, like the, the best, the, you know, most efficient, inefficient places to put the money in as far as like the most good will be contributed. 80, 85% of every dollar is, you know, is actually activated, you know, that kind of thing, then you can figure that out.
But I think that from a legacy standpoint, it depends on everyone's, you know, family structure and who's left and, and all that stuff. But I, you know, from my standpoint, I've done a lot of really interesting things, you know, about, you know, asset, I don't know if you want to call it, you know, visibility or, you know, protection and stuff like that.
But a lot of it has to do with it. But and you can you can be charitable causes yourself, you know, and from that standpoint, and structures, and I own nothing myself, and everything's in Cook Islands and another or Nevis Corp and stuff like that, you know, and from that standpoint and structures and I own nothing myself and everything's in Cook Islands and another Nevis Corp and stuff like that, you know, so, you know, there's, there's, there's ways to, to make it a lot more simpler and dealing with the taxes a lot more easier too, if you keep the assets out of the country, if they're in another, another country that is, you know, that is kind that is kind of shielded so so last question we're going into a very tumultuous time for people's brains the media is bombarding people with both sides of the political situation wars overseas there's a lot of picking and choosing sides and people are in this crazy mental state a lot of times i've watched you at peace and calm in the chaos while there's a lot of noise and the world going around you.
What could you say to people to stay calm in the chaos that's approaching to us at the end of 2024? This is an easy one for me. Yes, I'm very peaceful.
I'm probably one of the calmest people you'll meet. And I think a lot of it has to do with control, right? How much control do we personally have over a lot of stuff that's going on? I'll even give you another example, which is really close to home.
It's like, hey, I'm not a liberal, okay? And I'm not really, I'm not a Trump fanatic either. I'm like somewhere in the middle, right? Somewhere in the middle.
It's a thing that we can't control in California, unfortunately. It's really weird.
I mean, am I saying don't go out and vote? I'm not saying that that I'm just saying that just be prepared for the outcome because California is a liberal state you know it's a blue state so it's kind of crazy things like what's going on in Palestine what's going on Israel what's all that stuff what's going on in in Ukraine still by the way what's happening in Russia and Ukraine and all these other places hey by the way I was at every demonstration here in LA you saw me with the flags the ukraine when the ukraine war started i was in ukraine one week before the war started and then the war happened and it's very close to home for me because i have a pretty big team in ukraine i bought a company in 2015 in ukraine and so these people are you know they're you know they're great they're like family to me you know so i am i have a very close tie to ukraine but you know there's demonstrations and i went to all of them and you know we're like all about it and pushing it all on social media and nothing changed right i'm not i'm not like saying that don't do anything and don't voice your opinions and i'm not saying that i'm just saying that voicing your opinions and creating conflict and tension between friends and local, you know, neighborhoods and like communities is not the way to go because we do not have any fucking control over any of this at all. us demonstrating here all over LA for Ukraine for like months not once did Putin say damn there's Ted's

over there in Beverly Hills you know what

I gotta stop this is embarrassing

Ted is judging me over there you know and his friends those guys they're there you know I gotta stop I gotta stop you know he didn't do that once you know who I am you know like I was doing all that shit didn't give a fuck so he didn't didn't affect the war in Ukraine at all okay what's going on with Palestine and Israel? I'm going to talk about something really, really controversial here. There's a cafe here called Moro's Cafe.
Behind Fred Siegel, used to be Fred Siegel on Melrose. Great place, love the food.
I still go there. Nobody goes there anymore because there was a lot of Israeli demonstrators, a lot of stuff going on over there because they got really upset that the owner was demonstrating in front of a place of worship, in front of a Jewish temple on a Sunday.
Jews worship on a Saturday, not on a Sunday. What was happening there on a Sunday was an auction for land in the settlements in the Gaza, right?

Which is an illegal auction, by the way. And she was protesting that illegal auction.
And they got videos of her, you know, protesting in front of a synagogue, right? And they, they, those videos went viral. They went all over the internet and they came over there, death threats for her.
And, and they and like all this crazy crazy stuff i mean they're threatening to kill her they're threatening to kill her employees they they you know they boycotted the restaurant they did all this crazy stuff and you know people are not going to the restaurant anymore i mean i still fucking go there food's great you know i will continue to go there because it's great i'm not involved in any of that shit and the same time, what happened? The war end because people stopped going to this restaurant to the war end. Did anything happen? Did the Israeli prime minister say, Hey, you know what? Good looking out.
That's great. You know, or did the Palestinians come and say something? No one said anything because no one fucking, you know, like we can't affect what's going on over there.
We just don't have any impact. It's their war.
We are entitled to have feelings about it. We have friends that are affected by it personally because their families are affected by it.
I have friends in Israel, in Tel Aviv. I have friends that have family and, you know, and it sucks, you know, it really does.
But at the same time, I'm not going to create animosity with somebody who has another belief. I just don't think it's right because we can't make it and we can't affect it.
Why create tension when we can't have impact? Zero impact. That's a situation that has zero impact.
So my position on that is don't fucking talk about it and get people upset unless it's actually going to make some sort of an effect or impact that's positive. So it's not worth it.
Where can people find you on social? At TedSkilla on Instagram. Two L's.
All right, guys. The whole point of the Money Mondays is for you to have these intense discussions with your friends, family, and followers.
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