Ted Dhanik
Appearances
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
My click through rates are really low and conversion rates are really messed up and I can't spend a lot. These are all typical conversations with the buyers that are buying social rights of buying Facebook and Instagram and and even TikTok and, you know, other other platforms. It's they have this like it's variability and inconsistency and things like that. But hey, that's just one world. Right.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 a variety of different types of placements. Also, websites. Crushing still. Web's still crushing. You could buy... You have supplement products and diet products and whatever you have. Skincare.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
You could buy literally on the exact type of sites that you're marketing, the kind of products you have. Websites like WebMD and so many other places. There's so many sites. 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? Not relying on them.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
If you distribute your spend across 50 different places, if five of them go down, who cares? It's not going to really affect your revenue as much.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
is 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?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 at some really good ones, was one of the early original guys at a company called Lower My Bills, sold it to Experian, did really well.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
And if you do, then you're going to wake up fucked one day and you'll be like, fuck, I lost half of 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 percent. You're fucked.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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. So how do you 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Because people that are drinking Coca-Cola, I guarantee you they don't give a fuck about their health. They don't really care as much. Drinking Coca-Cola, sorry, I didn't mean that. But what I mean is Olipop has a very specific demographic. It's people that care about health, wellness, fitness, right?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
But you could do demographic reasonably on a reasonable level. You can put up billboards and TV and 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 market anything.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
We need to understand where 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 philanthropy because we just don't know where the money is going. And it's very hard to understand philanthropy.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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, it jumped on Myspace at its early days and stayed until about 2008. 2009, I wanted to solve a problem that Myspace faced.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 we if we could get a better understanding of that i think it'll make a big difference and i think the brand's spending money or contributing money to these causes and the educators 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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. Something they're doing with cats, right? A cat can live to like 35 soon with this injection. You know, it's really it's kidney related. It's only a matter of time before they figure us out.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
We'll be in the 125s before our lifetime's over, whatever it is. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. But I think that from the standpoint of dividing up your empire or your legacy at the end of it, I don't really have a lot to say about that because I think that once you identify... It's kind of like going back to the last question. Once you identify where...
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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,
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 in another
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
nevis corp and stuff like that you know so you know there's there's um there's ways to to make it a lot more um 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 of shielded so
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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? Like, I'll even give you another example, which is really close to home. It's like, hey, I'm not I'm not a liberal. OK.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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. Am I saying don't go out and vote? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that just be prepared for the outcome because California is a liberal state. It's a blue state, so it's kind of crazy.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
It had about seven billion ads a day. They're going under-monetized, so I built a company
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Things like what's going on in Palestine, what's going on in Israel, what's all that stuff. What's going on? 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 L.A. You saw me with the flags. The Ukraine, when the Ukraine war started, I was in Ukraine one week before the war started.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 have a very close tie to Ukraine. But.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 took that company public in 2017 in 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 L.A. for Ukraine for like months. Not once did Putin say, damn, there's Ted's over there in Beverly Hills. You know what? I got to stop. This is embarrassing.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Ted is judging me over there, you know, and his friends, those guys. They're there. You know, I got to stop. I got to stop. You know, he didn't do that once. You know, I was doing all that shit. So he didn't didn't affect the war in Ukraine at all. OK, what's going on with Palestine? In Israel. I'm going to talk about something really, really controversial here.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Jews worship on a Saturday. Not on a Sunday. What was happening there on a Sunday was an auction for land in 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
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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're protesting there and like all this crazy crazy stuff i mean they're threatening to kill her they're threatening to kill her employees they you know they boycotted the restaurant they did all this crazy stuff
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
and you know people are not going to the restaurant anymore i mean i still 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 and also at the same time what happened the war end because people stopped going to this restaurant did the war end did anything happen did the israeli prime minister say hey you know what Good looking out.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
That's great. Or do the Palestinians come and say something? No one said anything because no one fucking... 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
I have friends that have family and... And it sucks. 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 affect it. Why create tension when we can't have impact? Zero impact. That's a situation that has zero impact.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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. It's not worth it.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
At TedSkilla on Instagram. Two L's.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 who I am.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Yeah, so at the time, you know, it was interesting because MySpace 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 you. It's kind of like a poker game, right?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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, 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, lower my bills.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
And then... On the other side, for Myspace, it's like Myspace blew up really fast, so people just really wanted to be part of a rocket ship. 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Or you could be part of a company that's got a lot of perks and a lot of really interesting things, so you could attract employees that way. I always feel that 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 always had really pretty deep interviewing strategies.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So we did like seven interviews for a lot of candidates and that we'd find the right people. We use Craigslist a lot back in the days and there are a lot of recruiters that you'd hire. We hire recruiters in-house. would hire recruiters in house and that would be the best way to attract talent.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Well, you know, there's two states of mind. Like 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 I 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?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 the company. That's one. But I like the other side when you're when you are in rocket ship mode and when you're growing as fast as or faster than you ever have.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So I did that stuff there and I did really well and it monetized well and it drove it to, you know, over a million dollars a day in revenue. And then at MySpace 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 MyAds and I had a lot of input on that as well.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So from that standpoint, I saw, 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 at the end of that because the contracts expired in 2008 and it was time to go at MySpace.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
We had a run and now Rupert Murdoch continued destroying the business and he did. 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
And then from there, I learned a lot, too. 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So you look at your business, right? So if 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Now, I, you know, we've... We've been in crypto. We've, you know, we've done that. 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. Now, the investment side, you got three things, right? Yeah. One, you got to generate revenue for yourself or generate income.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Second, you got to save. And third, you have to invest it. 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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?
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So for the last few years, my business, 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. Um, it does well, but it's not typical. It's not what most people have in real, in terms of real estate.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
They're not leasing out their prop. They're leasing out their properties for longterm. I did the exact opposite. I run my real estate portfolio like a hotel. We re we rent them out every single night, short term rentals. And I, I return a lot more profit and revenue that way. Um, it just, it's just been a better business for me from that standpoint.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So, you know, it's a bit different for, for everyone, but I look at it very differently.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So we have coaches for everything. You know, it's kind of funny because people are always hiring us 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, you know, a coach of some sort. Right. So it's fantastic.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 specifically, aligned with people that are better than you at the exact things that you want to be good at.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 crazy crushing it, and I'm going to try to add some value in their lives and align myself with them.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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, we spend a lot of money on coaching ourselves, you know, a lot of mentoring and coaching, whatever it is.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 end win part is the most important part.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 gonna do it again because we have this unique talent And not a lot of people do.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Taking company public, going through the fire, walking through coals. It's like not Tony Robbins coals. The coals are actually on fire. You're walking through that, and then somehow you feel accomplished, even though you get beat up every single day. You feel really accomplished because it's really hard to do. But you do gain this thing called accountability, which is unparalleled.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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, they eventually did a grilled cheese truck. Anyway, so he needed some value from me. So he wanted me to help him market Grilled Cheese Truck.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So I went to these companies, these startups and a variety of different companies and basically said, hey, we're looking to go public. We're going to roll this whole thing up and all of us are going to share the upside in a public exit. And it worked and it did really well.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So without me being able to go public, selling the dream to acquire anything that was private was is kind of impossible because they don't have the ability to liquidate their shares whenever they want to. Right. So there is a purpose for that and a world for that. A lot of times people prefer to stay private.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
There's some really huge businesses that are private that will never go public, which, you know. at that, you know, there'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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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,
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
Two minutes and 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.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
You can issue shares at a small discount to a broker and you can raise as much money as you want overnight, which is kind of crazy. You can have an ATM machine at the market facility and you can literally issue yourself shares and liquidate them on market, which is really crazy. To go public, it's a lot of work. I know how to do it. You can reach out to me. You can hire me.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
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 S-1 here to go public here. But yeah, I mean, it's great.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
I mean, I think that 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's a way for companies to survive through a bunch of painful times.
The Money Mondays
Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 E96
So that's a great question. And that was part of my pitch, too, because, you know, everyone's buying media and 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.