From Myspace to AdTech Empire ft. Ted Dhanik | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby

0:28I've been doing for seven years. We go at Craig's. coffee in 10 years but since I'm a closer I guess I have to right today's a big day man you know 10 years deep and uh you broke the fast hopefully what happens to me hopefully it doesn't mess you up man you're a health nut so hopefully it doesn't throw you off yeah uh you want to give uh the audience like just a just a quick overview of who is Ted Danik sure so I started my career in the mid-90s in Silicon Valley I grew up in the Bay Area and um I worked for a lot of dot-com companies back in the dot-com boom, and some of them did well, some of them did not.

1:03That brought me to LA, a company called Lower My Bills. It was one of the original guys there. We sold that company to Experian. So I know the mortgage business pretty well and credit repair as well. And shortly after that, joined MySpace at its beginning, and we sold that in 2005, and I stayed until 2008, and the earn-outs ended. I was tasked with solving a problem for MySpace, which was MySpace had 7 billion ads per day. They were going under-monetized, and I needed to build a technology to help them monetize better. So I left, and in 2009, I started a digital ad company called Engage BDR, which is essentially tasked with solving a yield problem.

1:50So lots of ad companies or websites back then had lots of traffic, but they weren't monetizing it well. They had these rev share deals. They couldn't understand the value of those rev share deals in real time. So they were basically cannibalizing their own revenue. So I built a management system, supply-side platform to help digitize all the yield. And I did pretty well. MySpace was our first client, and we were profitable since the first month. We raised no money, no debt, no equity, did hundreds of millions in revenue, and in 2017, took it public on an IPO, raised about$80 million while we were public, and then merged it into another company, sold it, and left about three years ago.

2:35During that process, we came up with an idea to – it's pretty interesting – to figure out how to digitize lottery tickets in California. Like, you know, you couldn't buy a lottery ticket online. It was really weird, right? So I came up with this concept called Lotto Gopher, where we had relationships with liquor stores everywhere. Because gaming laws in California, gaming was sold to the Native Americans, online gaming. You couldn't do online gaming in any capacity in California because Native Americans own that. So it was illegal. So you literally had to do a gopher model. It's kind of like Postmates for lottery tickets.

3:12you put you know your information you know as far as like what kind of lottery ticket you want or you could be a part of a pool or something and then the bet slips would be printed at the liquor store and popped into the machine that was the workaround for digitizing lottery tickets online anyways we took that company public and uh and then sold it within a couple years so and then now it's like i don't know what happened somebody bought it and some somebody's still around but yeah it's a really interesting space so we did that and then now currently over the past three years. I've been focused on, I have a short-term rental business.

3:46We have about 50 properties in LA. And additionally, we have, I have a credit repair agency for 20 years. So that credit repair agency is thriving currently under, you know, unfortunately under the current economy and all the stuff going on with everyone. There's a lot of pain out there and we're helping people turn their lives around. So, um, it's still an exciting space 20 to 20 years later. Wow. So how many companies active right now? Two. Two companies active. What's your favorite one? Um, you know, after doing all this stuff, you know, it's like work is kind of like, you know, um, there's passion, you know, and I think that, do we have the burning desire at this moment right now?

4:28Um, I think there are some problems that need to be solved out there, but um you know i think the credit repair business is pretty exciting because we get to really have a pulse on you know personal finance and the finance everything that's happening in the world conversation you and i had about hey how's mortgage business impacted with all the stuff happening right now the high rates and fire insurance issues and all that stuff you know so we can't understand that pretty well we have the pulse on it so i think that that's an interesting space california is very tough for short-term rental business specifically los angeles because of regulation and the politics and there's a lot of lobby money from the hotel, you know, hotel lobby is very strong.

5:08So they've been successful at, you know, kind of breaking the Airbnb business out there. So, so where your properties are all out of state? No, they're all in LA. It's been tough, but yeah, we've figured out how to, how to, you know, maneuver for now, but there's always something coming up, you know, there's, there's always going to be, some change that's happening that's not in our favor. And it's been really rough. So possibly going to sell all those properties soon? We try not to sell any real estate, try to buy it. But it's been an experience. Even if we wanted to sell right now, we couldn't sell because all the equity that we thought we had is kind of gone because all the fire sales in all the neighborhoods, all the comps, right?

5:51So that's another discussion as well because we have so many properties, and we thought we have really great LTVs, like 50 % in most of them, and then you start seeing the comps. Next-door neighbors are selling for 50 % of the value, stuff like that that's happening. Comps are like that now? Really bad, really bad. So, yeah, so all this equity we thought we had is gone, completely gone. I mean, you're not in the Palisades, for crying out loud. No, we're in the Palisades. We'd be better there. We're in West Hollywood Hills, mostly. So you've seen massive declines in value. Massive declines, yeah, because people can't afford to hang on.

6:27And the fire insurance is gone, so you're on a state fair plan for only a portion of it. And then your banks are going to push insurance, which is pretty expensive. Some of our clients are paying like$4 ,000 or$5 ,000 a month on hazard insurance. That's the forced coverage from the mortgage banks. It's pretty insane. Dude, that's insane. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty wild. A lot of these people were forced to refi because the economy is so bad. They had to pull out cash. They're sitting at 7.5%, 8.5%. These non-QM loans and these DSCRs are so bad. So it's very hard. It's tough. And you can't refi anytime soon because we don't see rates coming down that much.

7:08And the fire insurance, you can't get insurance for the loan. Can't get insurance, especially all those$4 million,$5 million,$6 million homes. They're not selling because you can't get coverage for them. And it's like, what do you do? Um, so homes aren't selling, they're not selling because of fire insurance and because of the rates, both of them. Not, it's not just one. So if we had like one of them change, then stuff will start selling again. The only sales are fire sales, you know, and people can't afford them. And you can't remove them from the appraisals as outliers because they're actually good homes, you know?

7:38So we have no equity anymore. It's gone, you know? That's crazy. It's crazy. Equity gone overnight. I didn't even realize that LA is toast with their values. It's pretty bad. Yeah. And it was just like all these celebrities who own homes there are just. We're all fucked. So I had a home. I have a home up in West Hollywood Hills two and a half years ago. Last appraisal was 7.95 million. Next door neighbor right now is selling. And that's a 5 ,500 square foot home. Crazy views. Great home. All glass. Next door neighbor. Same home. Same kind of home. 6 ,700 square feet, much bigger than my property, selling his home for$4 million right now.

8:24$4 million. He's been on market for six months. He's getting an offer. He's going to break at$3.5 million. Dude, you can't even build half that house for$3.5 million. He's going to break at$3.5 million. And by the way— It costs more than$1 ,000 a square foot to build that. It does. But if he sells at$3.5 million, 6 ,700 square feet, what are we, at like 500 bucks a foot, basically. 500 bucks a foot. My last appraisal was 8 million bucks. What do you think? First of all, I can't tap any equity because technically equity is gone, right? Can't tap any equity. Equity is gone. You know, it's like your whole net worth is cut in half because all the properties are looking like that basically too, right?

9:03So it's been a year. Damn. It's troubling, you know? Time to move to Newport Beach, bro. Yeah, I don't know about the valuations here, though. We're overvalued here because everybody from L.A. came here. Yeah, that's great. Everyone's leaving, going to Miami over there. Yeah, here in Newport Beach, I can't tell you how many Palisades families are just on my kids' baseball team. Sure. Yeah, that's great. Just like 20 % of the team is from Palisades. So the Palisades is an interesting challenge. So I have quite a few friends that were in the Palisades, and some of them did really well with recovering their losses.

9:46The insurance covered 100 % for most people. Not for most people. Let me tell you what happened. And there's a vast majority of my friends who were affected by the fires that here's what happened to all of them. It's pretty crazy. So they bought their homes 20 years ago. let's say they paid you know three million bucks for their home they never updated the policies to increase coverage now this is the vast majority of the people okay so what happened was out of a three million dollar purchase price how much of it was dwelling like two million bucks or something right never updated the policies you can't build that house for two million bucks it's going to cost you like four or five now to build it maybe even more because you know all the crazy demand over there so what happens is they they get a check for two million bucks doesn't go to them goes to the mortgage mortgage company gets you know the the two million bucks as they have a balance on the home still and then they end up with hopefully their mortgage is paid off and they end up with a lot and then that's it they end up with a lot and they they don't have the means to go and build another home so they're selling you hear them you hear about them selling the lots right now even gavin newsom's out there buying lots for you know for um pennies for pennies he's buying lots to build you know housing for you know um the you know what how do we call that you know pc but you know you know i mean right so he's building privilege they're gonna put like yeah they're putting like canned homes on them um exactly you know homes for like you know manufactured homes low income homes tiny homes low income homes yeah so they're buying the lots for pennies because nobody can do anything with a lot.

11:26So I have several friends, the same thing happened to them. The insurance didn't cover some, most of the property in the home either. They got a limit on that as well from like back, you know, like whenever they bought the home, nobody updated their policy. So they paid out whatever they're supposed to pay out. Yeah, obviously it's the fault of the homeowner to not update the policy, but this happened to the majority of the people. And that's why you're finding all these lots that are available right now because they can't afford to build on them so it's a big problem people are out there buying lots right now and you know there's gonna be there's a pretty big opportunity from that perspective but it's pretty fucked up you know so there's a really big opportunity for those to come in yeah but man i would not buy in palisades i mean the probability of another fire if they build it again who knows i mean i love palisades though it's great but yeah it is you know that was i feel there was a manufactured fire it was not a real fire it was a manufactured fire Yeah, for sure.

12:20So that could happen again, too. But, you know, all of this starting to make sense where people are, you know, there's just a lot of like things happening right now that are, you know, that there's a lot of opportunity from demise. Right. So fires happen. A lot of people lost their homes. Guess what? Now people can now you now you can go in and buy, you know, these lots at the on the full they're sitting on the floor, basically, you know, like you could never buy lots in that neighborhood. you know now you can you know so i also feel like you know covid came and you know there was a lot of destruction from covid economy economic destruction we have not recovered since then you know there's so much pain from that and that created you know the bottom right again so there's a lot of moments where we see the bottom happening a lot you know again and so i you know we have a different perspective because when we talk to clients we're talking clients every day on the credit repair aside and all we hear is can imagine is demise right yeah and we're seeing more right now we're seeing more volume right now than we did in 2008 and 2009 which is crazy because you know i do economic updates every day and it's like oh you know job reports came in or we're seeing it bounce back and in in rates or we're you know inflation's cooling and all this high level economic upbeat stuff but really like if you get granular like a lot of that is just like there's so much chaos in the economy right now it's a lot of a lot of fluff like i i don't know you guys i don't know what you're seeing here but over there you know you drive around west hollywood and all these iconic places are all gone they're all gone like chin chin gone petite four gone um pink taco tessa um catch steak um mxo brand new restaurant just opened six months ago what do you mean like catch steak is gone in hollywood gone yeah they're gone what do you mean like they just shut down because they're all out of business yeah pink taco is out of business gone and i'm telling you there's countless more all these iconic places gone and this all happened this year so it's pretty um it's pretty concerning you know so there's a lot a lot happening that's uh you know that's a that's bit i don't know it's consistent with what i see you know on these credit reports consistent with what i see now your your perspective is different because you're here in newport and i feel like you guys are like a little bit shielded from you know from some of that stuff too but um in it you know you see the the loan origination volume you know that is a pretty good indicator you know yeah i I mean, right now, for my business model, I told you kind of like we thrive on bad economies, my specific model.

15:08But there's only a handful of us. We're considered a mega broker. And there's only five of us. So we thrive on other mortgage companies going out of business because then it's an opportunity for them to come cling to a mega company who has all the resources and the money and can withstand economic turmoil. yeah so as we grow there that's also kind of an indicator that other companies are going out of business so we're continuing we acquire companies for zero dollars sure you know and we're the larger the company that comes to us is an indicator like the more demise that's happening sure and so if a company with 100 guys comes over it's like dude this is tough times yeah because this company was making sure tens of millions you know albert presciato of course yeah i was talking to him the other days uh i think there are kind of feelings would love albert to join us i've mentioned it many times you know but big ego i'll get him here yeah i'm like albert you'd make 10 times more money and he makes a lot of money right you know if he's listening albert yo i'm still gonna tell you yeah he's got like you know he's got this whole hispanic community he does yeah i'll help him dominate yeah yeah that they're they're you know from that perspective he's got that world and he's got their trust and i don't know i've keynoted uh his driven events too they were fun yeah yeah he's a good guy on his podcast and stuff i like elbert um i saw a funny tiktok made that made fun of him one of his podcasts before it was hilarious yesterday i'm gonna send it to him there's a lot of that out there yeah he because he's controversial guy super controversial and i'd have to tell him he comes to my dinners on i have a boys dinner on thursday i have 80 guys in a dinner club in LA.

16:49I've been doing for seven years. We go at Craig's. I rotate 12 different guys every week on Thursdays. And Albert will come. And, you know, I would have to sit next to him and tell him, like, bro, what the fuck did you say in this podcast, you know? You gotta stop sometimes, you know? He's like, bitch, I've been driving to Rolls Royce since, you know, like something like that. I'm like, bro, come on, dude. It's so crazy. It's so funny. I know. Bro, I don't publish anything. Like, nobody knows anything about me, you know, like other than the shit they see. I wear beads. Yeah. We're third world immigrants, bro.

17:25Right, right, right. But at the same time, it's like I'm very spiritual, you know, so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's staying brooded in your spirituality and your faith is like what keeps you like grounded. Sure. Absolutely. It's all endogenous, you know. Yeah. It's a big part of my show here even. It's like, you know, everything I am is because I come from a persecuted Christian community in Egypt. Like we came because of that. So that's why I keep that mentality. I keep my, I say sixth world roots because I'm from a third world of a third world. Yeah. No, that's great. Yeah. You know, I believe it.

17:59You're not white. I got it. No, no, no. But it's, it's, you know, I say it, I say it on podcast, I say it in my book. I say it like. He's Egyptian guys. Yeah. Yeah. It's just part of my identity. And like, I, I, I come from like a really poor part of Cairo, the poorest part, you know, like there's like a handful of really, really poor parts and you just meet me. And then here I am in the richest part of America. So the dichotomy is insane. Here I am from the absolute poorest. Now I'm in the absolute richest. Trying to instill a mindset like that in my kids is the biggest struggle. My kids, their classmates, their parents won Super Bowls.

18:41Right, right, right. Yeah, it's crazy. I would have, you know, they come to, they, they know people that own sports teams. Yeah. Like I would have never even imagined going to a sports game, let alone like sitting in the owner's box ever in my life. You know, my kids just do that. Like if they're not going to a sports in a box, like, like what are we doing? That's wild. Yeah. So, you know, I don't have kids, but you know, eventually when I do, I'll just show them my film, the film I started. It was like Slumdog Millionaire. You know, that was me. You just kidding. I'm just kidding. Yeah. It's basically the same story.

19:11Totally. Yeah. I came from India. That's what it looked like. That's real. That's real. That was me for all intents and purposes. It's cool to have that root and then just maintain that mentality, especially in this journey of success that you've had. Let's dive into it, man. All these exits, all these brands, what was MySpace like? For me, I was intrigued by MySpace. you know like i loved myspace when it was around it started it was the catalyst of facebook it was the catalyst to this world we're in right now the social media dominant world we're in yeah i mean we uh pretty much you know for i would say like you know like the wide version we invented social media you know i think that we were like the we weren't the first social media platform there was a bunch of them before us you know it was like friendster and a couple others but you know for We're the one that took off pretty fast.

20:10We actually went after Friendster to copy Friendster and we ended up doing it way better. But that was the idea. Is Friendster still around? No, I don't know. Friendster's not around. But the idea really was we wanted to build a non-taboo dating site. That was what MySpace was supposed to be. So Tom, he was on Match.com way back in the days. And being on a dating site back then was super taboo. It was weird. you know so you know he wanted to do something that's a little bit more you know less taboo you know and so that's that was the idea we took off like you know you know like super super viral really fast within the first week we're starting to get offers you know like it was that crazy and we had no idea that it was going to be that you know that big or that great and you know we just kept growing and growing and then i felt like you know we we touched so much pop culture which was really exciting we were always around all these like nikki six and tommy lee and you know 50 cent and even diddy yes you know we were around i didn't go to those parties i went to a bunch of other parties you know we we discovered i'm sorry we toured danity kane one of his making the band um artists i think two like one or two of them testified against him in the trial it's so funny but i know those girls i've known them for we did like 50 city tour with them so i knew him really well.

21:28It was a really great time. It was so much fun. Like it was really, really was truly so much fun. My title was VP of fun. And so I was head of all strategic marketing and it was great. It was just, it was a different time, you know, and I came off of the thing for me, which was like so much contrast was I came off of a corporate job, lower my bills, you know, right before that I was at lower my bills and lower my bills was, you know, it was like 15 hour days selling to like countrywide, you know what I mean? And these big, huge banks, you know, and it was just all big business development deals and just selling leads.

22:04And, you know, at a certain point, you start wondering, you know, where's the value, you know, like, really, like, what change, what behavioral change are we making in people, you know, like, what are we doing that is really, that's really helping people, you know, I mean, besides helping them get a cheaper mortgage, you know, obviously, that's a commodity right so you get to a point where it's like i'm selling something for money and it's really just didn't sit right with me for a while and then so then i said i'm not doing sales or business development ever again you know so after that exit i just said i'm done and then myspace was purely marketing that's what my degree is in and it was completely different you know i didn't use anything i learned in college by the way so um besides the discipline and um you know it was it was it was great it was just tom and i running around the country you know was this you and tom just running the show no i mean there was a bunch of a bunch of people but i mean as far as like the people myspace people would see us we're the only real people that the myspace people that um they would see you know we were the tangible myspace face you know it was me and it was tom you know and tom would be you know everyone saw tom as their first friend you know and then he would make appearances you know we'd have parties all around the country everywhere that's kind of how we promoted myspace in the beginning it was myspace parties and we evolved pretty quickly to um other stuff like content acquisition deals and stuff but um that was that was kind of it you know it was so much fun and um myspace music blew up it was really huge and we had a record label with jimmy ivine interscope records called myspace records which is which myspace is now just music anyways right i don't know what it is now the guys in Orange County own it so basically what happened was MySpace was sold after us to um from News Corp sold it to specific media those two brothers it was like Vanderhoek brothers specific media was a media company that was based in Orange County here they bought it and then part of their launch they gave Justin Timberlake seven million bucks to do an endorsement deal right so it was just part of it you know like but it was an endorsement deal didn't work really work out they tried to relaunch it didn't work and then um and then they that company got rebranded and went public and all this stuff to viant uh and viant is still based in orange county their public company and um they still own it and i've been trying to buy it there's a lot of controversy around this publicly because i've called them out publicly several times you know i've been reaching out to the brothers chris and i'm like hey look we're the only ones that can reactivate myspace so why don't you give it to us what would you do to buy it or will i just want the domain i don't want the brand i don't want anything i just want the domain so what would we do build a like instagram or you know tiktok killer we know exactly what we need to do it's super easy but you know to reactivate tom you know in that world because tom's happy he doesn't want to work you know he doesn't need to do anything he just likes doing what he does which is golf He plays golf.

25:02Where is he at? He plays golf here in Irvine. He has a house here in Irvine. He plays golf here. There's some sort of golf course. I don't know anything about golf, but he's been trying to get me to play with him for years. Probably plays a big canyon here in Newport. That's some white people shit. Just kidding. Sorry, Tiger. But I feel that – so he lives here. He lives in Vegas most of the time. And then he comes here, comes to West Hollywood, comes to Hawaii. So that's his thing. But yeah, so, you know, I think that, you know, I don't know. I mean, it was great. It was so much fun. There was a lot of value that we delivered to people.

25:39We're able to, I mean, I still get DMs from people. I met my wife on MySpace. I'm like, fuck, I'm sorry. No, no, it worked out. Okay, good. You know, that's great. Stuff like that, you know, so many artists we discovered. Dane Cook was discovered there. Even Sean Kingston, who's in jail now. So many huge artists were discovered on MySpace Remember Sean Kingston? Yeah, yeah, the reggae music guy Dude, he's in jail Him and his mom The chubby guy, right? The chubby guy Yeah, we did a lot of work with him I've known him forever I didn't even know that he went to jail He just went to jail recently Him and his mom, some sort of fraud I don't know, some kind of fraud I don't know, man Some crazy shit in Florida You know, Florida There's a lot of weird shit happening in Florida all the time Florida used to be the armpit of the universe.

26:25Now everyone moved there, so I don't know. You know why, right? Homestead. Yeah, yeah. So you know Dan Bilzerian's dad story? No. Dan Bilzerian's dad embezzled$100 million from the company he was working for a long time ago, right? He embezzled that money, had to go to prison, went to prison. The government's been trying to recover that money for a long time. The government ended up spending more than$100 million to recover the money, and then they finally quit. what he did that was really smart he kept the money here but they couldn't get it because he bought really crazy homes for all his kids in florida and each one of the homes were their primary residence for each one of the kids and they had like columns made out of gold and weird shit like that so it's part of the home you know so in florida they can't take your home so they couldn't take any of the homes one of the kids expatriated gave up his citizenship moved to cook islands and they started selling homes and transferring the money over there couldn't touch him that's how he got his money that's how Dan got his money initially I didn't know that Dan's inherited wealth the Armenians are always just a head Homestead Act that was genius for him to embezzle money go to Florida and all the kids are made they're all made and he's still in jail as a dad no I don't think so I don't know how much time he did but I'm sure he's out.

27:51This is like something that happened in the 80s or 90s. Wow. Yeah. What kind of company was that? I have no idea. You know all the celebrities. Oh, if you look it up, you'll find it. It's all over the internet. It's crazy. So why did you start in the mortgage industry? How did you get involved with Lower My Bills? Okay, so interesting story. I worked for a lot of dot-com companies in the 90s, and I ended up at a comparison shopping engine. Do you remember Price Grabber? Yeah. A price grabber, and then there was a bunch of them. The next tag was another one. So I ended up at next tag. Next tag was basically comparison shopping engine.

28:27So it's for software and shoes and electronic products and stuff like that. So basically this was the buyer's behavior before. Before you bought a TV or something like that online, you'd go to comparison shopping engine like price grabber. You put in the model number and you'll see all these vendors or sorry, all these retailers selling them, right? And they'd see their prices. And basically you'd buy it from – you'd find the lowest price from that comparison shopping engine and you click on it and it would take you to that site and you would buy it there. And we would get paid for the click, right?

29:03So we were Nextag and we were a comparison shopping engine, one of the biggest ones. We get paid for the click. So we had all these guys. Imagine all these electronic retailers on the site paying us for those clicks. It's basically like another search engine, right? But very specifically for these types of products. So when I got there, I said, okay, this is great. But how about we're selling leads, right? Because that's a lead, right? So how about LendingTree? LendingTree is on fire right now. LendingTree is killing it. But they're only doing TV. They were only doing TV at the time. Why don't we have a mortgage product?

29:36or a personal finance product, like credit cards or something. Okay, great. Let's try it. So we started. We got partnered with a mortgage broker, and we're live in a few states, and we started running ads on our own site to market, refi, and home purchase. And so we did that, and the stick rate was really strong. It was converting pretty well. So we started selling the leads. We started doing biz dev deals with banks to buy the leads, and there you go. and we got to a half a million bucks a day pretty quick. So that's how we got to that. And then so I was one of the five people in the country who knew the personal finance lead space really well digitally online, you know?

30:18So when I went to Lower My Bills, Lower My Bills was doing credit card and debt at the time. They weren't doing refi or home purchase, any mortgage products at all. So they hired me basically to kind of grow that business. So were you one of the executives there as well? and then you had you were part of the exit so you got a earn out there too absolutely yeah it's fun i mean it was good so i was talking about this i just came from another podcast by the way but this other podcast um i was talking about this this recipe right so i've always been at the right place at the right time and i've done it like at least four times right like a bunch of times but how you know like how are you at the right place at the right time is it a fluke is it random?

31:01Is it like, I'm fucking lucky? No, I'm not lucky. I'm fortunate, but I have figured out the recipe for right place at the right time. And the recipe is basically you just have to be around the right people all the time, right? And so what does the right people actually mean? It's quite different from eliminating the wrong people. It's not that. It's not only eliminating the wrong people, but it's strategically placing the exact people that do things really well or perfectly that you want to achieve and you want to do, right? So if you want to be really great in the printing business, you should be around people that are in the printing business, right?

31:38That understand that business. You want to be, you want to take your company public, you got to be around people like Robbie Lee, who taught me how to take my companies public and buy companies with no cash. We're just selling a dream, right? Using private paper, you know, stuff like that. So it's always about, it's always for me, it's always been about being around those people. And I've never had a plan for the future. I don't know what I'm going to do next. I never did. Just being around the right people, I could pick up opportunities pretty quickly and figure out how to add value in that sector and run.

32:08And one other thing that I do that I'm focused on is I don't care about monetization. I only care about adding value. Figuring out how to add tremendous value, eventually figuring out how to monetize it once you build some critical mass. So that's my mantra is a little bit different than a lot of other people wanting to build businesses and trying to figure out how to monetize before delivering the value. So it's a little bit different. Yeah, I can see that cadence in your career path because you're like, lower my bills, came, added value, added mortgage. MySpace, came, added value. So, you know, but these companies like the credit repair and the Airbnb, I mean, not right time.

32:53Yeah, so credit repair business is like – Airbnb. Credit repair business is huge, huge, huge value, right, for people because it changes their lives, right? I mean we feel really good about what we do because we give people another start. Like we get countless people coming to us saying I'm about to file bankruptcy, but my cousin is your client. and he told us that you could be the alternative and we're looking at their debt and you've got$50 ,000 in debt and you want to file bankruptcy? Are you out of your fucking mind? You're crazy. No, here's what we're going to do. And so we save them from that.

33:24So we feel... I mean, how can you... If they don't have 50 grand to pay the debt, they can't afford the$1 ,500 payments. What can they do? Oh, there's so much we can do. First of all, they get sucked into debt settlement companies. Which destroy... It is like a bankruptcy. Which destroy them. So let me tell you what those companies do. debt settlement companies will collect all their fees well by the way their fees are like 75 percent of the amount that you agree to pay them in total right which i told i had someone come here in my office today like he had 40 grand in debt and he wants to like buy again i'm like dude i'm just going to tell you exactly the debt settlement company does yeah don't make your payments for four months call them in four or five months and settle them 20 cents on the dollar yourself i don't even do that i'll tell you what i do so basically so that's all my company is going to say you got $40 ,000 in debt, you're going to pay us$20 ,000.

34:11And out of that$20 ,000, we're going to save$5 ,000 to settle with them. And then$15 ,000 of it is going to be our fee. But by the way, we're not going to start paying, we're not going to negotiate a deal or start paying your creditors until we collect 100 % of our fees. So it could be like two years down the road, we've collected all of our fees. And then now we're going to negotiate a deal, right? They've already wrote off the debt. They've already wrote off the debt. But in this case, in the 24 months, if you stop paying them, guess what happens? Let's say you paid them$14 ,000 out of 15 that you committed to pay them.