Revolutionizing Shopping and Giving ft. Kenyatto Jones | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 62

0:03What's up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closers, the podcast where we bring you conversations with innovators and disruptors making big moves and creating a lasting impact on what's up to do you know what's a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good for a good insights, inspiration, and game-changing ideas. Please welcome the founder and CEO of GiveBucks, Ken Jones. Good one. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm actually not the CEO. I'm the founder and chief strategist of the company, but I appreciate the introduction.

0:46Well, the founder is chief strategy officer, still the founder. You know, I love the concept of GiveBucks. I love what you're doing with it and I love the mission behind it. Thank you. Now I like to start this show off with the same question everybody with everybody and Ken what is your morning routine? My morning routine at 5 a.m. I get up and listen to Greg Laurie. It's like like clockwork and it's one of my podcasts or what do you listen to? It's on I have an app no matter where I'm at in the world. it's uh right here it's called itune and um itune radio tune in radio i'm sorry tune in radio oh okay and he's just uh he's always on 5 a.m california time for 10 years he go live on at 5 a.m you know i don't think he's live no yeah because i listen to greg lori podcast i love his okay yeah i don't think he's live but there's reference you can tell that it was if it was recorded like in close proximity in the last 24 hours there's always some reference to something that's happening today or yeah it's it's i don't think it's live though okay i'm gonna download that i didn't know he had an app yeah tune it actually no it's his it's it's it's called tune in radio and there's probably a hundred a hundred different cast on there like right now it's a tony evans podcast okay so i think it's and it's actually k-wave k-wave oh gotcha Oh, it's the K-Wave app.

2:09Yeah. Right on. And so 5 a.m., then what do you do? Then at least three days a week, I go to – I work out. Not as much as I should, but I work out. I got sucked into this Pilates class, which I thought was pretty easy, but it's not easy. It looks easy. It's not easy. Yeah, but a couple of my friends suck at me into it, and I've been – me and my friend, Naomi, my bestie, she's a good girl. So we do that with a couple other people joined with us, and we try to get that out of the way. And then back to work. Nice, nice. Okay, cool. What year did you start Gift Bucks? 2018, December 5th, 2018. And you've been working on developing this app for years, and it still is now, what are we, six years later, now it's being really pushed to the public.

3:03Absolutely, yes, yes. We're really getting ready to a major push now. 2025, you're going to see some momentum start to happen. Seven years later. So you spent seven years building out this app. What were you doing in that whole time to live? How did you make money? Yeah, it was not easy. I made some money in a previous company. I put it all here, and I cashed out some stock for seven figures, and I put the money here. You invested heavy into this. Put everything in. Yeah. I mean. It should do very well for us. That's not the reason why money comes and goes. We're not worried about that, but we'll do well.

3:46Yeah. No, I mean the concept is it's revolutionary. So tell the general audience a 10 ,000-foot overview of what is GiveBucks and how they can benefit from it. Sure. So GiveBucks is a super app, and we know they're not big here in the States yet, but in Asia, just to put some context to a super app, there's GoJet, there's Alipay, there's Grab. These platforms have hundreds of millions of people today on the platform. The biggest super app fall, probably heard of it, WeChat by Tencent. They got 1.3 billion people on the platform. So a super app is just one app instead of three, four, five, six different apps to do all the different things like sending money, talking on the phone, doing FaceTime, texting, paying your bill, giving.

4:32instead of using all these different apps to do it, it's all encompassed in one platform. That's why they call it a super app. So we developed the super app for the sole purpose to change the way the world gives. And it's a pretty unique platform and algorithm that's embedded into the app. And the whole concept is, hey, live your life. Go to the merchants, spend your money. The app's gonna reward you because you use the platform. But we mandate that you have to give some of those cash rewards to a charity of your choice. Maybe you give to the Salvation Army. Maybe you give to Food Bank. maybe you give to the church or a booster club wherever you give a piece of your rewards away to a charity of your choice and it happens it's like inside the app you have to set the percentage of your rewards that you want to give to that charity it's like set it and forget it so now every time you go spend money you know that go to a restaurant you're at red robin you're at morton's you're at applebee's you spend 100 bucks you're eating food with your family you're putting food in your belly at the same time you know you're putting food in someone else's belly That's why we built this platform.

5:31It means a lot to us. It doesn't matter if you went to Old Navy or Nordstrom's, bought a hat, a jacket, a pair of pants, a pair of shoes. You use the app so that you get rewarded, and maybe you're helping someone that didn't take a shower today. Maybe you're helping someone that slept under a bridge. It doesn't matter. All you're doing is use the platform, and you're spending your money with a purpose. That's kind of, in a nutshell, that's the crux of why we built the platform. All the other little things, sending money back and forth, chatting, talking, Those are all just feature sets that come with the super app.

6:02But the whole purpose of using the app is spend money and help others that are less fortunate. That's the give side. And then the buck side is there's a really unique opportunity to also supplement income for yourself. And it's all using a free platform. So giving and making money all in one app. That's what the platform is about. That's great. Yeah. The concept is genius. and for someone like me like when I'm going to a restaurant and just to feel good about you know guaranteeing a percentage of whatever I spend goes to other hungry people would just make make the experience better all together absolutely um the right thing to do yeah we're our brother's keeper you know we're our sister's keeper so we have to uh to do the right thing if we can especially if it's frictionless I mean now the only friction would be adoption of the app that's correct yeah so they have to use the app as like your credit cards built into the app and you pay or you pay with the app or yeah it's it's super simple you literally go to the merchant you're at footlocker you're at applebee's doesn't matter they bring your bill all you have to do is go open up the app type in the amount 34.15 click pay and in about seven eight seconds a barcode going to appear and you just point the barcode to the scanner and you pay for your bill the app generates an e-gift in real time we're authorized to issue legal tender in the form of any of any gift basically the same as a gift card that you go buy at the grocery store but instead of being in plastic form it comes on your phone in the denomination of whatever your bill is that's how works wow that's amazing so it's very friction that's just like just paying instantly paying instantly and i'll show you um what you can ask a couple questions but i'll show you a couple um i should have had this pulled up yeah that's amazing and you looks like you have a lot of people already on it so like is that like because uber's on this uber's easy we love uber uber's easy so like when i order my uber can i just be synced so i don't do anything right it's like So, Uber, there's a few apps like Uber, Amazon.

8:11Amazon has its own giving solution. They used to have one, Smile, but somehow they abandoned that just recently. I think within the last six months. Yeah. I don't know why. It was an amazing platform. Maybe they'll bring it back. Who knows why, but no, they abandoned that for some reason. But it's okay. we're happy to keep the giving movement going with and without them. I mean, well, with Smile gone, that just opens up more market share, more opportunity for you guys, for those who have that on their heart to give. I mean, everyone should be giving anyways. We all know that that's something that we're called to do.

8:48Obviously, this doesn't replace the mandatory giving requirement, but you have to fulfill as part of your legacy anyways. But any additional opportunities where we can help elevate our soul, it's always welcomed, right? Amen. Absolutely. So let me ask you this. I'm going to go back. How long have you been an entrepreneur? Because we talked about your coffee company. We talked about – so you've had multiple companies in the past. Since college days, 25-plus years being an entrepreneur. 25-plus years. What was your first business? Well, I guess you wouldn't, if you had, well, let's say the first business was starting in the direct sales space back in the 90s.

9:36So, the formerly known as the multi-level marketing companies, multi-level marketing business. Okay. That was probably the first, I want to call it business that I'd have gotten involved in, where I didn't have a salary, didn't get a weekly paycheck. It was, you eat what you kill, kind of a scenario. but I really did learn a lot about business. They didn't teach much about balance sheets. They didn't teach much about income statements. It was just a different type of situation, but I learned to understand the power of leverage and how to earn income off of a network. So that was eye-opening. Much different situation than, hey, you punch out, you don't get paid until you punch back in kind of a situation.

10:22so you started you in your early 20s you became an entrepreneur yes and what year um what inspired you to start give bucks in 2018 so you had a big did you have an exit in 2018 and then that that's what allowed you to or you cashed out some stock um i cast some shares out uh of what company it was a coffee company okay um out of plano texas and you were a majority minority owner I was a large shareholder in there. I think if I kicked this thing off, I was the second largest shareholder in the company. Okay. And, you know, should have done better than I did, but life is what life is. So I now have an opportunity to control my own destiny here and do something that I think will have major impact on society.

11:10I think it will be a legacy play for myself, and I want this thing to be here. or the movement to be here long after I'm gone. And again, the whole concept really is changing the way the world gives. And it's an arduous task, I know. Some people say it's insurmountable. Some people, you know, everybody's got an opinion, but... Well, that should fuel you more. Yeah. It should fuel you more, you know, whenever someone says the mountain's too high to climb. That's true. Let's go, I'll make it happen. Absolutely. So my question is like, you know, Facebook, all these big mega platforms are encouraging giving or, you know, so how do you differentiate between, you know, Meta's giving platform or, you know, Smile, Amazon's platform or some of the big wigs charitable platforms?

12:00I think what's different about this platform is we're actually giving our user base the capital because they use the platform because we're not rounding up. So if your bill was$34.12, that's what you pay. We're not saying make it$35 so that we can give some to a charity of choice. You pay your bill, whatever the price is. So the people on the platform are basically foregoing a cut of the income to go to charity. They're losing. The user's not losing. The user's not losing. Really, no one's losing. It's a win-win for the merchants, win-win for the user base. And win-win for charities. We had to create this.

12:45I don't understand how the merchant doesn't lose. So here's a great example. So I pulled this up. This is what it looks like when you pay your bill. Went to El Pollo Loco. I typed in the amount,$15.93. I clicked pay, and they scanned my phone. Because I use this, we don't use it. I didn't pay with my Visa, MassCard, or my American Express, which the merchant would get deemed the merchant processing fees for that. so we pretty much eliminated that we don't ride the visa rails or the amex rails we utilize the cash rails we utilize the gift card rails which is a different kind of situation so the merchant benefited from that don't have to worry about chargebacks it's not like i dropped my car in the street and someone went in there and tapped it and left and complained a month later saying i was never here so that's the loophole the merchant you're avoiding the merchant fees going using cash directly as a gift card strategy it's it's one that's amazing yeah i mean i mean that's one of it then that but yeah i mean like just as a general gist like because they're saving on the merchant fees the two three percent you're saving the two three percent everybody's saving that two three percent that's the that's the variance there absolutely the merchants also benefit because we have a community of people that have money in our account so they've got funds to be able to use where do they get that money from either they top their account up or they earned rewards through the network which i can talk to you about that later so now i've got a bunch of money in my account where can i spend it i've got to spend it right there so you want to be one of the merchants on there if i'm in your town and i've got i'm just going to log in right now i've got 400 something dollars in my account i could be john's pizza joe's barbershop or who knows where i got to spend that money i'm and trust me i'm I'll spend this money before I pull out this Bank of America card or this paper cash.

14:33Yeah. So that money is, how do you fill that money? Is it through your credit card, your debit card, or where's that money being? So two ways to get money in your account is I can use Venmo. I can use Zelle. I can walk into it. You have to basically input your cash. Yeah, you can top your account up. I can connect my debit card to top my account up. That's one way. Or if you owe me money, let's say you, I. Well, let's say businesses are using their credit cards, you know, they'd have to use, is it tied to a credit card or only? You could tie your credit card too. You could still get your points too.

15:06Absolutely. That's what I was alluding to. Yeah, absolutely. So you can get your points. You avoid the merchant fees. You avoid the merchant fees for both ends. And then the hungry benefit. That's it. Yeah. This is amazing. Yeah. It's amazing. And you, I mean, it's a win-win for everybody. You're absolutely right. I hope to God this takes off now. We are now in the spirit of giving, and that's why I was really wanting to kick off this interview right in time for the Christmas season, for people to really just put it on their hearts, their minds, their souls to give and give accordingly and just give all the time.

15:43Awesome. And I think Give Bucks is a solution to help people start that journey of always being a giver, you know, because we all know God loves a cheerful giver. Absolutely. God loves a cheerful giver. So if we give and we give with all our hearts, we're going to be rewarded. So this is another, like I like to take many steps towards progress, and this is just a baby step towards giving. It's not like this is, God wants 10 % of your money, more than 10 % really, but this just adds a little bit more. Absolutely. Now, my question is, what put it on your heart to start GiveBucks? and where you spent six, seven years in development, millions of dollars with no end in sight, what put that risk on your heart?

16:35Excuse me. And why? Like I said, I wanted to do something where I could leave a legacy. I have a marketing background, been a part of situations and know so many of my friends that have made millions and millions of dollars, and they make this money, and then a lot of it just gets squandered or just goes away, and nobody really benefits except for them. And I said, let me put something together where people, we know how to make money, but let's figure something out. We're through this money that we're making, we're giving back. And people are doing transactions all day long. You're going to eat breakfast, lunch, dinner anyway.

17:09You're going to go to the theater. And there's so many. You got everything on. You're going to eat. You're going to buy GameStop's on here. Food for Less is on here. Uber's on here. Delta's on here. Home Depot is on here. We can give even when we go to Home Depot. I mean, I pretty much can. You can live on this app. Yeah. If you didn't have a bank account. And Nike's on here. Airbnb, Nike, Under Armour, Adidas. You can use this platform at any of these establishments. Yeah, it took a long time. We got a lot of no's. Some of these that you see are just recent. From Nordstrom's, Amazon, Home Depot, Forever 21.

17:50A lot of these companies said no, no first. I mean, you're calling their leadership teams to try to get them to, you know, give me an API integration into your payment platforms. It's actually an interesting methodology on how this came about. At one point, I had started, I had tried to use LinkedIn and I was trying to, you know, make the calls up the chain. Loser, loser model. There are associations out there. You know, there's these aggregators that have relationships already with a lot of these companies. And I thought, man, I hit the jackpot. Get with one of these associations and you can get in.

18:31But it's a good model. I'm thankful for it. It's helped us. But they can't get you into the platform. And I apologize. I have a little tickle here. But they can't really get you into acceptance to the merchants. You still have to get approval from the brand. So we used to have to think we used to have to think we'd submitted a application and a flow of how the brand will appear inside of our app. I have many of those diagrams for every merchant. I mean, the merchants are particular about their brands. I mean, it's not like you can just copy and paste the Nike logo and put it in your app or on your website without having a problem.

19:09You know, probably get a cease and desist really quick. Yeah. So you do have to get merchant approval. but the associations are super helpful super helpful in some regards I'm going to talk about now building a super app a lot of people on this call don't even know what a super app is because we don't really I think the closest thing I would think to a super app would be like WhatsApp or something like that i mean that's what's up with a super app it's not a super app i mean i feel like they're just they keep adding to it they're big yeah um what's this we don't really have anything in the u.s that's a super app right now huh nope i mean a lot of people i mean kind of facebook is sort of like you could send payments through facebook you can't go to you can't go to ralph's and say I'm going to pay with my Facebook.

20:06Yeah, you're right.

20:10No. The best example of super apps are look up for the listeners. Grab. Everyone knows WeChat. WeChat. Yeah. Yeah. Those are super apps. Even Elon Musk, he's kind of been touting turning Twitter, or actually now X, into an everything app. And everything app is the same as a super app. yeah so so i can talk i can chat i can send you money there's a social media component where i can post things on social media i can spend money at the merchants those are the major core features features of a super app and is there a social component of give bucks too like phase one's already done the next version which is our are you gonna be like a blue sky x platform are you going to be like uh they'll be our version of instagram or tiktok inside of the app so people can create content and post inside the platform and share what they're doing yeah all inside all inside the app and it'll be cool maybe it'll be like philanthropic you know content absolutely um yeah i i've taken a you know that's exactly what we want yeah philanthropic content yeah a A lot of my content strategy always is around philanthropy.

21:31Matter of fact, I do man on the street content, and I was doing it yesterday, and I was trying to find needy people just to buy them their stuff. Were you really? Yeah. Well, that's part of my content strategy. Okay. Yeah. So beyond the podcast, I do man on the street content a couple times a week. Okay. I've seen that. Yeah, in addition to everything else I do. and it's funny to get rejected by people they don't even know what what's coming if they said yes you know um yeah story about that i try to give a guy uh right in newport it's funny um because i i never let anybody if i see a homeless i i when i drive i have a stack of two dollar bills or when i was in my glove apartment ready to give as i'm just living my life once i'm in newport I'm giving I just do my routine okay here's a guy needs help and I'm cash he's all oh no sorry I can't take money from you people I'm like okay it's kind of odd didn't know there was racism even within the homeless but there's racism within the homeless I'll just give my two or three dollars to someone else it was the funniest experience right there on the corner right as a war in the office wow on PCH and Superior I guess right as you pass the whole hospital So a white homeless guy would not take money from an African-American.

22:56That's insane. Interesting. That was a fascinating experience for sure. So what are some of the biggest challenges you think you faced in building a super app? You know, finding the right development team to work together in harmony has been the biggest challenge I've had so far. I got lucky. I found some ninjas out of Honduras. These guys are super qualified. Language barriers, but it is. But we have an operations person here, and he's from Lake Forest. QA, a lady that's our QA, she's here in Irvine. Our CTO, he's here in Irvine. But getting everybody all on the same page, meeting timelines, has been a challenge.

23:57And partial, it could be part of my fault, run out of capital. I didn't have tens of millions of dollars to start this company. I think I had enough to get us to where we are. I think we have a seat at the table. Did you get any seed funding or you funded it all? I put seven figures of my own money in, but I got a little bit of money from out. So we went public. I took us public. Ticker symbol is GBUX, G-B-U-X. We're on the OTC markets. We just filed with the SEC a month back, a little more than a month or so. What's the share cost right now? You know, I don't follow it as much. I've been focused on, it's probably somewhere between 50 cents and a dollar, somewhere.

24:38It's always kind of hovered around there. But you're going to see, I believe, and I'm not making any comments on any investment advice or buying any shares or anything, but I think this thing is going to do very well. I mean, the concept is genius. so like a tech company that you know skips out on merchants you know and it gives the money back to the poor it's it's a brilliant concept do you have competition right now no one's doing this in in Silicon Valley the way we're doing it and we did this by design I looked at all the big what's Apple Pay Samsung Pay Google Pay Zelle Cash App Venmo PayPal what are they doing what are they not doing and that's part of how i came up with this idea i want to do something that that was just different and no one's doing it like this at all no one ever talked to the founders of like venmo like brian johnson or and you see what they're doing like well i know what they're doing you can look at their platform you can kind of see but what's on their you know on the horizon in terms of like because a lot of people are leaning a lot of the big guys i mean like amazon To hear Smile is gone, I thought they were going to lead the forefront on a giving revolution.

25:57Maybe they'll bring it back. I don't know why. It was a shock to me too. Yeah. It opens it up for more market share for you, but it's a shock to definitely hear that Smile is gone. Now, let me ask you this, and this is something that is important. How are you inspiring user engagement and really inspiring the adoption of your user base? So the app's by invitation only. So anybody can download it, but you can't get in without a code. So we incentivize our user base to spread the word because when their friends are paying it forward, they're getting a reward. So it really means a lot when you really understand and peel the layers back.

26:46if you told a friend and they told a friend and they told a friend and that person who you don't even know down there went to Applebee's and spent a hundred dollars because they paid it forward this person got in this example 50 cents of the of the transaction this person got 50 cents you would have got a dollar I would have got a quarter and so with three other people so seven of us benefit because this person who we don't even know uses Applebee's and paid it for it that's kind of the model so i can't just uh download give bucks right now start using it i have download it but you can't get in we need a code to get in it's easy that's why we just someone will invite you and you can click on the link and then get in yeah but how many how many users are out there i mean how do we just get started i mean there's north of 10 000 people that even know about the company nobody nobody really knows about this business yet they're getting ready to though yeah and They'll all, they'll all, listen, the last company I was telling you about, the coffee company, is word of mouth.

27:49And a quarter million customers were spending money. It's all word of mouth. We'll get customers. How do you get Nike to sign up for this, you know, your platform with no user, with 10, I mean, a small user base, 10 ,000? I mean, how did you convince them? Like, that was a feat by itself, like a big merchant like Nike, a big merchant like Home Depot. I think they have a different motivation as I've gone through and learned this. Because I wonder, why do we get these rejections? The business model is pretty simple. And then why are we getting some approvals? It was pretty, I know the motivation is, yes, I think checking the company out.

28:27We do give projections on how much volume, how much volume we believe we'll do. and I think really like we don't make any money unless we send them customers so it's not like we're saying hey guys we need a$19 a month fee or a $19 a year fee there's really no reason not to use the platform when we're sending customers to you I think the gift card rails are genius not having to worry about chargebacks. You guys probably don't have that issue here, but a lot of merchants, there's a lot of fraud out there by people just... I mean, all these merchants aren't listed here, Southwest, every single one of them are dealing with chargebacks.

29:14There's no way you can deal with chargebacks. Yeah, when people are using their debit card and credit card, you are subject to using chargebacks. The gift card rails are uniquely unique in that respect where we don't have that issue. We don't really have an issue with that. I mean, we bear some burden potentially with chargebacks as people put money into the platform. But even less, we're pretty safe, especially when you start seeing some of the new features in there with cloud biometrics where your face will actually approve the transaction. That's an extra layer of security for us. so we won't be subject to the characters out there that create these nefarious little...

30:00There's a lot of fraud out there. Of course. And there's a lot of bad actors that pry and looking for ways to infiltrate and squeeze in and exploit the vulnerabilities in these platforms. But I think with 3DS and cloud biometrics, it should shake all those guys out. It's kind of hard to charge something back when your face was required to approve the transaction or your finger. Yeah. In this case, not even your finger will require your face. That'll be the ultimate protection for us. And when's that coming, the facial recognition to pay? I'm a month away from that. Probably a month, maximum two months away, but yeah.

30:43That's amazing. We're pretty protected the way we are right now. 3DS is pretty good, but that extra layer is just ironclad. I don't have any issues. Now, I'm in the mortgage banking business, and in my business, we are hyper-regulated. I'm talking about so regulated that Elon Musk is even saying, man, you got so many regulators in the mortgage space that they're duplicitous. There's just a bunch of the same regulators all regulating at the same time, all like auditing, doing their concurrent audits. So I'm used to hyperregulation. What sort of regulatory compliance or hyperregulations is around philanthropy?

31:28I'm sure there's a lot because there's so many philanthropic scams out there. Sure. Sure. And then how did you overcome those and how are you kind of, you know, meshing in and overcoming any future regulatory issues? Yeah. So two things, you know, I like the fact that, you know, us being a publicly traded company, now filing Form 10 type information to become a fully reporting, fully audited company. Having an independent auditor that's not on our board, not a part of our company, wouldn't even know them. pill back and look at everything gives me some comfort but on the business model to answer your question see we're rewarding you cash back and we're saying hey if you want to give some of that to charity then so be it that's your business there's no way that anybody could have been defrauded because we gave you cash back it's not like um and you can earn rewards off of your network and if you that's your money if you want to cast that in and give it to the homeless alter or spend it at the mall that's your business so there's really no risk in our in our model on the charity and the philanthropic giving side so um we're not but again by us being publicly traded i still want to make sure we have an auditor to be able to look at all the books and make sure everything is in order as long as the math adds up meaning cash comes in cash comes out and someone can account for it i think we're pretty i think we're in pretty good shape but i let the attorneys sign off and bless all that um so that we don't have any blowback in the future good good you know as as you talk about give bucks and i'm just thinking like i'd like to be a like a major person advocating for you because i'm all about giving and i'm all about doing god's work and i love the mission of give of give bucks as a whole you know i love what you did i love that you you know you said i'm gonna go all in on giving i'm gonna make this you know my legacy because that's why god put me here um and it's it's amazing you know it's an amazing idea it's amazing concept i can't imagine how much effort went into getting all these big companies to say yes when you are nobody right so it's easier than like i said uh the long route going up the food chain through linkedin not the best route at all getting connected with we haven't even gotten started connected with the associations and the aggregators super super important but you gotta remember there's only a few hundred national brands that even exist we're positioned to this is why that sales force I talked about earlier was important we're positioning ourselves to infiltrate and go through and get the small mom and pod shops all throughout the community.

34:32And that's where there's millions of those businesses. A few hundred here, millions of John's pizzas and Tony's T-shirts and Bob's Barbershops. That's where the bulk of GDP is done. You know, gross domestic product is done in the small merchants, and that's where we're going. So, you know, Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats. you know you go down to pretty much any restaurant you see their sticker in the window you know they had to go get those accounts and but that's where a lot of business is done and that's where we're going not only be able to have it in the local merchant i mean they're nationally recognized brands but in the local merchants is uh super important for us the reason why we started here is because i wanted the app to mean something to everybody in all 50 states if i just started here in newport or in irvine um and just got all the local merchants around here it it wouldn't mean anything to someone in oklahoma or texas probably not even riverside no one's going to drive down here download an app just if they can only use it here no is it a national app or international app uh it's international right now we focus on the on the US market.

35:45But we're already, once you have NACU approval and Home Depot approval here, it's easier to get the green light to flip that rail on internationally. So that's my next question is like what is, you know, what are your plans for future expansion and how do you think GiveBucks users are going to grow over the next five years? I think we're going to experienced tremendous growth um having started i think um you just started the marketing now that last company yeah we yeah we just had a little stint we're trying to get some marketing going um you know today was a pretty important day just a few hours ago um you know a new update came out um there'll be another one with a better ui ux but new update come out came out it's gonna make it easier to put money in the account like within seconds 10 seconds you can top your account up now whereas you know using the the the previous version you know could take three minutes as much as an hour to get money in your account if you plan ahead it's not that big of a deal but today everybody's like quick quick now now i need money i need me now access so everybody needs now just what it is we're in the amazon world we're on demand world yeah amazon really uh open up a can for everybody yeah delivering stuff same day um now hours the next day that that that's now you have you have to meet that demand yeah so now give bucks has you i want to give right now i don't want to give it an hour i need to give it right now like that sounds we're moving too fast society moves too fast now yeah it is it doesn't even you know but i want to give all the time so i'm going to be using give bucks so you don't have starbucks on here yeah um we got yeah can i make some recommendations from starbucks so we'll get starbucks though yeah what once starbucks sees adoption once like all the other bigger players i mean you already got some of the big players but you know as there's more brand authority as there's more um adoption and as your user base grows everyone's gonna come to you same thing happened when i started my podcast i can get any guests you know i only got mortgage guests because nobody cared that I was a mortgage CEO other than mortgage people.

38:04Then as the show grew and started to climb the charts, they're like, oh, okay, we'll go on your show now. It happens in any industry. It does indeed. I said it's in communication with one of the executives at Airbnb. Not only do I think more and more of these brands are going to come, but when I start getting some of them to participate and market, I think there's huge opportunity from there it's kind of a crawl walk running approach i'm happy to first just get in the door just show them that we can put some points on the board get some volume going yeah that's it and um had a pretty interesting dialogue with this lady and i think there's some cool opportunities to even get companies like airbnb to market and talk about um the platform there's some there's some opportunities there now let me ask you something um how are you instilling and fostering a company culture of giving at give bucks like it's a company based on giving like how are you fostering that culture there i think we have to do a better job at uh marketing uh getting some videos out there so that it's just part of the ecosystem it's part of the ui ux we need to do a better job doing that but internally and we have it's a skeleton crew i don't have hundreds of people working for the company i've never had more than 20 people so um not much impact and we're an international company too so you know developers out of uh unduras and uh which can't really give yet yeah they don't really have much money to give yeah and we don't have merchants out there we're not we're not gonna put that switch on yet but um but we we need to do a good job at getting um explaining the power of giving putting some videos in the platform and showing you like one thing that I today I mean it's everything is in there we give you all the data if you went to make made a purchase you can see in how much you spent how much rewards you received how much the charity received it's all the data is there but it's a little bit static it's boring um you know what would work you know what you should do reach out to Greg Laurie and have him do a five minute chat a short video about the spirit of giving and make that one of your videos.