Unhireable and Unemployable | Todd Ault

Watch the episode here

Warren Buffett Quote

Risk Management

 

Episode Topics:

• Are you still holding on to bitcoin?
• The discard pile can be a gold mine
• Knowing and understanding EBITDA
• The business of buying businesses
• The world of M&A in Technology
• Cyber security and Oil companies

 

Rick Jordan:

What’s shakin’? Hey, I’m Rick Jordan, and today we’re going all in. I have a real special guest for you today, uh, a dude who has 30 years of a career on Wall Street, but I’m really pumped because we’re gonna talk about how he got started today. You know, literally from going from like nothing to where he is at and all the way to N Y S E. I Just had another I p O hit just a couple of weeks ago. It’s super exciting. Todd Alt. Welcome, my man,

Todd Ault:

<laugh>, dude. It makes me sound bigger than I am.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah. What’s going on with <laugh>? How are you doing? I always have really high energy. Well, you know that. I’m good. I’m good. Yeah. I just had, uh, the pleasure of being on your show.

Todd Ault:

What’d you do for New

Rick Jordan:

Years? Oh, I did, uh, what did I do for New Year’s? It wasn’t much. It was, uh, just hanging out with, with family. There were a couple of kids of mine that were feeling under the weather. So it was a really low-key New Year’s this year, you know, which was sort of welcome. And I know that with you, you understand this, right? Because we’re always going, go, go all the time. It’s kind of refreshing when you get something that’s just a chill day. That’s some, that’s a day that everybody expects you to be out and partying. I enjoyed that.

Todd Ault:

I need, I needed a chill day. It hasn’t been chilling. It’s not gonna be chilly in 2023, I think. Uh, this weekend we have the two-seater indie cars at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway as we’re preparing to launch bit now.com, which is a lifestyle brand, uh, site. And then, uh, I think it’s nonstop in the indie season, the launch of Bit Nile. Um, I did complete my last acquisition, I’m gonna do it for at least 12 months in December. I bought a crane company in Texas with about 50, 53 grove cranes, 250,000-ton cranes services, and the oil industry. So I’m, uh, I wish I could take a day off <laugh>. I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to squeeze like one day this weekend where I can sleep for eight hours, but I, it’s nonstop. And I thought New Year’s would slow things down, but it has not really slowed anything down.

Rick Jordan:

I, I’m with you. It tends to speed up around this time of year from what I see too. You know, you mentioned something right about the crane company, and this is intriguing because, I’d love to talk about what your very first acquisition was, right? Because your specialty is acquiring undervalued assets and disrupted tech technologies that can have a big impact on the global market. And it’s interesting to me because you’re involved in so many different areas and industries, you know, it’s so diverse. I mean, you go from pharmaceuticals, which I think was one of your, i, your I P O just a couple of weeks ago, right? But now you’re talking about a crane company. How do you decide what you’re going after?

Todd Ault:

Well, the funny part about, uh, the market is, you know, I thought a lot about this evolution of the market, how long it’s actually been around. If you think about how long humans have been on earth, and let’s say it’s debatable, let’s just say we agree with that. It’s 5,000 years old. I don’t, and I am not making a political comment on whether it’s 300,000 or 5,000 or 2000 or anything like that. But in the big scheme of things, money has been around for a long time. But actual government-issued currency, uh, in the manner that it’s controlled now has only been around for like less than a hundred years. And even less than a hundred years ago, the Bank of Illinois used to issue, um, currency, US currency. It was printed by different banks. And, so we’re not as mature as we, we’re not as mature as we are, right?

Todd Ault:

Um, we think we are. And I always think that, wow, this could never happen. And then it happens, right? Like the pandemic in 1918 happened, but you and I weren’t around for that. We only hear stories of it. Yeah. But the recent pandemic has just made everything upside down. Like what’s right is left, left is right, uh, you know, sort of black swan moments as I say ’em, right? And so I try to buy when something is so hated that no one wants it. And if I just listen to myself on that, I will, I’ve made a fortune. I’ve made a fortune buying real estate when no one’s ever gonna rent an apartment again. And now everyone has to have an apartment. I made money when I bought Jack in the Box. Then, when they had actually served hamburgers that had e coli in them.

Todd Ault:

And the stock one, remember that from 18 to 2 72, 75, I think seven people died. Maybe it was four people, 700 people sick. And so right now I’m really big on Bitcoin. There was a line out the door a year ago, in November, when Bitcoin was 69,000. You couldn’t get, I mean, you couldn’t give it away. I mean, you couldn’t, you couldn’t keep it. It was impossible. People were buying it like crazy. And now the line out the door to buy Bitcoin is like, there’s no one out there. It’s the reverse now. Yeah, right. Everybody’s still selling, right? Yep. Yeah. Well, Bitcoin’s stabilized, but a lot of the other cryptos have gotten smushed, right? Yeah. And, uh, so you asked how I do it. What was my first acquisition? I’m always the guy who likes trolling in the trash bin for your discard, your discard pile. You, you like, think about, uh, uh, Warren Buffet talking about how he used to buy, you know, pick up cigar buds with one or two puffs left on a cigar.

Todd Ault:

It’s kind of like that, I used to hear it as a kid. Now it’s really kind of a creepy gross analogy cuz you wouldn’t smoke a wet cigar bud. But they do have maybe a couple of puffs left in them. But when I bought the crane company, it was an upgrade because the crane company’s EBITDA has been around a long time, but they had them. They had some financial issues that I got myself into during the oil crisis when oil, believe it or not, went to negative $32 a barrel. Meaning you had to pay someone to take your oil. Yeah. You had to pay them. Now, now oil’s back to 80 bucks a barrel and it’s, and the world has righted itself correctly. But, uh, I always buy when people, people, there’s an analogy I use all the time. I don’t know to whom I actually give credit for cuz probably something I didn’t make up.

Todd Ault:

But stocks will trade higher than you ever thought possible and lower than you ever thought imaginable. Um, and so I’m a guy who likes to buy stuff when it doesn’t feel good that you’re buying it. Now I’ll do some momentum trading, I’ll buy stuff on the way up when they think that it’s transformative. You know, if you, if you bought only the way I bought, you wouldn’t buy, you wouldn’t have bought Microsoft, you wouldn’t have bought Google, you wouldn’t have bought a lot of stocks, you wouldn’t have bought Apple. But even Warren Buffet will say to you if there’s something unique about the property where they’re changing the narrative. Warren Buffett’s analogy was, is this little phone here for a thousand dollars? Does the craziest stuff in terms of value versus what it would cost to make it if you were making a singular one? And what, like this, this machine is more powerful than anything that sent something to the moon. Yeah. It’s like the value add that it creates to society is so amazing that there’s only one person making Apple phones.

Todd Ault:

They’re only one person. Right? Bingo. One company. Um, and so it’s just, uh, it’s, I try to buy stuff that’s on sale, you know, I, but, but it’s, uh, even I, there are periods of time where people are willing to pay 140 bucks a share for Peloton and then now they’re willing to pay nine. And I keep having to remind myself of it, it’s never different this time cuz it’s never different. But during the pandemic it became different. I’m gonna be a diamond hand of an ape. I’m gonna own an M c even though they own billions of dollars of Yep. Of lease payments. And in fact, I was attacked viciously for being short by $30 aggressively. And, I read a report where they said it was going to go to a dollar, and of course, it’s on its way to a dollar right now. Right? Yep. Because at the end of the day, you

Rick Jordan:

Still held the short position. You still held the short position the

Todd Ault:

Attacked now. No, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t. But at the end of the day, you have to have a business that ultimately produces some sort of cash or some sort of value that can be realized. Um, we don’t agree on Bitcoin, myself and Charlie Munger, and Warren Buffet. But I, you, I don’t think you could argue anymore that Bitcoin is the premium, um, digital asset. There’s no question. It’s the best of, a scenario where you have someone like Sam Bankman Fried, who just made up a coin and then borrowed against his made-up coin.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah, yeah. No joke for

Todd Ault:

Sure. Not a movie. It’s not a movie. I know what you’re doing. Your business is really simple. I mean, it’s really complicated, but it’s really simple. And that is, you’re, you own like a utility. I mean, you’re providing a utility for people who need technology. They run the business and they need outsourced services to manage their technology network. Very definable. Like very definable, right? Yeah. And there are moments in time, there are moments in time when people wanna pay a premium for your type of company because they are large, have steady cash flows and they’re predictable. And there are moments in time when they’re not predictable because you’re buying a business or you’re developing it in which they’re willing to pay less because it’s unpredictable. And, but then if you’re at a high growth curve, they’ll pay more cuz they think you’re successful at buying more of them. So, um, there’s no straight answer. I think that number one, um, the reason why people make money or lose money, is temperament. And if you don’t have the right temperament, you buy when everyone else is buying and you sell, when you have fear, temperament is, I mean, it’s really a big part of the game.

Rick Jordan:

Listen to that. Everyone and you buy when everybody else is buying. That’s gold right there. And you sell when everybody when you have fear,

Todd Ault:

Yeah,

Rick Jordan:

That’s the wrong way, but

Todd Ault:

Yeah, it’s the wrong way because your, your, your, your crowd mentality isn’t leading you. Something to see in my world right now though, it’s the worst ever. Because I think people if you go on to StockTwits or Twitter, and the vast majority of the people that are bashing me, I have people that bash me right now and it’s fine. Markets down, stocks stamp, um, and they say you’re raising money on an att m Yeah, I’ve been doing that for years. I said I was, did you read any of the filings? Do you know what you owned before you invested <laugh>? And then they say, you know, you’re a liar. But no, I put it in the filings. Did you read the filings? But most importantly, I read people say, I put my life savings in your stock. Why? Yeah. Why, why would you do that? That you’re just a gambler now? Yeah. You’re not really an investor. Why? That’s, that’s the

Rick Jordan:

Key differentiator, isn’t it? Even with crypto, that was the case. There were so many that were gambling rather than investing.

Todd Ault:

Right? So I ask people all the time, like, why, why are you doing something? And if you know why you’re doing it, then, then you have to understand the consequences of, I mean,  I, I don’t usually write them back, but when I hear someone say, I put all my life savings in your stock. Well, if your life savings is 500 bucks, I get the point.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah. Yeah.

Todd Ault:

Uh, I hope if you put your 500 bucks in there, you don’t have any credit card debt. Because if you have credit card debt, get rid of that stuff first before you put any money in your life savings into a stock, which I would never do. Now, I happen to have most of my life savings in two stocks, but that’s because I own and control most of the companies. Yeah. I apologize. One second. Skylar. What’s up? Oh, yeah. So my assistant’s saying, why would, she’s laughing at me. So why would you put your whole life savings in it? I, I’m, I’m more dumbfounded now because what I, my biggest concern is I see people that don’t seem to be educated effectively using the market to gamble. Yeah. Yeah. And I don’t know where they got the mentality. And then I listen to my kids and they say, well, you’re not really taught to invest in, in, in, in high school. You’re not taught these basic fundamental foundational stuff. And then there’s a generation, now, I don’t know how old you are, but I’ll date myself and say that from 1998 to 2001 when I was managing money, I could not convince people or explain to them that just because you put a.com next to your name, the stock shouldn’t go from $9 to 200.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah.

Todd Ault:

But it did. And it worked until it worked. So it’s like a party where everyone gets drunk and they get, keeps getting a drink, they drink more and more and more and more and more and more. And then eventually they have to wake up in the morning and they have a hangover. Well, the market has a hangover now. And the Fed basically said, Hey, we’re gonna pull the punch bowl away, which is lower interest rates. We’re gonna jack those up in your face. At the same time, the government was issuing people money to, uh, help them during the pandemic. And that’s over. Yeah. And we’re all dealing through the, right now, we’re in the hangover. We’re in a hangover, man. Yeah. It’s a hangover.

Rick Jordan:

Well, it was overextension because all that mo you know, all that money that was issued, it was all based upon debt anyways. It was new debt that the country took on and then spread around just to bolster the lives of individuals for a moment. Just like having a party night. Right. <laugh>, it’s, it’s fun for a moment, but then like you’re saying, you have the hangover the next day and you wake up and realize, what the fuck did I do <laugh>?

Todd Ault:

And I would say it was good that we had that party. I wanna help people during the pandemic. Absolutely. When the government says, we’re gonna shut everything down, they gotta do the right thing by people. But now we gotta tighten our belt a little bit and make sure that we’re efficient and not thinking it’s coming back. And, um, you know, you caught me on a day where I’m in a weird retrospective mood because I see people well, I see people spending money on things like tennis shoes. I’ve never, I mean, I must be that I’m not a boomer. So all those guys out there want us to write Boomer below my name. I’m not a Boomer <laugh>. Um, but I can’t believe that you can go to a, a a, a shop, uh, in Vegas and buy tennis shoes for 500 bucks a pair that sold on Nike for

Rick Jordan:

A hundred. Yeah, no kidding.

Todd Ault:

Um, but that’s the world we live in, man. Yeah. You know, my son wanted an off-white belt

Rick Jordan:

<laugh>. That’s great. Or, or the Yeezys that were just around for a bit. But look at it, that’s a good example, right? The Yeezys are a really good example of how the market can shift so quickly, you know, all because of something that’s really, really fickle. And then you go from a $2,000 pair of sneakers down to, what is it, half a million pairs at ADIs still have an inventory that they can’t sell now.

Todd Ault:

Is that true? There’s a half a million Yeezys in inventory they

Rick Jordan:

Can’t sell. That’s what I read. Yeah. It was in the journal a couple weeks ago. Yep. They have around a half a million Yeezys that are just sitting there.

Todd Ault:

But is that because they won’t sell them or because they’re, no one wants to buy them

Rick Jordan:

Then? I don’t know. I didn’t get too far into the article. It was just that they were, it was phrased at the beginning that they were quote unquote stuck with them. So it would be something. But right now that might be good for you because it’s something everybody hates, right? <laugh>.

Todd Ault:

Yeah. That’s interesting. You know, could I buy those Yeezy shoes and put ’em on bit.com? Yeah. Maybe that, maybe I should get ahold of Adidas and see whether those songs to

Rick Jordan:

Me

Todd Ault:

Go, I’ll give ’em a dollar a pair. Half a million bucks.

Rick Jordan:

Right On <laugh>.

Todd Ault:

I mean, I’m kind of serious, right? I mean,

Rick Jordan:

I know you are. Yeah,

Todd Ault:

That’s what I, that’s what I would be doing. That’s exactly what I would do. That’s exactly what would happen, but we, um, you know, I think your question was how did I get started doing this? Um, I have wanted to work on Wall Street since I was 11 years old. I saw, uh, Warren Buffet on tv, uh, when I was a kid. I, uh, got a hold of his office. His assistant, I think her name was Gladys, sent me, um, every annual report up until then, I think it was 1981. Wow.

Todd Ault:

And, uh, when I was 18 years old, I tried to go work on Wall Street, and I’ve been working on it ever since and wanna roll, run a holding company. I finally run one called Alt Alliance, which is public in the back there, the symbol on the New York section uses A U L T. And then we own, we either own control or invest in I think maybe six or seven other public companies. Uh, and we were, when I took the company over, it had about three and a half million in assets. I think it has close to 650 million now with the purchase of the Crane company and, uh, public and private matters closer to 700 million. And then we, uh, have sales that with the combined companies, I think will be approaching 200 plus 230, 40 million, including the two companies we’re gonna spin out. So we, um, I think we had sales of 6 million when we started in 2017, give or take 16. And now we’re gonna be at a clo, you know, closing in on a quarter of a billion, hopefully by 2025. Um, for the first nine months of this year, we did about a hundred million. So we’re in everything. We’re in lending, we’re in, uh, biotechnology. We’re in, we’re we’re the largest. We own control of the largest karaoke company in the world called The Singing Machine, which is on the Nasdaq. M i c s.

Rick Jordan:

I remember those from when I was really, really young.

Todd Ault:

Uh, we have, uh, um, the Crane company, we have five hotels, four of which we own outright. We’re all over the map. Two Marriotts. Two Hiltons.

Rick Jordan:

That’s

Todd Ault:

Incredible. Part of a diamond business. Yeah.

Rick Jordan:

Oh, you were, you were 18 when you started on Wall Street and, uh,

Todd Ault:

Yeah, I kind, I kind of was, I mean, no one really wants to hire you at 18, but I kind of started at, I

Rick Jordan:

We say that’s young for that to be on the street. Yeah. Uh, how you just, did I hear you right, that you just cold-called Warren Buffett’s assistant? Uh,

Todd Ault:

Well, I, I saw him on Lou Dobbs’s money line. Okay. And I called, uh, I called his office. She answered the phone. Uh, I told her who I was and she sent me the, uh, the annual reports back then, you know, there was no like email.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah, yeah. In

Todd Ault:

Fact, I don’t even think there was a call waiting when you called the phone number, there would be a busy signal. No one even knows what a busy signal is. Hmm. And, uh, I called her, and he said she sent ’em to me. They arrived a couple of weeks later and the rest is history. And if I would’ve just listened to the guy a lot more than I should, I mean, if I would’ve listened better, I’d probably be a richer guy. I didn’t, didn’t listen to that well. But <laugh>, I pay a lot more attention than I used

Rick Jordan:

To. Well, yeah. Who does when you’re 18, I mean, when, when you’re 18. Yeah. <laugh>, it’s, yeah, there’s a, there’s a lot of grandiose ideas that one can have. And there’s a lot to be said about experience bringing temperament.

Todd Ault:

Well, that’s definitely happened to me. My temperament has changed dramatically. Yeah. I, um, I, I think, Skylar, what do you think my temperance changed even since you’ve known me, hasn’t it? Night and day? I don’t tend to get as excited as I used to, or mad as I used to. Still get mad. Occasionally you still get excited, but the extremes are more mellow. And, as you get to be a bigger company, when I give this analogy when you’re a small company, you’re driving a speedboat, everyone’s holding on board, and they’re all turning with your left and right.

Rick Jordan:

<laugh> hanging on for dear life, is what I’ve noticed.

Todd Ault:

<laugh>. Yeah. Yeah. And when you get to be a little bigger, if you still drive it like a speedboat, some people fly off the edges, and when you turn or they hit against the wall, and then when you get a little bigger like we are now, you gotta drive it like a little bit, like not an ocean liner, but like a small yacht where you’re turning a little slower. But eventually, as we get towards a billion dollars, I’m sure we’ll be turning like an ocean liner where it’s an eight-mile turn and you don’t want the deck chairs to fly off to one side. You want everyone to be calm.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah. That says something too about risk management because, uh, you know, as I’m looking at scaling too, it’s something that I, I’ve got some big hitters that are on my board, but there’s one individual I in particular who always wants to talk about risk management. And that’s where I’m seeing is he’s looking down the road when there are a billion dollars in revenue. And he’s saying, okay, what, what can we do? Because right now we can, we can dodge, we can pivot, we can maneuver pretty quickly. But when it comes to that point, the analogy he gave was almost like the Titanic avoiding the iceberg. You have to see the risk even further out to be able to make those shifts.

Todd Ault:

Let me ask you a question.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah.

Todd Ault:

How many payrolls have you had to make in your lifetime?

Rick Jordan:

Oh my God. <laugh>. If you take, uh, we’ll say 25 times, just as an average, 25 times, 14 years. So you’re talking, what, 400-ish?

Todd Ault:

Do you think that you know what I’m about to say to you next about making a payroll?

Rick Jordan:

Oh, yeah, yeah. There, there’s nobody that can understand the emotional load until you have to do that.

Todd Ault:

I can’t, and it’s taken me a long time to figure this out, but I used to hire people. I’d had people that come over from Harvard, had their business degrees, and they were like, oh, I work for GE. I managed, uh, this division. I had 3,500 employees. I cut people and I cut expenses and we got more profitable, et cetera, et cetera. And there’s a reason for that to be a manager. Yeah. But for me, it’s really hard to take advice from someone, from a business standpoint, to understand what I’m doing until they’ve had to make a payroll. Yeah. So until you’ve had to make a payroll where you’re responsible to make sure other people eat and that their families are taken care of. Uh, I get a lot of people, you know, on social media saying shit about how they, you know, what, what they think about me.

Todd Ault:

And I say to ’em, go fuck yourself because until you’ve made a payroll, you should fuck off. I don’t think you have any, you can’t give, provide me any advice. Like your, your, your opinion only matters in that it’s your opinion. Right? Yeah. I mean, they’re, you’re like, I work at a Walmart and I’m a manager. Okay, great. You did. You have to manage people, by the way, the way is one of the hardest things in the world. But until you’ve had to make a payroll where you run a business where you’re responsible to make the payroll, everything you’ve been taught is theoretical. Yeah,

Todd Ault:

Yeah. You don’t know what you’re doing. Yeah. You’re like, you haven’t really had to do it. Now, I may be biased there, but I’m not talking about like, oh, I had a, my partner and I, there’s two of us and we started an online business and we do drop shipping. Okay. All right. So you had to make your own payroll and your partner’s payroll. Yeah, I’m talking about, I mean, we have, I think we have, I mean, I might be wrong. And I, I say this very carefully, please look at the filings, but I think after the crane company, the hotels, I think we have like 515 employees.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah.

Todd Ault:

Yeah. You gotta make payrolls. Right? You gotta, and, and uh, so I, you know, to your young viewers out there, you gotta be careful where you’re getting advice from. I know what you do. You run a business in which you have to make a payroll. Bingo. You have to make sure there’s revenue coming in. The people are paid. When I was a kid and I took out my first job, I was thinking, but I never even worried that people could pay me. Yeah. I got a job making, and I was at Albertsons at $4 an hour. I was thinking I was a king, you know, king shit cuz I was a box boy and back then was 2 35 an hour, but I got the $4 an hour box boy

Rick Jordan:

Job. Nice.

Todd Ault:

I never thought that Alberts wouldn’t be able to pay me. Never crossed my mind. When I started my own business, I realized, holy crap, I actually better make the money ’cause I gotta pay this

Rick Jordan:

Bill. Yeah, no kidding. I

Todd Ault:

Gotta, I gotta pay people. Right.

Rick Jordan:

You’re reminding me of my first job because I got a, permit, to work when I when I was only 15 at McDonald’s and it was 4 25 an hour. And there you go. When I was, I know when I was doing that, it was the same thing. I never had a thought in mind that that story. And when I think about it now as I look back, it was that owner had six franchises owned six franchises. Uh, so that owner was responsible for around, uh, maybe 200 people and had to make sure was

Todd Ault:

You’re a Chicago guy, right?

Rick Jordan:

Yeah, yeah.

Todd Ault:

Chicago. Yeah. Chicago’s where I own those, uh, hotels, uh, Rockford,

Rick Jordan:

Illinois. Oh yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s about an hour and a half from where I’m at.

Todd Ault:

There

Rick Jordan:

You go. Yeah. Yep.

Todd Ault:

So you worked for McDonald’s, and you got a permit when you were

Rick Jordan:

15? When I was 15, yeah. I just wanted to get started on things and wanted independence. That’s really all it was. But yeah, it was 4 25 an hour. And when I would sit and think about, you know, people managing labor, I would ask the managers, you know, what’s the biggest expense at 15? I’m asking this like, well as an assistant managers we’re responsible for our shift to manage and keep labor rates. Cuz they were tracking revenue almost in real-time, even back in the nineties. I don’t know how they did it right with the systems, but they would, they would start to cut people when they would approach 12% labor cost by the hour and then they would start to send people home at night. Wow. You know, to me that was pretty advanced. When I look back at it for the mid-nineties, you know, you’re talking about the, at a McDonald’s of all places, they would start to cut people when they would approach the 12% labor mark.

Rick Jordan:

Uh, but then looking back, it’s like that was a, something that the owners put in place because they were pretty tight with that and made sure that that was one of the metrics in place so that they could make payroll for everybody and maintain profitability. It was just very intriguing to me. So from the very beginning, I mean, I was, I was a trainer when I was 15. I became an assistant manager when I was just 16 at McDonald’s and then moved into other retail and, and then, uh, of course technology, all of that. But it’s, uh, I’m with you. It’s an intriguing thought process because even with what I have now, I owned a private security company protection agency for three years and I had 70 employees in that company. That was from 2016 to 2019. And the same scenario because it was served, but then it comes to accounts receivable, it comes to collections. And it was pretty much time for money for all the individual agents, the guards that were out there. And you had to make sure that there was enough working capital in place to cover payroll when those people worked before you even got paid by your clients. It’s an interesting scenario, you know, and that was, you know, $15 and $25 an hour jobs for unarmed and armed agents.

Todd Ault:

Right.

Rick Jordan:

And that was, that’s what they depended on to make money half of that roster because it’s, it’s just like kitchen help <laugh>, I’d say that affectionately, but in a restaurant. But, security guards, whether it’s armed or unarmed, it’s the same scenario. Half of them did not even have bank accounts. They would still get a paper check. And I’m only talking a few years ago, they would take their paper check to the currency exchange and cash it because they needed to go pay the rent with it. And that’s a big load that, that a lot don’t understand, you know, or self-righteous operations managers will be like, well I have to, I have to go cut payroll, you know, I have to go make a payroll. And it’s like, no, you don’t. Well, you have to go through and make sure that people are not over-reporting, under-reporting their hours, making sure the numbers are correct and then you’re hitting a button to submit. That’s it. Right. You’re not making sure that people are, that the money is actually there to write the checks.

Todd Ault:

Right. I’m not, I’m actually, uh, dealing with a, a different argument right now, which is that I heard someone say to me the other day, well, we’re approaching almost 8 billion people. You know how hard it is to find people to work with.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah.

Todd Ault:

I mean we have, we have a work crisis problem. And more importantly, in a few years I was watching this, uh, we, they raised rates, uh, the minimum wage in, in, uh, California to $22 an hour for people at McDonald’s. 22 an hour. Right.

Rick Jordan:

Oh wow. Yeah.

Todd Ault:

And so McDonald’s is introducing fully automated McDonald’s that are all robots. Yep. Like the whole thing, you know, the foods made by a robot.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah, I was looking at that. Yep.

Todd Ault:

It’s packaged by a robot. There’s like a couple of employees that are human now. I know, but this is a real problem. Yeah, right? Is that you have a world that’s gonna become very automated?

Rick Jordan:

For sure. It’s Amazon warehouses now too. Oh yeah. The

Todd Ault:

Picking the package shipping. They’re not, they’re not picking in, they’re not picking parts here.

Rick Jordan:

You got it.

Todd Ault:

They’re, you know, so, um, we’re in this really interesting time, like a really vertical delta in terms of if, if, if you really, I get the person who really has the most advanced thoughts in my mind on this, ironically, is Elon Musk. You talk about like, just, I mean, think about where we were a hundred years ago, right? Yeah. So a hundred years ago, 1923, um, there were still cowboys, you know, walking around and putting their horse on the, you know, <laugh>. It’s not that we haven’t been around that long. Yeah. But curve, the learning curve is exponential. Right. The technology curve is exponential. And uh, I’m just excited to be here for the ride, dude. So if I went back to your original question about, um, how did I do it? I did it because I wanted to, one of the, one of the bullshit things that people teach you, these, these, these coaches, is about manifestation.

Rick Jordan:

I’m with you.

Todd Ault:

My wife would say that I’m keen on manifestation and my therapist would say with action.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah.

Todd Ault:

I just don’t say I want to do it. I do something about it. So if you’re one of those people who wanna do something, ask yourself what you’re doing about it. Because no one would hire me. I was like a, I lived in HUD housing in Fullerton and me, like, I played football, but I didn’t have like a great education. The reason I’m self-employed is cuz no one wants to fucking hire me. Yeah. I mean, I, I had to go get my own job. I, when I worked at Dean Whitter, I, I remember a broker named Bob Abraham who said to me, I said, Bob, I’m gonna make $187,000 this year. This is like 30 years ago, 25 years ago, whenever it was, I think it was like 1995 or something. And I’m like, where would I go get this kind of money? And he, he said, okay, but Dean Witter, if I wasn’t here as a broker, where would I go?

Todd Ault:

He said, you’re unhireable. That’s what he told me. So the first time I ever heard the term You are unhireable, I said, what the fuck? I, I’m a good guy. What do you mean? Why wouldn’t people wanna hire me? Goes, you work on your own schedule. You come and go as you please, and you effectively work under Dean Whitter, but they’re your clients and you’re not hireable. Like you can’t, who’s gonna pay your starting salary? 187 grand. You’re, I think I was 25 or something. Yeah. Like, no one’s gonna hire you. I was 23 maybe or something like that. Whatever. I was 24. No one’s gonna hire you. They’re not gonna hire you, dude. And I thought he was crazy. And then I realized no one would hire me. And eventually, I figured out that I could never be hired and now I’m unemployable. Like I, I have to be in charge.

Todd Ault:

And, uh, you have a person who wants to do what they want to do, has to know do they really want to do it or not? Yeah. Like, are they willing to, I was willing to not have any money, only do what I did for a living, start my own business, go broke, borrow from my mom and dad, and have no money. Marry the right person who stuck with me when I had nothing with blind faith that I was gonna keep going forward. So it’s, it’s not like the problem is you watch too much tv. Like you’re right. You go, wait, wait. Mark Zuckerberg was in his boy, his room, and he came up with an idea, isn’t this cool? The social network. And he ran around with, uh, Edgar, what’s his name, and, and then all of a sudden Justin Timberlake showed up and now I have a social network and I’m a billionaire. Bullshit.

Rick Jordan:

Exactly.

Todd Ault:

Doesn’t happen that way. Like it’s, it’s too like a romance novel. Like I have, I have this one friend, a female friend, a very pretty girl. Uh, and she is like, she’s like a Kim Kardashian type and Kim Kardashian has been divorced. Like what? Like Elizabeth Taylor, like 19 times, oh

Rick Jordan:

Man or something.

Todd Ault:

Yep. Whatever the number is. Now she’s on, on dude number 65 or 70. That’s her, it’s her bag. It’s not me, listen, she’s a billionaire. She’s smarter than me in marketing. She can do what she wants.

Rick Jordan:

Well it’s because she has a.com to the end of that. Right. Dude. 60 five.com

Todd Ault:

Right? <laugh> No, I’m, I’m teasing. I have no issue with the reaction. I’m using her as an example. She’s a nice person. I have no issue with her. Yeah. I’m saying trying to prove a point, which is that there are people that think they’re Kim Kardashian. There, you’re not. There, there isn’t another Kim Kardashian, there’s only one Kim Kardashian. You have to be what you wanna be. Right. But if you, if you are in a scenario where, uh, I’m married, but now it’s just not fun for me. Cuz uh, Tufts are, times are tough and my husband lost his job. What a coincidence. That my husband lost his job and now he’s gonna get a divorce because it’s not working out. She can’t have the lifestyle she wants. Right. Yeah. Uh, that’s not a commitment to what you want. That’s like a Well, times got tough. So I bailed out and I use that analogy all the time. And that is, you gotta be who you want to be yourself. Like, you gotta figure it out yourself and know that it’s not gonna be easy. And it’s that you’re gonna be Kim Kardashian, you’re just not gonna be Kim Kardashian.

Rick Jordan:

You’re gonna be you, you’re

Todd Ault:

Not gonna be, they’re not, you’re not gonna be this influencer that, you know, just does a couple of posts and cuz by the time you figure out that you can be an influencer Yeah. That ship has sailed. Yep. Everyone wants to be an influencer. So I’m not, I’m mean, I’m being like a little bit of an ass today to prove a point. Which is that like, you have to know what you wanna do and if you know what you wanna do, you’re gonna figure it out. You’re gonna do it. But you’re not gonna say to someone, I’m looking for the opportunity. I’m hoping it’s gonna work out. I need a break. You have to make your own breaks. Yeah.

Rick Jordan:

Bingo.

Todd Ault:

I mean, you really do it. It’s really not as hard as you think. It’s harder.

Rick Jordan:

Great insight, my man. I, uh, I’ve

Todd Ault:

You think so? You think

Rick Jordan:

So? Cause I do, I enjoyed the self-respective or self, uh, reflective nature of our conversation today. And it’s, uh, it’s almost like you were talking to yourself.

Todd Ault:

You’re, what’s that? I kind of was talking to him.

Rick Jordan:

It wasn’t <laugh>, but it’s good. It was a good monologue for, for a lot of, you know. Well,

Todd Ault:

I, well I’ll, I’ll tell you that when I think about yourself, I know what you’re trying to build in, in the service business around technology. And you’re gonna look back 10 years from now, you’re gonna say, one’s gonna say, how did you get there? Yeah. You’re gonna say, I ground out one deal at a time and I bought another company and I bought another company and I bought another company. And that’s how you got to a hundred million. Yeah. And, but the road, there’s no road, special road from zero to a hundred million without you doing the work.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah. Bingo. You got it. Everybody wants that. What, what’s the phrase? You know, the overnight success that took 10 years

Todd Ault:

<laugh> <laugh>. There’s no greater definition for me than someone saying, well it happened almost overnight. I’m like, yeah, like 20 over 29, 20 years.

Rick Jordan:

Yeah, exactly

Todd Ault:

Right. Oh, got there overnight just 20 years later.

Rick Jordan:

Yep.

Todd Ault:

No one’s around for that.

Rick Jordan:

For sure. Todd, I appreciate you. I

Todd Ault:

Didn’t, you, my man didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t mean to give that monologue like that.

Rick Jordan:

I’m sorry. No, it’s good. Don’t apologize. Are you kidding me? Such great insight. You know, there were just a couple of things around, I’m glad Skylar jumped into, you know, just, uh, just asked a question halfway through, you know, but it’s, uh, your bio is, you know, a born entrepreneur and self-made man. And, I love that cuz there’s no, there’s nothing else in going all in than just being real. And that’s what this was today. You know, it was a good, uh, good ode that we both gave to some NPR. I kind of like the feel, I don’t have this feeling too often. You know, it’s, uh, <laugh>, there’s a lot of influencers that like to come on the show, quote unquote influencers, right? They, they like to come on the show and then you find out real quick that they’ve been, uh, an influencer for, you know, two days, something like that. And they’re just calling themselves that because it now, it becomes a, you know, putting in the work. There are some really cool people and then some other interesting folks that, that I meet that I go on the show. But Todd, you’re the cream of the crop man. I appreciate you.

Todd Ault:

Oh, that’s, appreciate you too, man. That’s nice of you to say.

Rick Jordan:

Thanks for coming on.

Todd Ault:

Uh, I’m happy to be here. All right. It’s been, uh, uh, I apologize for, uh, being a little, you know, reflective here at the beginning of the year, but the reason I’m reflecting is that I’ve seen the last two years in this pandemic people thinking it’s different this time buying stocks that are going to the moon that are these new age Robinhood who’s gonna give you commission free trading. Yeah. It’s never different. At the end of the day, you gotta do the work, and if you’re making money trading crypto and, uh, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m really disappointed with, with what SPF F did with, with or allegedly did with uh, fix, you know, um, San Fried. And same, he’s heard an industry that’s a great industry. Yeah. What I would encourage people to think about, right, is that any time there have been boom-bust scenarios, there’s, they have them in real estate, no money down real estate. The 2008 debacle. They had it in 2001 when the internet dot com’s busted. Any great technology or new opportunity is gonna be taken advantage of by people that will do things that they shouldn’t be doing. But it doesn’t mean that the industry isn’t revolutionary and blockchain is revolutionary. It’s a revolutionary idea.

Rick Jordan:

Absolutely. The tech is, yeah. The technology itself is revolutionary.

Todd Ault:

Right. One of the reasons I have such an interest in your business, what you’re doing, and I know you’re raising capital around your business, you’re planning to go public, is because your business is so definable and people need it. And so what I would tell people to understand if they wanna start something is what problem are you solving? Yeah.

Todd Ault:

Why do you have a passion for doing it? And your problem for you, my friend, is you’re solving a problem where I grow my business, I need technology to help me support my business and I help people to support, the technology around my business. But I, I’m not a technology expert, but I gotta go to a place like a utility, right? Yeah. And, and I’ll give people this analogy. When you go to turn on the power, do you, do you think about that? You have to press the power button for the power to come on because a hundred years ago you didn’t have that option. A hundred years ago when you had the power button, you wondered if the power would come on cuz there wasn’t a power button

Rick Jordan:

For sure.

Todd Ault:

My point is, is that what you’re doing now is you’re taking what is a utility now, which is a software as a service, uh, managed technology around what companies needs in desktop and customer service and uh, uh, what they need in terms of software to manage their business. And you’re saying we’re gonna give you managed services around your technology where you don’t have to think about the power button.

Todd Ault:

That

Todd Ault:

Power button’s right there. And you can call us anytime. We’re gonna help manage your desktop remotely. We’re gonna make sure your technology and your tech, your tech stack works for you so you can go build your business. There’s never been a better time ever in the history of mankind than start a business today. Yeah. Right now I’m with you. You want to sell something, you can go to Shopify and something that costs billions of dollars to build when Amazon built it over 10, 15 years, Shopify is available now and you can set it up in a day. Yep. And you can get a company like yours, yours right now and open up a call center and have the technology within a few weeks to have it all done and ready. Bingo. Never a better time to do it. Once you know what you want to do.