← Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
Revolutionizing Shopping and Giving ft. Kenyatto Jones | Coffeez for Closers with Joe Shalaby Ep. 62
00:45:25
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Foreign.
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What's up everybody? And welcome to another episode of Copies for Closers, the podcast where we bring you conversations with innovators and disruptors making big moves and creating a lasting impact. Today we're talking to someone who's transforming how we shop, connect and give back. Leading a groundbreaking shift into in fintech and philanthropy. Get ready for insights, inspiration and game changing ideas. Please welcome the founder and CEO of givebucks, Ken Jones.
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A
Good morning. 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.
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B
Well, the founder is chief strategy officer. Still the founder. You know, I love the concept of Give Bucks. I love what you're doing with it and I love the mission behind it.
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A
Thank you.
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B
Now I like to start this show off with the same question. Everybody. With everybody. And Ken, what is your morning routine?
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A
My morning routine at 5am I get up and listen to Great Glory. It's like, like clockwork. And it's one of my podcasts or.
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B
What do you listen to?
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A
It's on. I have an app. No matter where I'm at in the world. It's right here. It's called ITUN and iTunes. Radio. Tunein Radio. I'm sorry. Tunein Radio.
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B
Okay.
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A
And he's just, he's always on 5am California time for 10 years.
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B
Does he go live on at 5am?
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A
You know, I don't think he's live, no.
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B
Yeah, because I listen to Greg Laurie podcast. I love his podcast.
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A
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 because 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.
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B
Okay, I'm gonna download that. I didn't know he had now.
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A
Yeah, Tune. Actually, no, it's his. It's, it's, it's called Tunein Radio. And there's probably 100, 100 different cast on there. Like right now it says Tony Evans podcast.
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B
Okay.
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A
So I think it's. And it's actually K Wave. K Wave.
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B
Oh, gotcha. Oh, it's the K Wave app. Okay, Right on. And so 5am Then what you do?
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A
Then these 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. It's not easy. Yeah, but a couple of my friends sucked at me into it, and I've been. Me and my friend Naomi, my bestie. She's a good girl. 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.
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B
Nice. Nice. Okay, cool. What year did you Start Gift Bucks?
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A
2018. December 5, 2018.
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B
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.
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A
Absolutely. Yes. Yes. We're really getting ready to a major push now. 2025, you're going to see some momentum.
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B
Start to happen seven years later. So you spent seven years building out this app. What were you doing in that whole time? Like, to live. How did you make money?
- [03:20]
A
Yeah, it was not easy. You know, I. I made some money in a previous company. I put it all here, and I cast out some stock for seven figures and I put the money here.
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B
And you invested heavy into this.
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A
Yeah. Put everything in.
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B
Yeah. I mean, it should.
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A
It should do very well for. For us. And, you know, that's not the reason why I'm not. Not. Money's money comes and goes. We're not worried about that, but we'll do well.
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B
Yeah, no, I mean, the concept is, it's. It's revolutionary, you know. So tell the General audience a 10, 000 foot overview of what is give bucks and how they can benefit from it.
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A
Sure. So. So Gitbooks 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 3, 4, 5, 6 different apps to do all the different things like sending money, talking on the phone, doing FaceTime, texting, paying your bill, giving. Instead 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 is going to 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 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 a 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. It means a lot to us. Doesn't matter if you went to Old Navy or Nordstrom's, bought a hat, a jacket, a pair of pants, 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 the. 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. But the whole purpose of using the app is spend money and help others that are less fortunate. That's the gift 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, giving and making money on one app, that's what the platform's about.
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B
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 altogether.
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A
Absolutely. The right thing to do.
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B
Yeah.
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A
We're our brother's keeper. You know, we're our sister's keeper. So we have to. To do the right thing if we can. Especially if it's frictionless.
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B
I mean, now the only friction would be adoption of the app.
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A
That's correct. Yeah.
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B
So they have to use the app as like your. Your credit cards built into the app. And you pay, or you pay with the app or.
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A
Yeah, it's. It's super simple. You literally go to the merchant, you're at Foot Locker or you're at Applebee's, doesn't matter. They bring your bill. All you have to do is go and open up the app, type in the amount, $34.15, click Pay, and in about 7, 8 seconds, a barcode is 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 an egift. 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 it works.
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B
Wow, that's amazing. So it's very friction. That's just like, just paying instantly.
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Paying instantly. And I'll show you. You can ask a couple questions, but I'll show you a couple. I should have had this pulled up.
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B
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.
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A
Uber's easy. We love Uber.
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B
Uber's easy. So, like, when I order my Uber, can I just be synced so I don't do anything? Right?
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A
It's like so Uber. There's a few apps like Uber, Amazon.
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B
Amazon has its own giving solution.
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A
They used to have one, Smile, but somehow they abandoned that just recently. I think within the last six months.
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B
Yeah, we got.
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A
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. So. But it's okay. We're. We're happy to keep the giving movement going with. Without them, I mean.
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B
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. You know, we all know that that's something that we're called to do. Obviously this doesn't replace the mandatory giving requirement, but it just. Right, you have to. To fulfill. As part of your legacy. Anyways. But, you know, any, Any additional opportunities where we can help elevate our, you know, our soul. It's. It's always welcomed. Right?
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A
Amen. Absolutely.
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B
Yes. So, so let me ask you this. I'm gonna go back like at what year you, 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.
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A
Past, since college days, 25 plus years.
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B
Been an entrepreneur 25 plus years. What was your first business?
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A
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. So the formerly known as the multilevel marketing companies. Multilevel marketing business.
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B
Okay.
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A
That was probably the first want to call it business that I've gotten involved in where I didn't have a salary, didn't have a, didn't get a weekly paycheck. It was you eat what you kill kind of a scenario. But it really, it really, I really did learn a lot about business. And 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 stand 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. So.
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B
So you started, you in your early 20s, you became an entrepreneur.
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A
Yes.
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B
And what year 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. You cashed out some stock?
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A
No, I cast some shares out of what company? I was a coffee company.
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B
Okay.
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A
Out of Plano, Texas.
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B
And you were a majority, minority owner?
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A
I was, I was a large shareholder in there. I think I kicked this thing off. I was the second largest shareholder in the company.
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B
Okay.
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And you know, should have done better than I did. But life is what life is. So we. I now have an opportunity to control my own destiny here and do something that I think will have major impact on society. I think it'll have be a legacy play for myself. And I want this thing to be here, you know, 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.
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B
Opinion, but well, that should feel you more. Yeah, should feel you more. You know, whenever someone says the mountains too high to climb, like that's true. I'll make it happen.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
So my question is like you, 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. Sure, you know, Smile, Amazon's platform or some of the big wigs charitable. Well, so platforms.
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A
I 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 choice. You pay your bill, whatever the price is.
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B
So the, the, the people on the platform are basically foregoing a cut of the income to go to charities. They're losing. The. The user is not losing.
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A
The user is 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. That's. We had to create this.
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B
I don't understand how the merchant doesn't lose.
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A
So, 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, MasterCard or my American Express, which the merchant would get deemed the merchant processing fees for that. So we pretty much eliminated that. Which 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 the complaint a month later saying I was never here.
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B
So that's the loophole. The merchant. You're avoiding the merchant fees, going using cash directly as a gift card strategy.
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It's one.
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B
It's amazing.
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Yeah.
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B
Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's one.
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That.
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But yeah, I mean, like, just as a general gist, like, because they're saving on the merchant fees. The 2, 3%. You're saving the 2, 3%. Everybody's saving that 2, 3%. That's the, that's the variance there.
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A
Absolutely. The merchants also benefit because we have a community of people that have money on 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? Well, 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 and something dollars in my account. I could be John's Pizza, Joe's Barbershop, or who knows where. I got to spend that money. And trust me, I'll spend this money before I pull out this bank of America card or this paper cash.
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B
Yeah. So that money is, how do, how do you fill that money? Is it through your credit card, your debit card, or where's that money being?
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A
So two ways to get money in your account is I can use Venmo, I can use Zelle, I can walk.
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B
You have to, you have to cat. You have to basically input, top your account.
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A
Yeah. You can top your account up. I can click my. 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.
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B
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.
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A
Only you could, you could tell your credit card too.
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B
You can still get your points too.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
That's what I was alluding to.
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A
Yeah, absolutely.
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B
So you can get your points, you avoid the merchant fees. You avoid the merchant fees for both ends and then the hungry benefit.
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A
That's it. Yeah.
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B
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, their souls to give and give accordingly and just give all the time.
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A
Awesome.
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B
And I think give Bucks is a solution to help people start that journey of always being a giver, you know, because, you know, we all know God loves cheerful giver.
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A
Absolutely.
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God loves a cheerful giver. So if we give and we give with, you know, all our hearts, you know, we're going to be rewarded. So this just, this is another, like, I, I like to take many steps towards progress and this is just a baby step towards, you know, giving. You know, it's not like this is. God wants his 10% of your money. More than 10% really. But you know, this just, you know, just adds a little bit more.
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A
Absolutely. Yep.
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B
Now my question is, what put it on your heart to start give bucks and where you spent six, seven years in development, millions of dollars with no end in sight. What put like that risk on your heart?
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A
Excuse me?
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B
And, and why?
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A
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, just goes away and nobody really benefits except for, for them. And I said, let me put something together where people, we know how to make money, but let's figure something out where 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, you're going to go to the theater and there's so many.
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B
You got everything on. You're gonna eat, you're gonna buy. Gamestops on here. Food for Less is on here. Uber's on here, Delta's on. Your Home Depot is on here. We can give even when we go to Home Depot. I mean, I pretty much can live on this app. Yeah, if you didn't have a band.
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A
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, from Nordstrom's, Amazon, Home Depot, Forever 21. All these companies said no, no first.
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B
I mean, you're calling their leadership teams to try to get them to say, get, you know, give me an API integration into your payment platforms.
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A
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, there's these aggregators that have relationships already with a lot of these, these, these companies. And I thought, man, I hit the jackpot. Get with one of these associations and you can get in. But 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. Thanks. We used to have to think we submitted an 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. You know, probably get a cease and desist really quick.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So you do have to get merchant approval, but the associations. Super helpful. Super helpful. In summary, in some regards. Put this in my throat here, buddy.
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B
Yeah, I'm gonna talk about now, like, building a super app. Like, a lot of people on this call don't even know what a super app is. I mean, because we don't really. I mean, I think the biggest. The closest thing I would think to a super app would be like WhatsApp or something like that.
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A
I mean, that's what's up.
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B
It's not a super app. I mean, I feel like they're just. They keep adding to it.
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A
They're big.
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B
Yeah. What's this? We don't really have anything in the US That's a super app right now, huh?
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A
Nope.
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B
I mean, a lot of people, I mean, kind of Facebook is sort of like. You could send payments through Facebook.
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A
You can't go to. You can't go to Ralph's and say, I'm gonna pay with my Facebook.
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B
Yeah, you're right.
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A
No. The best example of super apps are look up for any of the listeners grab.
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B
You know, everyone knows WeChat.
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A
WeChat.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Those are super apps. Even Elon Musk, he's kind of been touting turning Twitter. We're actually now X into an everything app. And everything app is the same as a super app.
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B
Yeah. So.
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A
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.
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B
And is there a social component of gift bucks too?
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A
Like, phase one's already done the next version, which is our.
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B
Are you gonna be like a Blue sky X platform? Are you gonna be like, there'll be.
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A
Our version of Instagram or Tik Tok 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.
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B
And it'll be cool. Maybe it'll be like philanthropic, you know, content.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
Yeah. I. I've taken a.
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A
You know, that's exactly what we want.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Philanthropic content.
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B
Yeah. A lot of my content strategy always is around, you know, philanthropy. Matter of fact, I do man on the street content and I was doing it yesterday and I was, you know, trying to find needy people just to buy them their stuff.
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A
Really?
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B
Yeah. Well, that's part of my content strategy, so.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah. So beyond the podcast, I do, you know, man on the street content a couple times a week.
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A
Okay.
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B
Yeah. In addition to everything else I do. It's funny to get rejected by people. They don't even know what, what's coming if they said yes, you know. Yeah.
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A
Story about that. I try to give a guy right in Newport. It's funny because I, I never let anybody. If I see a homeless, I, I have a, when I drive, I have a stack of two dollar bills or whenever it was in my glove apartment ready to give. As I'm just live my life one time in Newport, I'm giving. I just do my routine. Okay, here's a guy needs help and I'm Cassie. He's all, oh, no, sorry, we. 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.
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B
But there's racism within the homeless.
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A
I'll just give my, my two, three dollars to someone else. It's the funniest experience right there on the corner of right as a war in the office.
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B
Wow.
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A
I'm PCH and superior, I guess. Or right as you pass Hook Hospital.
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B
So a white homeless guy would not take.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Money from, you know, an African American. That's insane.
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A
Interesting.
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B
That was okay. That was a fascinating experience for sure. So what are some of the biggest challenges you think you faced in building a super app?
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A
You know, finding the right development team to work together in harmony. It's 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 barrier is what it is. But. And we have operations person here and he's from the 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 and partial. Maybe it's been part of my fault. Run out of capital, didn't have all. I didn't have tens of millions 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.
- [24:10]
B
Did you get any seed funding or you funded at all?
- [24:13]
A
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 Symbols, G Bucks, gbux. We're on the OTC markets. We just filed with the SEC a month back. A little more than a month or so.
- [24:30]
B
What's the share cost right now?
- [24:33]
A
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. Always kind of hovered around there but. But you're going to see, I believe and I'm not making any comments on any investment advice or any buying any shares or anything, but I think this thing is going to do very well.
- [24:53]
B
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 support. It's a brilliant concept. Do you have competition right now? No one's doing this in Silicon Valley.
- [25:13]
A
The way we're doing it. And we did this by design. I looked at all the big boys. 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.
- [25:33]
B
You ever talk to the founders of like Venmo, like Brian Johnson or see what they're doing? Like, well, you know what they're doing.
- [25:40]
A
You can look at their platform, you can kind of see.
- [25:43]
B
But what's on there, 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.
- [25:57]
A
Maybe they'll bring it back. I don't know why. It was a bit of a shock to me too.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah, it opens it up for more market share for you but you know, it's, you know, it's a shock to definitely hear that Smile's gone now. Let me ask you this and this is something that you know is important. It's how are you inspiring user engagement and really inspiring the adoption of user of your user base.
- [26:25]
A
So the apps by imitation 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 pull the layers back. If you told a friend, 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 $100 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 would three other people. So seven of us benefit because this person who we don't even know use this app at Applebee's and paid it for it. That's kind of the model.
- [27:16]
B
So I can't just download give box right now. Start using it.
- [27:20]
A
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.
- [27:29]
B
Yeah, but how many, how many users are out there? I mean, how do you.
- [27:32]
A
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.
- [27:40]
B
Yeah.
- [27:40]
A
And they'll all, they'll all listen. That last company I was telling you about, the coffee company, is word of mouth. And quarter million customers were spending money. It's all word of mouth. We'll get customers.
- [27:55]
B
How do you get Nike to sign up for this, your platform with no user with 10, I mean a small user base, 10,000. I mean, how did you convince him like that? That was a feat by itself. Like a big merchant like Nike, a big merchant like Home Depot.
- [28:10]
A
I think they have a different motiv 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. We 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.
- [29:11]
B
I mean, all these merchants listed here, Southwest, every single one of them are dealing with chargebacks. There's no way you can't deal with chargebacks.
- [29:17]
A
Yeah, when, when people are using their, 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, don't really have an issue with that. And 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, or your face will actually approve the transaction. That's an extra layer of security for us, so we don't have to, so we won't be subject to the characters out there that create these nefarious little. There's a lot of fraud out there, of course, a lot of bad actors that like, pry and looking for ways to infiltrate and squeeze in and exploit the vulnerabilities in these platforms. But I think with 3Ds and biometrics, 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.
- [30:28]
B
Yeah.
- [30:29]
A
In this case, not even your finger will require your face. That'll be the ultimate protection for us.
- [30:35]
B
And when's that coming? The facial recognition to pay.
- [30:38]
A
I'm. I'm a month away from that, probably A month maximum. Two months away.
- [30:42]
B
But yeah, that's amazing.
- [30:44]
A
We're pretty protected the way we are right now. 3Ds is, is pretty good, but that extra layer is just ironclad. Won't have any issues.
- [30:55]
B
Now I'm in the mortgage banking business, and in my business, we are hyper regulated. I'm talking about like so regulated that Elon Musk is even saying, man, you got so many regulators in the mortgage space that they're like duplicit, duplicitous. You know, 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 hyper regulation. What sort of regulatory compliance or hyper regulations is around? Philanthropy. Philanthropy. I'm sure there's a lot because there's so many philanthropic scams out there.
- [31:33]
A
Sure.
- [31:34]
B
And then how did you overcome those and how are you kind of, you know, meshing in and overcoming, overcoming any future regulatory issues?
- [31:42]
A
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. And 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. And you can earn rewards off of your network. And if you. That's your money. If you want to cash that in and give it to the homeless shelter 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 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 so that we don't have any blowback in the future.
- [33:13]
B
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 get of give 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. 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?
- [33:54]
A
Easier than, like I said, the long route going up the food chain through LinkedIn, not the best route at all. You know, getting connected with. And we haven't even gotten started.
- [34:07]
B
No, I know.
- [34:07]
A
I mean, connected with the associations and the aggregators. Super, super important. But you got to remember, there's only a few hundred national brands that even exist. You know, we're. 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 pop shops all throughout the community. And that's where there's millions of those businesses. A few hundred here, millions of John's, John's Pizzas and Tony 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, 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 businesses done and that's where we're going. Not only be able to have it in the local merchant, I mean the nationally recognized brands, but in the local merchants is 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 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 and download an app just if they can only use it here.
- [35:37]
B
Is it a national app or international app?
- [35:40]
A
It's international. Right now we focus on the, on the, on the US market. But we're already, once you have the approval and you know, Home Depot approval here, it's easier to get the green light to flip that, that rail on internationally.
- [35:59]
B
So that's. My next question is like, what is, you know, what are your plans for future expansion and how, how do you think givebucks users are going to grow over the next five years?
- [36:12]
A
I think we're going to experience tremendous growth. Having started, I think you just started.
- [36:18]
B
The marketing now last company.
- [36:19]
A
Yeah, we, yeah, we just had a little stint. We're trying to get some marketing going. You know, today was a pretty important day. Just a few hours ago, you know, a new update came out. There'll be another one with a better UI ux, but new update come out, came out. It's going to 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 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 now access.
- [37:00]
B
So everybody needs now just what it is. We're in the Amazon world. We're on demand world.
- [37:05]
A
Yeah, Amazon really open up a can for everybody.
- [37:08]
B
Yeah.
- [37:09]
A
Delivering stuff same day now, hours or next day. That, that, that's what now you have.
- [37:15]
B
You have to meet that demand. 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.
- [37:24]
A
Like that sounds.
- [37:25]
B
We're moving too fast. Society moves too fast now.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah, it is.
- [37:29]
B
It doesn't, 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 yet?
- [37:35]
A
We got. Yeah, can I make some recommendations from Starbucks? So we'll get Starbucks, though?
- [37:39]
B
Yeah, 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 adoption, and as your user base grows, everyone's gonna come to you. Same thing happened to me when I started my podcast. I couldn't get any guests. I only got mortgage guests because nobody cared that I was a mortgage CEO, like, other than mortgage people. And then as the show grew and, you know, it started to climb the charts, like, oh, okay, we'll go on your show now. You know, so it happens with every, you know, in any industry.
- [38:14]
A
It does. It does indeed. You know, we have it. I said it's in communication with one of the executives at Airbnb. And not only do I think more and more of these brands going to come, but we want to start getting some of them to participate and market. I think there's huge opportunity from there. It's kind of a crawl, walk, run approach. I'm happy to first just get in the door. Let's show them that we can put some points on the board, get some volume going.
- [38:38]
B
Yeah, that's it.
- [38:38]
A
And 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 the platform. There's some. There's some opportunities there.
- [38:53]
B
Now, let me ask you something. How are you instilling and fostering a company culture of giving at givebucks? Like, it's a company based on giving. Like, how are you fostering that culture there?
- [39:03]
A
I think we have to do a better job at marketing, 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 not much impact. And we're an international company too. So you know, developers out of Honduras and Which can't really give yet.
- [39:34]
B
Yeah, they don't really have much money to give.
- [39:38]
A
Yeah. And we don't have merchants out there. We're not, we're not put that switch on yet. But, but we, we need to do a good job at getting, 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's in there. We give you all the data. If you went to make, made a purchase, you can see and 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.
- [40:14]
B
You know, it 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.
- [40:24]
A
Yeah.
- [40:25]
B
And make that one of your videos.
- [40:26]
A
That would be that actually not a.
- [40:28]
B
Bad idea that you're like. That would, you know, that would be your intro video. Listen to Greg Laurie tell you why to use Give bucks.
- [40:36]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:38]
B
And he'd do it. He would do it.
- [40:40]
A
He totally would. He's such a cool guy.
- [40:42]
B
Yeah, he would do it. You could just like listen, I've worked on this app. Greg, I'm a big fan. Like I need you to do this five minute video. I'm sorry I had to say that. I didn't want to cut you out but. No.
- [40:55]
A
No, I was just lost my train of thought there, but.
- [41:01]
B
Well, a couple last questions for you. Now. I like to wind down with these last same questions with everybody. And what is a personal goal that you have for yourself and a business goal that you have for Give Bucks over the next year, next year?
- [41:17]
A
Well, I'm personal goal. I'm a little behind on my family obligations. So I'm like the last of the last of the delinquent friends to get, get married, have kids. Actually there's another, there's another buddy, he's worse off than me. So I'm not the last one. I won't mention his name, but he lives in Las Vegas.
- [41:39]
B
No, that's not. You'll never get married there.
- [41:42]
A
Kidding. No. Yeah, I got to get the family situation going. Mommy wants grandkids so Got to get that machine moving and you know the business, I think the business is going to do well. Get the first million people in the.
- [41:58]
B
Platform in the first year. You think you get a million?
- [42:01]
A
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there we can. Before then, I mean, we've never even utilized the power of these influencers and there's a couple influencers that could just move the needle. But, you know, I think there's a, I think there's a better way if using the influencer is going to work too. But I think there's a better way than having to just stroke a check and pay XYZ influencer to talk about it. It's going to happen anyway. Yeah. When. I mean, that's the last case resort. If we have to do that, we'll do it. But I think the platform, the merits of the platform will attract the masses. I think a lot of people will gravitate to the platform and our ideology is sound. I think people gonna, people just need to experience it. And thank goodness for Apple Pay and Google Pay, Samsung Pay, who've made it mainstream even though people still don't use it yet, but they've kind of made it mainstream that, yeah, you can go pay with relative ease using your smartphone. Without that, it'd be a hard. Be a harder road.
- [43:12]
B
Absolutely.
- [43:12]
A
Be a harder road. But even they haven't infiltrated and they spent a lot of money to get you to use this. But go stand at any store, sit back and watch 100 people pay. And 90 plus of them are still using plastic cards or cash. This craziest thing. A lot of the younger generation though, they're, they're using their Apple.
- [43:30]
B
They're using, I mean, I barely started using Apple Pay myself.
- [43:34]
A
I spent a lot of money to get you to do that years ago.
- [43:37]
B
But, you know, it's. Adoption is slow. Adoption is slow. And I'm, I'm typically an early adopter, but I was reluctant because I was always scared with my phone. But I didn't realize with your phone, with Apple Pay, that before you pay you have to, you know, do facial recognition, which was my apprehension before.
- [43:58]
A
Yeah, some people are a little bit wigged out about that Big brother. And there's a lot of people that are. But this is where the world's going. This is just. It is what it is.
- [44:07]
B
Yeah. Pretty soon it's gonna be the requirement.
- [44:10]
A
Yeah, it's adopt or die or unfortunately. We'll see.
- [44:15]
B
Now, last question. You know, because you're a man, you know, of character and faith and you built a company based on giving. So you know that says a lot about you. So when you're in front of the pearly gates what do you think God's gonna tell you?
- [44:33]
A
Well job well done my faithful servant. I hope so but gotta pull this off. I got a lot of a lot of making up to do. You know just turned 50 this year so there's a lot of a lot of making up to do not I've not done everything I I can or should have done so let's go make it happen.
- [44:57]
B
This is going to take the giving community, the philanthropic community by storm. Coming to you 2025. You're going to hear a lot and see a lot of him. God bless you man. God bless your service and I hope GIVE Bucks takes off and I'll be advocating for you. Thank you. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [45:14]
A
Sa.