Episode 408: Rigging the Game with Dan Nicholson

Welcome to another episode of the Above the Business Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. On today's episode, we have Dan Nicholson. He is a serial entrepreneur since birth, and he's also the author of Rigging the Game: How to Achieve Financial Certainty, Navigate Risk, and Make Money on Your Terms. And it is deemed a bestseller by USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. You'll see throughout this, there's been— I don't know how many episodes we've done up to this point, maybe 250 to 300 interviews— there's not been many of them that have made me think in a way that Dan does. I love his approach to both life and in business. I think this podcast is one of my favorites that we've done this year. I think you're going to get a tremendous amount out of it. We go both kind of with mindset and mental models and thoughts, all the way to some stuff that you can do today. He challenges conventional wisdom but doesn't in a way that's very approachable. I think you're going to really love this episode with Dan Nicholson. Thank you, team. You know, I do say often I really enjoy that conversation, but that was one of the more thoughtful conversations that I can remember having on the podcast in, in quite some time. That was very conversational. Almost got a little lost in the fact that we were actually doing a podcast there because it really made me kind of stop and think. And I love the— I think unconventional is a really good way to approach that, but yet in a very approachable way. It's really made me stop, pause, think about some of those things. So I love his views on life and in business. And so definitely go and check out his book, check out his podcast. You can connect with him, go to riggingamazon.com— love that URL— and then check them out at unconventionalwealth.cash. Dan, welcome to the Above the Business podcast.

Thanks for having me on.

Excited to have you. We'd love to start background and origin story, people's journeys, kind of how they got to where they are. So why don't you take our listening audience back and bring us to present day?

Yeah, I always like to sort of start with asking the audience to just imagine that, that kid growing up scheming on business ideas constantly. And so that was me as a kid. I'm sure there's sort of an image that comes to mind. So from a very early age, I just kind of ran the numbers in my head about different business opportunities and to date myself a little bit, around 9, I was trying to convince my parents that I should have a paper route because I had sort of run all the numbers. Of course, like I said, that dates me a bit because what kids have paper routes now? It's such a thing of the past. And ultimately went off to college, first person in my family to go to college. I come from a blue-collar background that's really meaningful to me. Dad was a journeyman machinist. My mom was mostly a stay-at-home parent and then eventually was a lunch lady. So come from humble paths and very appreciative of my parents for sort of the hard work and opportunities they gave me that they didn't have. And that informs a lot of how I am today. So got accounting degree, information systems degree. Thinking that would be the best skill set to be an entrepreneur. And then for about 10 years, I went pretty far away from that. I did a fellowship with the board that writes all the accounting standards in the US, uh, that put me on this really technical path. I was a fish out of water in that fellowship, uh, like I said, coming from this blue-collar background. It's a very elitist thing to do, sort of like clerking for the Supreme Court. So the— all my colleagues, for the most part, their parents were CFOs of Fortune 500 companies and top cardiologists. And I pulled up in my Honda Civic. My dad's a machinist, my mom's a lunch lady. And, and, uh, and, uh, it served me well in those opportunities though, because I got more and more opportunities that didn't make sense to the other fellows in some cases. And, you know, sort of floundered for a while because people kept hiring me based off that fellowship program and assuming I must be smart because I did this fellowship. But really, they shouldn't hire— I kept thinking, you probably shouldn't hire me. I'm going to be your top employee for like the first 90 to 120 days, and then I'm going to get bored and kind of— I'll still do good work, but really I should be self-employed. So it took me 10 years to kind of navigate that and what I felt like I should be doing given the fellowship I did and thinking about how hard my parents were working compared to how much I was working and the income disparity between the two of us. I struggle with that, but ultimately I realized 15 years ago there's opportunity to do something different in the CPA space, and I really haven't looked back since.

That's great. Well, you don't know this yet, but you and I come from similar backgrounds. My dad's a farmer, uh, so, and my mom stayed at home. She was in sales for a period of time, Nutrisystem, in a furniture store, and that influenced me. But also my dad being an absolutely blue-collar, even to this day, it had a big impact on me. So I certainly can can absolutely relate to that a lot. First of all, I have to tell you, I really love your book title, Rigging the Game. I think that is a super catchy hook. Tell me, how did— how did— your podcast is Rigging the Game. How did you come up with just that name, let alone— obviously we'll get into the, the, the, the frameworks and the concepts and what the book is about, etc. But I just have to tell you that, that, uh, had a lot of authors come on the podcast. That's a really great, uh, title.

I really appreciate that. And I was seeking something that seemed counterintuitive. A lot of my— I would consider myself to be a little bit of a contrarian, and that's a big part of my personality. So people expect, because I'm a CPA, because I've done some academic type stuff like the fellowship I mentioned before, that I must be the definition of someone who's very conventional. Accounting is like conventions. So the idea of rigging the game is like, well, that doesn't— CPA shouldn't think like that. You've got to be the letter of the law. And I don't mean to do anything nefarious or unethical whatsoever. But what I have learned mostly through failure and through unlearning a lot of things I thought I knew. Is this idea, and it's a quote from someone named W. Edwards Deming, and I'm paraphrasing, but he says, every system is perfectly designed for the results you're getting. Like, wow, okay. So if I don't like the results, I have 3 options. I can be a victim and just throw my hands up and go, this sucks, it is what it is. I don't recommend that path because that's just accepting, uh, the certainty of of misery. Uh, but there's two other options, which if you don't like the results, you can change the system or you can change your behavior. And that's really what I mean about rigging the game is once you understand the outcome that you want, if you can deconstruct the system, could be the tax code system, could be any other number of complex systems that you can deconstruct the system and figure out either how to change it or how to change your behavior. Within that system to get a different outcome. And so we can almost always rig the game, meaning, uh, modify things in a way that we get an outcome that's at least acceptable to us, if not very preferential.

Tell me if I'm thinking about this wrong, but the way that that is resonating with me now is that I see it as a, as a mindset and as a concept, and then at the same time I began to think about it as like, how can I build this system to be able to get outsized returns in the game of business and entrepreneurship? Would that be a fair way to absorb it?

I haven't had it summarized that way back, but that's a very great way of articulating it. It is both a mindset or a sort of change in your orientation of how you view things. And then In addition to that, if you're willing to change your point of view, uh, then you have to develop a different set of tools and principles to actually make that operational in your kind of day-to-day life. So it is—

I, I really love that word. Um, I've come to appreciate the quality of words, individual, the change of the point of view or the change of the orientation. I really love that, that word because sometimes when I hear mindset, I think it's, it's like not how I'm trying to approach it, right? It's more like, I think maybe mental model is a closer thing at times to what I'm trying to say often than, than a mindset, you know, um, at least for me it is anyway.

Okay, so I have thoughts on that, um, and I, if I could just jump in for a second.

Please go ahead.

I've had similar kind of consternation around this idea of mindset. Maybe it's my contrarian point of view shining through again, where if I hear something that just becomes cliché, it's like, ah, come up, adapt a different point of view. But I think about developing what I call mental agility, which is your ability to sort of navigate through complex systems, relationships, biases. We are all subject to biases, whether we want to acknowledge that or not. And there's all different shapes and forms of them. But how do we navigate through all of those biases, roadblocks? And it requires not to be set or fixed in a certain direction, but to actually be quite agile and be able to identify it and then adjust accordingly.

Yeah, I totally agree with you. In fact, Kind of is a good segue to comment I was going to make, which was through doing the podcast and then just doing business, you know, I think 5 years ago even I would have had several hills I'm willing to die on. And it's been interesting about how few of those exist now, the more that I have learned and grown over time of like, well, I was wrong 5 years ago. I, uh, now see business a lot different. I mean, just the holding of equity is a big one. And I was like, no, don't give equity away at all, ever. Don't ever do that. Now, now the value of partnerships and having other people that have skin in the game has changed my mindset completely in, in a way about how to, how to do business. As an example, again, not saying freely just throw equity around like Oprah, you know, you get equity and you get equity. Not like that. But, but no, I mean, that, that's an example of You know, hills I'm willing to die on are just a few and far between now at this point, you know, whereas— and it's interesting though, the more that I've learned along the way, the more that it's like, well, I actually need to revisit that firmly held belief that I've had about maybe life, about, about obviously business and entrepreneurship, um, etc. Have you had a similar experience?

Yeah, what, what you just described to me, uh, I construe as integrity. And I, I have slightly redefined integrity from a definition that feels really good but often gets violated, which is most people would describe integrity as something like, I do what I say I'm going to do. Now, the problem with statements like that is that often we violate them because there's exceptions. It's like I do what I say I'm going to do, except— and then there's all these sort of constant exceptions that keep evolving because clearly there's instances where you can't do what you say you're going to do. Emergencies, you know, you can think about all the different extreme scenarios. And, and, but again, it, it feels good to say I do what I say I'm going to do. And I have remapped in my mind integrity to be I reserve the right to change my mind when presented with new information. So it takes a lot more integrity to me to be willing to do that, to change your mind in the face of new information. Most of us are subject to confirmation bias. When presented with new information that invalidates a previous thought that we have, we get more entrenched in our existing belief.

Sure.

And I could give you lots of examples that would take this you know, we could look at politics. I'm not going to go any further than that, but we could— whatever side you're on, you could imagine that when you have a point of view and you present someone with some new information that contradicts with their beliefs, they get more entrenched in their point of view. Point of view.

No question.

And that to me is a demonstration of a lack of integrity. Again, because my sort of remapping is I'm willing to change my mind. And that means that I have to then tell people I made a mistake. You know, I thought this, I had this long-standing belief, and, uh, and now I realize when presented with new information that I've been completely wrong, like you said with partnerships. And now I have to come tell you that, admit it, and do something different going forward, which you may not like because maybe our relationship was all based off this thing that I'm now wrong about.

Sure.

So to me, that, that is the sign of someone who has integrity.

Hmm, that's great. That's a great definition. I got a really random question for you. When you were in school growing up, like, what kind of student were you? Did you, did you question a lot of the things that the teachers were sharing with you? Were you, were you super inquisitive in school?

Yeah, I'm kind of a, I'm kind of a I have evolved quite a bit from being a painfully shy kid. I mean, that's how my parents would describe me, painfully shy or painfully, painfully shy. And I had a speech problem, really bad teeth, just didn't know how to make friends. It just was pretty quiet. And for most of sort of growing up, and but I was always strong academically. I could just sort of, I would get good grades. And it wasn't until near the end of, of high school and then into college where I found confidence. And there's just this notion of people will tell you all the time, just be more confident. And I don't know if you've tried to do that before, but unfortunately, when you tell someone be more confident, they don't become more confident. No, it's like It's things that we say to make ourselves feel better. It's like, man, I really helped that person out today. I told them to be more confident. Yeah, no, they didn't, because, uh, confidence requires, uh, evidence that you— that validates the belief. So you— I have to see it and, and, and believe that it's true. So, uh, someone can't just tell me to be more confident. I need evidence. That's real and not just me. I think humans in general, we got to see it. So I started having these things happen. I competed in high school in this thing called DECA, which is sort of marketing sales competitions that high schools do. And I was fairly checked out in high school. I just wanted to play basketball. And I was the student who would, who would see, see what I could do last minute. It's like, how much can I what can I get away with? I wasn't being pushed the way that I— I have regrets about it, but I wasn't being pushed the way that I needed to be pushed. Um, and so I wasn't getting that evidence. And, um, and then I did this, this, this DECA thing. I went to Nationals. I got the highest score in the country on the, the test component of it. And that was sort of this inflection point where it's like, oh, you know what, like Maybe I do have some strengths, skills. I went to college and I made a declaration, uh, during freshman orientation, which was, I'm, I'm not going to have the regress I have from high school doing the minimum. I'm going to do the most that I can do. Yeah. And it snowballed from feeling completely unseen to, uh, calculus teacher, uh, having the entire class take a take a vote on whether or not I should switch to being a business major. And it was just sort of this one thing after another that validated that I was capable, that I was as cliché as this is, like, I'm good enough. And from that, it's like, I'm just gonna play my game, which is naturally I have a different point of view by default, or I'm sort of, I question What's— if it feels cliché, I just question it. And what I found was that as long as you do it in a respectful way, you, uh, it actually leads to better grades and more opportunities. Can I give you one example? I know I just gave you a long-winded response.

Oh yeah, please.

So I remember, uh, we had the business school where I went, you had to take a first class was business communications and you would get all these kind of requirements. Hey, when you write a memo or when you write something, you gotta justify it to the left. Or it, and, and don't spread the text all the way across. And so I thought about that and I was like, well, I'm going to justify it across the page because it looks like I wrote more. When I do that, and everybody else in class is not gonna do that.

Yeah.

So if I justify the text across page, every time they look at my paper, they're not gonna notice that I did it. They're just gonna feel like I did more work.

Yeah.

And, uh, I later validated this is true because this was freshman year, and then by senior year, I had a study partner of mine We're in this kind of final senior thesis type, uh, pro— senior thesis project. Uh, and, uh, we studied together. He was getting Bs on every paper. I was getting As on every paper. He's like, I don't— what is the difference between the two of them? I'm like, it's because I justify my text all the way across. It's like, that looks like I'm doing 10 to 15% more than you. It's like, no way. It's like, just do it once. This was halfway through the quarter. Uh, he got an A the rest of the way.

Wow.

Every paper.

You know, I, I'm not going to say it the way that Hormozi says it, and I really love a lot of the things he says, but one of the things I really like that he does say is you just have a stack of mfing evidence that you are you say you are, or right, or you've done what it is that you say. I remember, I've actually never shared this story and I won't say who it is, but, uh, it was actually two people. It was in like 2021, I think, and I was in a group. I was in a group, it was a group call, it was a global group call, and then we went into these little small breakout rooms and these two people were in the room and everybody's like introducing like what they do. And this person, that— these two people, they both coached business coaches. Okay, fine, that's what— that's what they did. One was in like Singapore and one was somewhere else. And so I was like, awesome, well, what business did you guys— have you guys owned? And they were like, wow, we haven't owned any business. I was like, wait, wait a minute now, you, you coach business coaches, okay, but you have not ever owned a business? I'm like, I I, I'm sorry, that, that is— you've never been in the game. Like, how do you know what to do with that? And it just was this, this, this place at the time that I was like, that's kind of weird. Like, you don't even know what it's like to be in the trenches and to have turnover and all of these kind of things in the business and hiring people and firing people and having time off and payroll and, and, and all that stuff. You've not done any of that stuff and you're coaching people, other people to do it. It was just a weird experience for me. And, you know, it's like, whatever, they're free to do whatever they want to do with that. But, but like, to your point, you start to get evidence of what it is that you do. And it's not that somebody else is saying like, Dan, you're so great, Dan, you're so great, Dan, you're so great. And by the way, I think that's helpful when you have people in your corner that are believing for you. Let's be real, like, we're all humans. We love, we need, we want external validation, even though if we really need to seek it inside first. You know, we're not machines. So, so getting people saying like, you know, um, hey, I love your book, right? I mean, like, that feels good. I mean, you'd be a robot if you said like, you know, I don't care what you think, you know. And so, but I think at the end of the day though, do we have enough evidence of the things that we have that give us the confidence that it— that, that, that we need to have internally, not that we're seeking it from external sources. That's, that's kind of been my own belief along those lines.

Because I'm a nerd, uh, I like to take complex thoughts and try and turn it into an equation. And so I just wrote down external validation times evidence equals confidence. And if one of those is zero, you know, then the outcome is zero. Like, you take anything times zero, then the outcome is zero. Um, so you could have a bunch of internal valid— or external validation, but if there's zero evidence, probably doesn't increase your confidence.

That's a good point.

Vice versa, if you had some evidence but you weren't getting any positive validation, then probably maybe no increase in— so I just, I don't know, I got to think through that more, but that was just a thought that I had as you were talking.

Ladies and gentlemen, we just came up with IP. That is now intellectual property that Dan has, and he puts a— he just put a team on it. That is called The Confidence Equation, and he'll be coming out with a book in 2025. I think it's great. All right, Dan, I gotta, uh, let's get into— tell me, walk me through kind of the, the construct of your book. Walk me through kind of the, the principles and maybe the overarching thought and message that you really were trying to convey to readers, um, of your book.

Well, first off, I love that you have OS in the name of your business because what I tried to do was create a, what I call certainty operating system. I believe that the essential question that people are asking themselves is, am I going to be okay? And I've seen that at all levels. It's hard to imagine someone who's got hundreds of millions of dollars wondering, are they going to be okay? But It's just a different problem set that they're, they're dealing with and different levels of it. But there's a kind of future-focused worry and anxiety. Am I going to be okay? And I heard this equation I did not come up with. They said uncertainty equals— or sorry, anxiety equals uncertainty times powerlessness. So anxiety equals uncertainty times powerlessness. So if we want Uh, to have less anxiety, that means we want more certainty and more power. Now, the beauty of equations is that we could add in financial anxiety equals financial certainty times financial powerlessness. We could say marketing, we could say any number of— we could insert, and the equation would still be true. So what I sort of set out to do was, how do I develop a operating system that allows people to have less financial anxiety, and that means they need more financial certainty and have more power over their finances. So that's sort of the, the plane I'm trying to land with, with the book. And it starts with trying to tackle some of the gotchas or false beliefs that we have out there about what it really means to have success or win. There's a lot of ideas around, well, winning requires us to go all in and bet on ourself at all times. And there's shadows of truth to that, um, because we get back to having confidence. Like, really what maybe people mean is you got to believe in what you're doing, uh, but redlining on effort and risk is a recipe for disaster. So those that have done things in the, uh, you study the extremes, people who have had significant financial success, what they have done pretty universally, ignoring people who inherited their wealth, is they made bets that had way more upside than downside. So the relative— it's called asymmetric risk. The— in other words, the the relative risk that they're taking is fairly small. So that's contrasted with the typical sort of small business guidance that people have, which is go all in, burn the boats. You heard that saying before, burn the boats?

Oh, yeah.

And it's super effective if you want to lead someone to a sale, especially a high-ticket sale, get them hopped up on a bunch of dopamine, leading about why they need to go all in and bet on themselves. And then that leads to sort of an offer that you're making that has a bunch of guarantees and wow factor. Uh, that— have you ever heard the backstory on burn the boats?

No.

So it comes from, uh, so Cortés, and I think the 1400s, is sailing off to sea in battle, and he's got hundreds of men that, uh, sort of are on boats and they pull up to battle, and in what looks like they're outmanned and certain demise. And so what Cortés does is he burns the boats and they go on to victory. And so the anecdote there is, gotta burn the boats, bet on yourself, make sure that winning is the only option. Now, what is left out from that story is if we go back for context, we find out that Cortés was told that if you return a loser or you do not go into battle and you turn around, you will be tried for treason and you and all of your men will be murdered. Wow. So in fact, he chose the least risky option. And that is how we play the game, actually. Is that in all scenarios, how do we— and this is the change in orientation— how do we go into something with the least amount of effort and the least amount of risk with the most amount of options? Because if we're constantly redlining on effort and risk, we're not able to capitalize on those couple moments a year where the real opportunities present themselves that have the potential 100x, 1000x returns. Now, I don't say take no effort. I didn't say take no risk because as entrepreneurs, we're wired to take, to put a lot of energy and effort into things.

No question.

It's weighing the options and not constantly redlining.

All right. For our listeners know that whenever I'm taking my notes, if I circle something on my notes, they don't see what I circle, but it's like, okay, that's good. All right, so I circled several things of what you just mentioned. The Cortés and the burning of the boats being the least risky option, that's going to stay with me for a while. That's good. I'm totally stealing that one for sure. Uh, that, that was— that's a great story. I'd never heard that. The other thing about asymmetrical risk that you mentioned is— I heard that— I didn't hear him, but I heard people tell the story of Ted Williams in baseball. He said he waited for the fat pitch. And I think that's the other thing too, is that you can't just be swinging at every pitch in baseball. Clearly it's ridiculous. But also, he's waiting for the right pitch. He's waiting for the one that's the asymmetrical return that is out there. And But yet the problem is, is that that doesn't hit Inc. magazine cover page, the Fortune 500 cover page. They typically don't say like, hey, they really made the right bet here versus they went all in. Elon Musk, he was down to his last, you know, $2. And I, you know, it makes it for a really good Facebook ad of like, how do I turn $2 into $2 billion or something, you know, ridiculous thing like that, right? It's, it's, it's hookier, so to speak. But I really do love that. And the other part that I wrote down is I, in my own journey and story, see, I redlined on effort. I redlined on effort because my dad— when I mentioned earlier, my dad's a farmer. If you learn nothing else from, from a— as a farmer's son, you know what the value of hard work is. I'm sure you saw it from your, from your father, like 100%, do what it takes. And now that comes at a lot of sacrifice. So my dad missed a lot of stuff when I was growing up But I absolutely caught— not taught, caught— that from my dad. And I redlined on effort myself in my own entrepreneurial journey. I can't say I redlined on risk. I don't think what I was doing was per se risky, but I was absolutely redlining. And I redlined to the point to where I effectively burned out. And other people have shared with me that their, their story has been similar. Those have been, those have been absolutely great again, I would say mental models of how to think about it. I think you do an incredible, incredibly good job of taking a complex experience and boiling that down into something that's tangible and easy to take away.

I appreciate that. And, and absolutely, uh, similar in seeing my dad just put in the 12, 14-hour days, 7 days a week, sometimes more, than that in terms of hours. And, uh, I value that. So in no way do I want to suggest that, that hard work and effort isn't of value, but it's got to be allocated at the right time. And sometimes you don't have a choice. My dad didn't have a choice. He had my mom and my— me and my sister to take care of, and no backstop. So he had no choice but to put in the hours. And imagine, similar for your dad running a farm, there's there's no other choice but to put in the time. As a business owner, we write all the rules to our business. We write the rules. And so there are choices and you have to, uh, when there's a chance to run to daylight, you run to daylight, but you got to save your effort and resources to those opportunities.

Yeah, I agree. I, I think that that's where the, um, hustle culture, and then there's the anti-hustle culture that also— and they seem to be fighting. And I think to myself, why can't two things be true?

Why can't I have a thought on that?

Yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts of it.

So, uh, there's a, there's a model called the rigid chaos model, and, uh, humans are highly susceptible to this. It's sort of the version of like yo-yo dieting as an example. So you've got Uh, but we could apply yo-yo dieting to, to every other kind of domain if we wanted to. But you're, you've got a bunch of chaos and that may look like, um, you've got unhealthy eating habits and maybe you're binging from time to time, uh, not eating, eating high caloric food items. And so you're feeling a lot of chaos. Internal, like, self-image things maybe that are boiling up about your appearance and weight and otherwise. And so then what do you do? You go to something incredibly rigid. It's like, okay, well, I have been doing all of this, this sort of, um, uh, haven't been thinking about what I'm eating. I'm just eating whatever I want when I want as much of it. And so now I'm going to do just the exact opposite of that. The George Costanza, I guess. You do the exact opposite of that. And now I'm on a diet 7 days a week. So it's incredibly rigid, and I am going to work out 7 days a week now. And what happens is that on the other side of chaos is rigidity. But what happens after you have too much rigidity is you go back to chaos, and it repeats itself. And, uh, so there's different ways to sort of approach things, and I can share one kind of anecdote on it. That I call microsteps. But culturally, because of this rigid chaos model, that there's usually groups on either side. It's like the only way to just live your life and do what you want versus there's only one way to do it, you got to go all in. And, and, uh, those things sort of repeat, repeat themselves. Of course, almost always we know the answer, which is somewhere in the middle.

Somewhere, somewhere in the middle. I love that. No, I've never heard of that. This— I like the way you— I like the way you think. Um, sometimes people are contrarian just to be contrarian, you know? You ever experience somebody like that? There's like, I'm contrarian and everything, I'm just going to challenge everything that's out there. It's like, okay, wait a minute, that's a little too much. But I actually really like the way you think. I think you're— I think you're really thoughtful in the way, and, and, um, I attempt to want to be that way because I have to try to make sense of business primarily to, to allow myself, because I don't think I'm that intelligent, that I've got to be able to kind of figure it out. So words and other things that I was like, what does that mean? What is— what, what do I mean with that? What does, what does scale mean? What does growth mean? What's the difference in growth and scale? That's just one example. And I would be like, people are throwing these words around interchangeably, and I'm like, I don't know what the difference is, you know. So then I start down this path of Google searches and ChatGPT of trying to figure out like what's the difference, you know? And then 45 minutes later I'm like, okay, wait a minute, I got to go back and get some work done here. I've actually figured out at least how I think about scale versus growth. But, um, curiosity, great. Um, I have loved connecting with you. I think we could have— we should have made this a 2-hour, like, 2-part series. I think actually we'll have to get you back, back on. Uh, 2 things. One, Uh, where can people find and pick up the book? And then secondly, how can people connect with you and also tell them about your podcast?

Yeah, so if you're interested in my book, you can just go to riggingamazon.com and that'll redirect you to the Amazon page for my book Rigging the Game. And, uh, so that's probably— that's the easiest path to do it. You know, maybe at some point Amazon will send me some nasty letters saying I can't own that website, but, or that domain, but it redirects to a checkout page in their environment. So, so far so good. In terms of kind of where I have probably kind of most accessible for my work is unconventionalwealth.cash is the website. And so unconventional and rigging the game are kind of part of my my, my brand, and really what the podcast is about, is trying to bring on folks like yourself who are curious and, uh, kind of question, uh, different approaches to, to life and business. And I sort of couch it in the difference between having an egocentric business versus a purpose-driven business. So the egocentric business is basically, I got a bunch of arbitrary goals that I have to meet because if I don't, what does that mean about who I am as a person? I gotta prove to everyone that I'm capable, that I'm good enough. And that means that I can't be wrong a lot of the times. I don't reserve the right to change my mind. It's very egocentric versus purpose-driven, which is this business, these assets, these investments all exist to serve me in living the life that I want. That means I'm much more open to changing my mind because I just care about outcomes and living the sort of the life of, of that's going to be most fulfilling for me as an individual. And so that's what I try to explore on the the podcast.

Awesome. That's great. Last question. What do you feel working above the business means to you?

I think it connects right back to that kind of purpose-driven or outcome-based business and style of kind of investing and thinking about wealth. So I believe that the biggest risk in life is not living the life that you want. And I believe that you're entitled to your opinion. You don't have to justify why you want something. You want it because you want it. And again, the business exists and your investments exist to serve you. And so in this case, ultimately constantly realigning, spending time realigning your actions with the life that you ultimately want to live.

What a great answer.

Thank you.

We've not had an angle from, from that. That's why I love to ask that question kind of open-ended, because people come at it from slightly different perspectives. And I think that all helps us to be able to live the kind of life that we want to live. And I just will double tap on you want it because you want it. You want it because you want it. Dan, it's been great having you on. Hope to have you back on in the future.

My pleasure, and I look forward to it. Thank you so much.

I want to give a shout out to our podcast sponsors: Club Capital, TodayApp Pro, Coach B Consulting, and Autopilot Recruiting. If you're an insurance agency owner and you want to have unconventional wealth in your business that your business provides to you, go and book a no-obligation demo with Club Capital. Go to club capital. I was having a conversation with one of our business owners the other day, and we fundamentally believe that business is a team sport. It's actually one of our maxims. It's things that we believe and things that we say often. And so with that, it is known that you're going to bring on team as you begin to grow, let alone scale your business. And oftentimes we might not think about bringing on the team as having a pipeline as you would do whenever you're having, say, leads coming into your business and you're working those leads through a pipeline. Yet it's often a little intimidating of like you make a post and there's 50, 60, 70 resumes that come in in a day, let alone over the course of a week, and you're kind of piling through all of those. Well, Autopilot Recruiting can help you. Go to autopilotrecruiting.com and book a call with someone, and they can share with you how their system can help you to be able to buy back more of your time. I think that success leaves clues, and those people who are willing to give back to others, who have done what it is they're sharing that they have been able to do for themselves, and they share that with others absolutely are incredibly helpful because it can shorten the decades down into days. And Coach P would love to help you to do that. Go to coachpconsulting.com if you would like to get coaching yourself, but also coaching with your team. He can help you. They go twice a week, have the Zoom calls, they get word tracks, things that are working and happening now to help you and your team to grow and scale your business. CoachBe Consulting.com. Over time, we have tried in business so many different tools. Some work, some don't. We come back, we change, etc. Kind of think about that as our tech stack. Well, there's a lot of times that sometimes you just want to go to an Excel spreadsheet. But it's limited. It's limited because it's not updated real time for your team and for you. And where is it saved at? It doesn't do a lot of the calculations for you. But if you have a great software, that is a great place for your bonus, your compensation plans, as well as your sales production and word tracks. TodayApp Pro is a great place. Go to todayapppro.com. TodayApp row.com. Art of One. Till next episode, lead well.