How to Build a Business that Feeds Your Soul?

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This is Beyond Confidence with your host Divya Parekh. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal professional, and financial goals. Well, coming up on Divya Parkh's Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want. You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career or business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life, or vice versa. Learn more at www.divyaparkh.com. Diviapark.com, and you can connect with Divya at contact@diviapark.com. This is Beyond Confidence, and now here's your host, Divya Parekh.

Good morning, listeners. Hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend, and I'm thrilled to be here with you this Tuesday. And I want to thank each and every one of you who has purchased our book, The The AI Agency, Expert to Influencer, and some of the others. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you are looking to get ahead of artificial intelligence, if you are looking to shape up that career or bring in AI adoption into your company, then this is the book for you. Well, let's bring in our guest. Welcome, David Hampson.

Thank you, Divya. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on today.

Absolutely. So David, do you recall a moment from your youth or from your lifetime which left a positive mark on you?

I can think of many moments, but one particularly, you know, from my youth was that, you know, when I was growing up and I was in school, there was a time where I took a placement test and I didn't get into an advanced math class that I really was— I wanted to get in because all my friends got into it. And the school said, you know, David didn't, didn't do well enough, he can't get in the class. And my parent— and I said, I want to do it, I want to do it. My parents advocated for me, both my mom and my dad, and they, they basically insisted the school give me a chance. And then I subsequently went on to get the highest grade in that, in that class and had to catch up on all the work I missed. And the reason I mentioned that such an important moment is that that's a defining moment for me, teaching me that, you know, that your growth mindset, you know, that your situation isn't static, that people can tell you you can't do something. And if you're, if you're, if you're insistent enough, and you work hard enough.

And that's absolutely—

and you allow yourself to have that growth. Today.

Yeah, no, having that growth mindset can do wonders for anyone because it brings the part of you that is open to different perspectives, it is open to challenges and seeing them as learning opportunities. So as you moved beyond your high school, what were your interests?

Well, you know, as I, um, I've always been interested in aviation. Like, that's something that I've always been passionate about. We used to, we used to travel a lot to visit my grandparents, um, in Florida, and we lived in New Hampshire, so we'd go a couple times a year usually. And, you know, just commercial airline travel, but I just fell in love with airplanes, and I just thought it was so amazing how this, this machine could transport you to what seemed like another world. And I started to get fascinated in it. I later, when I got into high school, I got into competitive track and cross-country running, and I kind of put aviation to the side, and I got into interest in exercise physiology. I studied that in college, but aviation was always a youthful passion that stayed with me, and I was able later to reconnect with that, with that spark, um, in my 30s when my wife got me a gift certificate for flying lessons, and that's when I started, started flying myself.

So what happened during the time when you kind of lost sight of your passion?

Well, you know, I think that I wasn't that— I mean, I was pursuing some other passions. I mean, I was very successful in cross-country running and long-distance running, so I kind of latched on to that. And unfortunately, I had knee injuries, so I couldn't continue that anymore. But, um, I think that, you know, the fact that I, that I hadn't had an opportunity to to get exposed to flight training. I mean, I didn't have anyone in my family who was in aviation. I wasn't in that circle. So I kind of had to put it on the back burner. I think that not having family in aviation, my, you know, obviously my family, my parents are probably a little bit concerned about me doing something that maybe is a little bit scary, you know, learning to fly. And I can understand that. So I think that's why I got put on the side and just, you know, I sort of latched onto other things I was doing well at successful in. Um, but it never left me, you know. I think that for most people, I think your childhood passions stay with you forever, you know. Sometimes you take— you have to reconnect with them, but, but they never go away.

That's absolutely right. I used to love writing when I was a child, and then it kind of got away from me, and then it definitely came back in my life. So absolutely. So you mentioned that you started taking lessons, and how did that go?

Well, it was wonderful. So I, you know, I took— I initially took 3 lessons for 3 gift certificates my wife got me on a birthday. And at the time, I didn't have enough money to go all the way. So I kind of put it on hold a little while until I got a promotion at my job I was working in. And then I started right back up and went all the way and got my pilot certificate. And, you know, it was challenging. I mean, I loved it, but it was also very challenging. I remember doing multiple lessons of doing touch-and-goes at the airport. That's where you, you know, go around and you land, you take off again, and you go around the traffic pattern. You just keep doing it to practice your takeoffs and landings, especially the landings. I remember thinking there are times like, am I ever gonna get this? Like, I can't seem to get my landings down. One day it just clicks, you know, and you get it. And it just— and then finally, the day that you— the two— there are two times that are really memorable. First is there's a point when you're flight training when you, when you do a solo flight, when your instructor says, okay, you're ready to go off and fly on your own. And they give you, they give you a sign-off and you can go do that. And you do a couple takeoff, you do 3 takeoffs and landings on your own. And that's just like doing that all by yourself, that's just amazing. It's, you know, it's, it's obviously, it feels a little scary at first, but it's also, you know, you feel confident as well and develop, you develop a great confidence as a pilot doing that. And then, and then when you go for your checkride at the very end of your training, when you have to go with it FAA-designated pilot examiner, and they, and they, you know, have you go do a practical checkride through different maneuvers. And then when you land and they say, "You're now a private pilot, you've got your private certificate." That was just like, I felt on top of the world then, you know, that day. And I felt like, I felt like that also, you know, to latch on to what I said earlier, that also was like another growth mindset thing, showing that like, you know, if you persevere, if you work hard, you can achieve it. And it really helped boost my confidence, I would say, in irrevocable ways and, and even raise the bar for what I expected of myself, which I brought into my business career too.

So powerful. And so as you continued working with that, you talk about scaling the businesses, scaling fast and exiting. So did you run your own businesses?

Well, so yes, I had a couple different businesses I've been involved with. My initial business experience, sort of going back to when I was, I was younger and I lived in South Africa for 7 years. So after I finished my undergraduate degree, which was in exercise science, um, I met a professor, um, at a conference I went to, Dr. Timothy Noakes, who ran, um, who led an exercise science program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and who I'd read a book he read called The Law of Running. So I approached him and spoke to him after, after he spoke at the conference, and he told me about a program they had from University of Cape Town. So I, I applied for it. I got a scholarship. I studied exercise science there as a postgraduate student, and then I was working there in South Africa, and I met my wife while I was living there on a blind date, and she was really excited about business. She was studying a bunch of business courses and I had at that time developed my own little program at the Sports Science Institute called, called Run Science. I was kind of running it. It wasn't my own business, but I was running as my own profit center. I really enjoyed that a lot. And my wife got me— my girlfriend at the time got me excited about, about business too. And I started thinking about my grandparents and, you know, they had been very successful in their own respective businesses, insurance agencies on my dad's side and, um, and some a variety of businesses, a construction company, apartments, and a retail grocery store on my mom's side. And then I read a book as well someone recommended to me called Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And that's where I came together with those other thoughts to start to change my perspective on my career and what I wanted to do. And so then I said, I want to go into business. I want to do this. I ended up buying a branch of a restaurant franchise called Ocean Basket in South Africa. I knew I didn't have the experience or education. I hadn't taken any business courses in high school or college, or finance courses or anything like that. So I knew a franchise would provide some support. And most franchises, at least at that time in South Africa, are restaurants. So I thought that would be a good way to go. It ended up definitely being business school for me. I made many, many mistakes running that restaurant the time that I did. I learned a lot. I eked out a living. I didn't make a lot of money, but It gave me a wealth of education, a practical education running a business. And then I, you know, ultimately it wasn't the right business for me. It wasn't something I was passionate about. So my wife and I, we sold it before we moved to United States, moved back, back close to home. And then, but, you know, and I knew the restaurant wasn't right, but I knew I needed to find a business that I'd be passionate about. That was going to be the key. And then I ultimately got an insurance because I mean, my family had been in insurance, my dad's side of the family. My dad had as well. And he encouraged me to consider that because he said that, and it's true, within a lot of people don't realize, but insurance, there are so many different specialties. You can kind of find an area of it that you, you're interested in and kind of specialize there. And I was ultimately, after working in insurance, able to, you know, combine my aviation passion with my insurance experience. And that led me to to acquiring an aviation insurance agency, which we did in 2015. And my parents, you know, again, unwavering support. They helped me by, you know, providing the collateral to get the business loan we needed to buy that business. And it was— and we bought it, it was just the owner and one other employee. And now we have about 25 people in our organization and we've grown, you know, obviously a large multiple of what it was, you know, 11 years ago. And why we've been doing— Having that growth, I've been enjoying it, I've been loving it. And I think that it was created not only financial success, but also personal fulfillment with the people that have been part of our team that we've been able to empower and promote. And some of the things we do in the community and just the personal satisfaction of doing something that's a family business, something I'm passionate about. So when someone approaches us and says, you know, we want to buy you, which we— a lot of private equity companies will do that because they buy a lot of insurance agencies. And they say, what's your number? What's your number? I say, no, there is— there's no number. You got to have a number. And I think, no, it's not. And it's really true because, you know, how can you put a price on something that's giving you personal satisfaction, fulfillment? You know, if, um, you think of plenty of people like, you know, social workers, um, teachers, a number of different jobs where people have relative financial scarcity for spiritual fulfillment alone. When you can combine those two, when you get spiritual fulfillment, something that fills your soul and fills your wallet at the same time, that's priceless. And that's my definition of what I call rainbow gold in my book. And it's something that I hope I can perpetuate to our family, but, and my kids in the future. But that's a counter-narrative to the scale-to-sell mindset where you're just hustling, you have this hustle culture, You know, build, build, build, grow, grow, grow at the expense of culture, at the expense of personal satisfaction, at the expense of work-life balance, hoping there's a light at the end of the tunnel when you can sell the business and then get your reward. And I think there's a better way.

And that makes sense. What you're saying is that building that team that knows that we are not going to be sold out, we are here they are fully engaged and you build a team that's cohesive and invested. So you're building a sustainable business. So what would you say are those 5 ingredients of building a successful and scalable and sustainable business?

Absolutely. And I've come up with— in the process of writing my book, I've come up with some key ingredients. Initially it was 5, but I've added 1 to it, so I'm gonna give you 6 if that's okay.

Of course.

So I have an acronym for it. And, you know, I think acronyms can be overused. I read business books and there's so many acronyms, you can't remember the acronyms. There's too many. So I only have one acronym, but I think it's an important one. And the acronym is PRIMER. And that has 6 things. The first is, for P, is passion. I think it's important to, if you're going to, you know, have a business, that you be passionate about it. Now, passion isn't the only thing. It has to be a sustainable business. Model, but it's important because passion will help you get through the difficult times, you know, which every business has. It'd be much easier to get through it if you're passionate about it. The second letter in the acronym is R, and that's for risk management. And with risk management, you need to look at it both before you start, you know, the business venture, as well as while you're running it. And risk management doesn't mean risk avoidance. You know, business can be a risky thing. Every business has an element of risk, but it's a matter of assessing the risk and looking at, you know, is there— is the risk for this particular venture endeavor an acceptable risk for you? And that can vary at different Managing those risks, um, you know, so that hopefully the risky thing doesn't happen. But, you know, a lot of people I think miss that one. That's an important one. And then, um, and then I is, uh, interpersonal relationships. And that has to do with relationships between your, your customers, your clients, your employees. Relationships with your vendors, you know, and centers of influence. And I, I've, you know, I've learned something in my business career that's critical, like, you know, be there for people and they'll be there for you. Don't ever discount the importance of relationships and don't break, you know, relationships unless you have a really good reason. So that's the I. And then M is money sense, and that has to do with learn— knowing accounting principles, knowing sales. I mean, every business, even, even if you don't think your business is a sales business, Every business has— needs to have sales.

Absolutely. Like, without sales, no business exists. It's so important. And as David was talking about the risk management, it is also seeing where your business is.

Um, and then, and they, they don't, they don't have the money sense, and if you don't have it, you need to learn it. Um, and then, and then, um, and then E is environment, and it has to do with having a healthy culture, purging toxicity in your company. And they could be toxic employees or toxic clients— not every client's a good client— and making sure that you have a healthy environment, because everybody, including yourself, is going to be much happier working in a healthy environment. It's, you know, where most of us work 8 hours a day, at least 5 days a week, and It's terrible if you're working in prison and you hate it. So that's important. And then the last one, this is the one I added, is resilience. And that's having, you know, having that growth mindset, having that perseverance, being willing to push through the tough times. Because every business, even a business you love, is going to be difficult at times. And you have to be willing to be able to push through that, especially in the early years. One thing I've learned is, you know, no matter how business, whether you start, you know, whether starting a business from scratch, it's the best idea ever, or you're buying a great company, the first couple years especially, you're going to have challenges. So be prepared for it and be willing to persevere through it.

Absolutely, some great nuggets over here, David. And when you talked about that there are going to be challenges in the first couple of years, so not only during those years, but also later down the years, and the market trends change. Now artificial intelligence is there. So where so many things are changing, you know, where beforehand, like, you know, software engineers were coding, now 65 to 70% of coding is being done by artificial intelligence. So a lot of changes can happen. So there can be risk anytime in a business. So what are some of the risk management factors that people can consider either when they're starting their business or when market trends change?

Well, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of fact— you know, risk management factors. Some of the risk factors, you know, you can trans— sometimes you can transfer that risk where there's certain things that you can— that's where insurance comes in, right? Where you can insure against certain types of risks. You know, typical— typically things like, you know, risk of, of, you know, of fire, of liability claims from people suing you. You know, those are risk of property damage. Bodily injury. Those are risks that you can usually get insurance for, and that's really important, and transfer that when you can. You know, some risks can be transferred contractually with the contracts you have, but there are some risks that can't be transferred, and those are typically— you know, one is speculative risk, like you have a chance of gain or loss, like if you invest in a new product or, you know, a new, a new type of venture, whether it's financially successful or not, That's a risk you can't get insurance for, and you have to be willing to accept to be able to live with the worst-case outcome. And then there's the risk of obsolescence, where maybe the technology that you're using becomes obsolete. And that plays into what you're talking about with AI and companies who don't adapt. Companies, frankly, that don't adapt to the technology that's available today are likely to become obsolete in the future, and other companies that do are going to get ahead of them. And that's a risk. And that's a risk you can control because you can adapt to technological change. And to me, from my perspective, it's not scary. I think it's a great opportunity. It's a good opportunity for growth to be able to be able to— and then of course, if you do embrace it, beat your competitors who don't. But trying to ignore it inside of putting your head in the sand and saying, I'm not going to do that, or No one's going to force me to adapt to this new way of doing things. You know, that's a little naive because I think eventually that's going to hurt you as a business owner. You've got to always be willing to embrace new technology. We've seen it, you know, throughout history as different things have come into play, you know, um, advent of the car, the airplane, even, you know, electricity. Like, think of the companies didn't embrace that, where those companies would be today. Well, they don't exist anymore, right, if they didn't. So So I think that's really important, just be aware of that and think about in your mind, like, are you creating a risk to your organization by being adverse to adoption of new technological things?

Absolutely, some great points over there. And it is not to be feared. Before, like, people used to say, oh, AI won't replace you, AI— but people knowing AI will replace you. Now I go in one step further and saying it's not about just knowing AI, but how to train AI and how to use AI. So like how to think, that capacity, that metacognition skills is going to get you ahead. So coming back to risk assessment, so you talk about insurance being the DNA of capitalism. How does insurance help transfer the risk that businesses or companies have?

Well, you know, a number of different ways. And now I use that term, and that's actually coined by my dad initially, so I can't take full credit for it. But if you think of like, you know, the, the, how the economy works, and it would be impossible for anyone to take a risk of investing in a business if there wasn't a way against, a way to ensure against the possibility of loss, whether that's property loss or somebody suing you or even getting a loan, right? Like, you know, banks not going to give you a loan to buy a building buy expensive equipment if they have a risk of something happens catastrophic, the whole loan is in default and they can't collect on the balance. So it allows lending to take place both in business and personal. But the way that you transfer risk essentially is you're paying an insurance company a premium to accept the risk of having to pay for losses that are specified in the contract. And the contract is the insurance policy you purchase. And it's important that people understand that, you know, there's no such thing as insurance policy covers everything. Like, some people use the term, oh, it's all-risk policy. There's no such thing as all-risk policy. You know, every insurance policy has— it's a contract that has terms and conditions and coverage and exclusions. And you understand that because people sometimes get disappointed when it doesn't cover something, but, you know, it's contractually laid out there, and it's usually pretty, pretty, pretty clear. But, um, but, you know, but you can— there are a lot of things that can be very well covered. Like I mentioned, you know, property damage of any type, whether it's equipment or buildings, um, uh, you know, even technology like computer equipment, software can be covered. You can sometimes get coverage for loss of business income, like if your premises, you know, burn down, loss of profits you would have and your continuing expenses could be covered by a policy for that. You know, the big one is lawsuits, of course, having good liability coverage, whether that's, you know, general liability policy to cover your premises or product liability coverage if you sell or manufacture product. Or, or auto liability or aviation liability, which is, you know, what we do. Um, because unfortunately the United States in particular has become a very litigious society and we're seeing, you know, extremely high verdicts given by juries these days. There's something called, a term called social inflation, and that was coined to describe the trend where juries are awarding higher and higher settlement amounts in liability claims. And of course, if someone gets injured, if they get disabled, they deserve something significant. But, you know, if one person— I mean, is $100 million the right number? Is $200 million the right number? You know, at some point it becomes, you know, outrageous. And, you know, sometimes people, I think, think of insurance money as like, you know, monopoly money, and it just comes out of the air. But like, it has to come from somewhere, right? We've all— we're all— we all end up paying for it with higher insurance rates and at some point becomes unsustainable. So I think that's an issue, but you can get insurance of course to cover liability claims. You should, you know, it's important to get as highest amount of liability coverage you can. And then of course, you know, employee injuries, you have workers' compensation coverage for that. Employment practices liability, like wrongful termination, harassment, there's coverage you can get for that. Directors' and officers' liability. And then, and a big one today, we're just talking about technology, cyber liability and data breach. And that's where I see sometimes companies missing or having a gap in coverage, not having a policy for that. And we've had several clients have had claims. You can imagine these days all the, all the ways criminals are trying to, to do nefarious activities with technology, whether that be fraudulent bank transfers or hacking into your system and holding it hostage with cyber extortion. Um, you know, there's a whole host of things that could happen with technology that, you know, obviously you want to have, you know, the right software to protect against viruses and, and malware and whatnot, but, but also insurance to cover when a criminal does get through, because they seem to always be able to get one step ahead of, you know, the best detection and risk management protocols we have.

Absolutely. And you really did point out that insurance claims and anything that is happening, it is coming out of the insurance payees. Now, given that, as business owners and as companies are going and searching for insurance companies, I mean, there's so many comparable quotes, there's so many sites over there and contracts, like, there's so much fine print. So how can people go about and figure out which one is the best policy for them and which is the right company to work with?

Well, that's a hard thing to navigate, and you make a good point there because, you know, most people don't deal with insurance, you know, that often in terms of reading the contracts and the policies, and it can be confusing. And that's where I think it's really important, particularly for a business, to develop a relationship with an insurance broker, you know, who will get to know you and your business and be able to provide— help you navigate that, how we navigate what the best options are for you among all the companies that are out there, the coverages that you need, identify gaps. You know, if you have a business, your insurance broker should become a professional advisor who's a member of your advisory team, similar to where, you know, you'd have— and hopefully have an accountant, hopefully you'd have an attorney you can, you can turn to. Um, you know, you— various people you have that are part of your advisory team. Insurance broker is a really important part of that. It's more than just someone who's just quoting your policies. They should be somebody who's looking at it from a risk management mindset, and they're looking at identifying the risks you have and how to mitigate those and, you know, or transfer those risks. And they'll let you know, like, these are risks we can transfer by purchasing these policies, and this is what it'll cover. And these are risks you can't transfer. These are enterprise risks you have, and we can't use insurance for that, but just realize that you have these risks and you have to look at other ways to deal with it. So you need a really, you know, high-level professional who can do that. I think insurance, unfortunately, sometimes gets commoditized. I mean, these days, you know, there's online ways to purchase insurance, and we all get mailers of different things, you know, save 15%, call us today. But, you know, if you have a business owner, you don't want a 1-800 number you're calling to get your— you need a professional advisor. So I just would encourage anybody to really think carefully about choosing the right person to work with so that, you know, your insurance program is the way it needs to be and that you understand what you're getting. Because if you don't, if you have the wrong insurance program, you know, the outcome can be, can be catastrophic to your business if you don't, if you're not covered for what you need.

Absolutely. And what are some of the criteria people need to be looking for finding a good insurance broker partner?

Well, you want, you, you definitely want somebody who you can kind of be working with you know, the same person or team of people that will get to know you. Um, that's really important. You want somebody who has expertise in risk management beyond just, you know, being able to quote policies. You also want somebody who's comfortable with, you know, doing things like reviewing contracts when you have them, because that's, that's something that, you know, it's really important for businesses and something that we do for clients is you know, if they have a new contract, either that they're going to— either contract they have, they want to have, you know, one of their vendors sign, or someone wants them to sign a contract. We're not attorneys, we can't give legal advice, but we can certainly evaluate it from a risk management and insurance perspective and making sure the contract language is consistent with the insurance coverages that the parties have. So someone that's comfortable with contractual language and somebody who's willing to take a holistic approach and, you know, review— not just quote like one specific part of your insurance, but like quote everything and then take a holistic approach of looking at where, where there are gaps, where you need to, to maybe, um, consider, you know, consider, you know, other ways of mitigating risk. Because, you know, going— having your insurance spread out, having like, oh, I have this company does my auto and this company does that and You know, that's not always a good approach. The only exception to that is like if it's a very specialized field, like aviation is a great example of that, where we're so laser-focused that sometimes people will come to us just for the aviation because we have that very specific expertise, but they'll have their other types of policies with other brokers. So, you know, if someone has a specific specialty, that can be sometimes good to bring someone else on the team, but generally speaking, you don't want to have a whole bunch of different providers quoting different aspects of your program because they'll end up being piecemeal and you won't have that sort of whole— someone taking that holistic view of your entire enterprise.

And those are definitely very helpful nuggets. And you talk about good debt and bad debt for a business.

Yeah, and that's, you know, really important concepts to think about and to know because, you know, a lot— there's a lot of people out there in the media who will talk about debt and they'll say— some very, you know, popular people say, oh, that's bad, get rid of all the debt, you know. But, you know, that's a personal— from a personal perspective, yes, that's generally true. But from a business perspective, debt is such a wonderful tool. I think it's an amazing tool, actually. And, and I— it's— I've definitely used it, and I still use it in my business a lot. Because think about it, like, you can scrape and save paycheck to paycheck, and maybe someday you'll get enough money to maybe buy a business or start the business, but you might not ever get there. Whereas if you, you know, willing to take on debt to get a business loan, for example, you know, or even an SBA loan, which is even easier to get than just a standard business loan, all you have to do is save up the down payment, you know, which might be 20%, let's just say for example, and then the bank will give you 80% and you'll be able to buy that business much sooner. Now, if it's a business, it's a good business and the business is generating enough cash flow or profit to service the debt, and then still pay money beyond that. The bank is going to evaluate that. They're not going to let you get a loan if the cash flow doesn't work. But if it has the right ratios where it generates cash flow above and beyond paying off the loan, well, that's almost like a money tree, right? And you're paying off the debt each month, each year, and eventually it's all paid off and the business continues to keep paying you after that. That's almost the only way that you can create money almost like a money tree through debt. You have to be responsible with it, of course. But I think sometimes people get scared of the big number because for a significant business, a business loan could be bigger than your mortgage, but it's very different from bad debt. And it can allow you to have leverage that you never would be able to do without it. And if you get scared by it, I encourage people to look or think about other successful business people. And you can think of many examples, and most of them all have good debt. They have portfolios of real estate or businesses, and they all use that as a very important tool. So, um, you know, use it responsibly, but don't be afraid of it.

No, that is definitely powerful. So thank you for sharing such powerful nuggets with our audience. Uh, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Well, one other thing I like to share is that, um, you know, when in my book, and I talk a lot about, you know, building a business you never want to sell and, you know, never exiting, but that doesn't mean that you should not think about a perpetuation plan. 'Cause having no plan at all isn't good either. And all of us only have a limited time on this earth. Unfortunately, time is our most precious commodity that we have. So it's really important to think about that. And you can think about your business, you might not wanna scale it to sell it to private equity or have some sort of exit, dramatic exit, but at some point you're gonna have to figure out what to do when you can no longer work or someday, obviously, you'll pass on. And, you know, you could perpetuate it to your family, and that could be a good way to do it if your kids are interested in being involved in the business. You shouldn't pressure them, I don't think, but that's an option. Another option could be that you could find— ultimately find someone who was like you, who had similar attributes and skills, and perpetuate it that way. Or you could potentially set up an employee stock ownership plan, perpetuate it to your team that worked for you to help you build a business. It can become a great sort of employee retirement plan, and that can be another feel-good way to perpetuate your business. But think through those things, because not feeling to exit doesn't mean you don't think about perpetuation. So I just wanted to make that clear as well, because that's really important.

No, absolutely, David. So let's say if somebody wants to get in touch with you and wants to get your book, share with us your contact information and where can people find your book.

Yes, certainly. So my website is myrainbowgold.com, and my best email address for me is really easy. It's david@planeinsurance.com, P-L-A-N-E Insurance, like an airplane, dot com. And you can certainly reach me there. And my book is available on Amazon and Barnes Noble, which are the two best places to purchase it.

Any other thoughts before we wrap it up?

Well, I'll just say that, um, You know, I hope that, you know, my message helps somebody with encouraging them to go on their own entrepreneurial venture in a similar way, to build a business that's both the journey and the destination. And also just say thank you very much, Divya, for the opportunities to be on your show. I really appreciate it, and I really enjoy talking with you.

Absolutely. And thank you for sharing all the wisdom that you have accumulated during your entrepreneurial journey, because if somebody's thinking of starting their business, it's It's so important to know some of the pitfalls, what to consider, what not to consider, because so many of us don't know that. And these are some of the practical things that are not talked about in schools. So thank you for joining us, and thank you, wonderful audience, for being part of our show. You are the soul of the show, and reach out to us just like you always do and let us know How can we serve and support you to live the best life you can? And thank you, Juan, for being our tech genius. And be well and take care until next time.

Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence with your host Divya Parekh. We hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Divya Parkh shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form heart connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www.divyaparkh.com. And you can connect with Divya at contact@divyapark.com. We look forward to you joining us next week.