Dan Nicholson - How to Achieve Financial Certainty, Navigate Risk, and Make More Money on Your Terms

We're not wired to look for the downsides. We're wired to go, I better do this now because I'm going to miss out and I got to jump on it, right? So we systematically remove the bad things so that we're only left with good things. And the people who I see who consistently win in business, they either have a system where they eliminate the downside or they naturally do it and they're just not aware of it. They're not actually huge risk takers when you weigh the downside versus the upside.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear and welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business, but I am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic Hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy. Hey. Hey. On this episode, I'm bringing in a gentleman who shares a very similar mission to what I'm doing here at Hustle and Flowchart. And this is in Dan's words, Dan Nicholson is that his mission is to end suffering for entrepreneurs. And you'll understand why he has that mission and what to do about that if you feel like you might fall into that bucket. I have missed many times and there's an actionable way out of that that actually flips anxiety, stresses uncertainty, all of the stuff that leads us to pushing to more and more and overfilling our cup and not figuring out what our enough is. So my conversation with Dan Nicholson, who happens to be also the author of Rigging the Game, how to Achieve Financial Certainty, Navigating Risk and Make More Money on your terms. Get it, get that book. It's your manual with the solution. It's the thing you need. So go to rigging Amazon.com and that's actually going to take you straight to the checkout with that book there. Rigging the Game. My conversation with Dan was epic. I hope you enjoy it and please share it with another entrepreneur if you want to help them end some suffering as well. Because we all need a little, little good Juju, while we're navigating this wildlife of entrepreneurship. Okay, on to Dan. All right, we are back with another episode, and this time we're finally having Dan Nicholson on the podcast. I think it's been over a year now. Nick Peterson made the intro your business partner, and I think the timing is right now. Dan had a shift in the podcast. You have a new book, Rigging the Game. It's great to have you on here, man.

Yeah. Super excited to chat. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Yeah, of course. And I want to. I guess I want to start this show off talking to the listeners because this new theme, newish theme of the show is locating and finding enough in our lives, in our business, and how that. How we can actually fulfill ourself through all those means. And there's something interesting, Dan, that you said is, and this was, I think, a quote from Huberman, Andrew Huberman, was we're all wired to have more or want more and have that craving. And there's a lot of downsides to that that you really outline well in Rigging the game, your book and on your podcast. I'll shout that out, too. And I feel like you bring a lot of certainty and you bring all that into these quantifiable things and thought processes in a super smart way in this book. And I know in all these other things you have, but I want to shout out that at the top of the episode is that I feel like this book is almost like a guide to finding your enough, but also doing it in a smart way to achieve all the financial aspects and just changing your thinking in a way that's a lot healthier.

Well, Joe, I think you're making a lot of good points about just in particular, borrowing from Dr. Andrew Huberman, this whole idea that dopamine is the molecule of more. And I'm not a by any means credentialed like he is to talk about it, but I've certainly felt this throughout my life, just on my professional career, this constant, the next thing, the next thing. And it makes sense if we go back to the early days of humans when we were out there hunting and gathering, and you see an opportunity, you have to go forward in that moment. And so it makes sense that we might still biologically feel like every opportunity we have to have to capitalize. Otherwise, maybe we're not eating tomorrow, but that's oftentimes no longer the case. And so the challenge when we're constantly chasing more is that we put ourself in a position often where we might blow ourselves up. In other words, we might actually take ourself out of the game for a while. And so I talk about trying to reorient to. Not more is the answer. Although sometimes it is. Sometimes you do need to work more, sometimes you do need to get more clients, sometimes you do need to hire. But. But the question is, is this decision going to get me closer to what I really want? And so it's about closer, not necessarily more. And it's tough. It's a simple thing for me to say, but it's not easy to do in practice.

And that definitely it comes through in the book and I'll call it an aha. And I think this relates to the fourth commandment, if I'm not mistaken, that you have in the book, you have four commandments. I won't list them all here, but I think we'll probably, probably hit on some during this episode. Is something that we're not always seeking the best of ourselves every single day that there's almost like this rolling average that. That we can pursue. So it's getting closer to our goals instead of those PRs every day.

Yeah, I started thinking about that because, I mean, full disclosure, I'm a recovering people pleaser. I'm a recovering, like I gotta get a 4.0 on everything. So just so people know that's where I'm coming from. Super competitive. Maybe sometimes in the past that's borderline and being a little bit petty. So I found myself const setting expectations on a daily basis based off my maximum output. And it was almost. I used to do a bunch of endurance athletics like marathons, half ironman, stuff like that. And if you've ever done any of that type of endurance training, you go out and some days you're just feeling it and you set your personal record. You're like, I didn't know I could run that fast. But you know, that's a personal record. And the next day you don't go out and expect that you're going to run that same race. Otherwise it wouldn't be a personal record. It'd be so meaningful. But when we set expectations around work, how we're going to show up as maybe parents, as a spouse, how we're going to show up in our relationships, we tend to get anchored to that personal best. One day I got 200 emails, responded to and I got all this work done. And so I'm now I'm measuring myself and setting all my systems and everything around that personal best. 9 out of 10 days I go home and I have all this guilt and shame because I can't live up to my personal best. So I suggest an alternative. And this is kind of an essence of trying to rig the game. In other words, engineer the outcome you want, which is set expectations more based off your average or your rolling average. And then so most days now you're going to hit expectations. And in those moments when you are feeling good, that's just engineering extra upside. And it's a small nuance. And again, it's simple, but it's not easy because we're going to keep coming back to what should. What should I be doing?

I thought that was. That was a big aha. And I think later as we go through here, some other folks might have that ting even more as an aha. Because, yeah, it takes a lot of pressure off. And that was my feeling through reading your book, rigging the Game. And it's just, it's almost like an understanding of us as entrepreneurs. We all have this drive to keep pushing for more, but we can reframe that into. I know you say a lot of it's optimizing for the right thing.

Of course, it took me a long time to realize how much I had to unlearn as an entrepreneur. I was that cliche kid growing up scheming on business ideas, got an accounting degree and information systems degree because I thought, okay, that technology language of business, okay, going to be primed to be a great entrepreneur. And then eventually I started running my own business and doing all the things I learned in business school, because why wouldn't I? I went to business school and it took me almost a decade, embarrassingly, to realize most of the stuff doesn't work because business school prepares you to work for a Fortune 500 company that all the rankings for business schools are based off, like placements to Fortune 500 companies. So why wouldn't they prepare you for that? But the challenge is Fortune 500 companies, they have one duty that is to maximize shareholder value. Maximizes right back to more the most. Right now I want the most clients, most employees, the most market share. And they can do that because they have significant resources. My wife worked at Starbucks in recruiting. They had a whole IT department just to support the application that she used in the recruiting department for recruiting store architect. Like they have resources.

So minute.

Yeah, so minute. You're a small business owner. You're like, you take out the trash, you do all the sales and marketing. You know, you're doing everything. You don't have a whole team for one application. So we have to optimize what's the most efficient path forward to what you want. That's a totally different mental model. And so it means you have to unlearn a lot of the traditional business stuff that's about maximize, unlearning.

I like that. Well, let's. I want to go back because I know you have a. You have a big history in business after business school. And I did business school as well, and a lot of endurance training. You're right. There's a lot of. I see how you relate, you know, how all that stuff relates. And you gotta unlearn a ton through that, that pushing, pushing. But let's go back to, to you and a little bit of your journey of how you got here and maybe some of these key points that you really want people to take away of how you did have the process of unlearning and to this point where we're at now. And then we can dive into.

I think that traditionally there's kind of two buckets of folks. There's the people who do all the research and then there's the people who are like, screw it, I'm just going to bet on myself. You know, there's some in between, but there's sort of these two different archetypes of sorts or narratives out there. And I was more of the do all the research. So I was like, you know, the straight A student and like I said, like obsessing to a point that wasn't healthy about that. And I had this narrative of if I do the work, I'm going to get the outcome. And that's a big part of a lot of cultures, especially Western culture, is like, you do the work, you're going to be rewarded for the hard effort. I got a masochistic part of my personality on endurance sports. I'm doing all the research, business school, getting the good grades, doing a prestigious fellowship, working for these top companies. One of my bosses was the CFO of Roku, Steve Louden. He took the company public and so really awesome mentors doing all the research. Like I said, I get into running my own businesses and it turns out that you can have one person who does all the research and one person who just goes all in and they both win and vice versa, they could both lose. And so there isn't that I can find necessarily a correlation between doing the research and taking the risk. More about having the right principles in place and being able to kind of consistently execute on that and really like play what I Would say, play your game. Lean into your strengths.

Yeah. And you had so many. I know you went through a bunch of different corporate gigs. And so you've learned. Yeah. You've learned from that. You've learned from school, obviously, your own personal. Just abilities and preferences, I guess. Old preferences. I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit on the preferences thing. Sure. What was. Was there like a moment in time where it shifted for you? Was there an occasion or an event?

So about seven years ago, I bought another business to kind of bolt onto an existing company and again, did all the research, all the due diligence, just like I would when I was part of due diligence for Fortune 500 acquisitions. Get into it couldn't be more of a disaster. Like, clients are just showing up in our office. That's what I always used to do. I just show up. Things aren't scheduled. You just show up. The person I. We. The leader of the company that we. We bought the business from, he was in the same building, and so he just wanted a little bit of a transition. So he's like, can I just set up a couple of things in one of your open office spaces just so I can be around on occasion to help you with the transition? It's like this. Sounds. Thank you. Like, that sounds great. Give him a key. Come in Monday. He's taken over the whole corner office, filled it. It's just like all these massive bookcases. It's like, now you're running the company now. Sent out this communication to all these folks. Don't worry, I'm still, you know, I'm still around. I had a huge crisis of confidence. What did I give myself? How did I miss all this stuff? What happened? And I just thought about, maybe I need to sell this business. Maybe I need to go get a job. What am I doing? So I got connected to my now longtime mentor, this guy, Randy Massingale. And. And Randy was senior advisor to Bill Gates. So just sort of the level that he was playing at. And the list goes on and on. And I was introduced to him, and the introduction was, you're just going to have to meet Randy. I can't really describe him. And I sat down and for about an hour, he asked me a bunch of random ques. Seemingly random questions to me, totally different than I inter. I met with three or four other potential, like coaches, mentors, and it was very. Tell me about your business revenue. What's your, you know, kind of the typical research stuff. Randy's asked me all these questions. That people hadn't ever asked before.

Do you have any, like, top of mind or something that stands out?

We spent a lot of time talking about playing basketball in, like, my cul de sac. Like, a lot of times talking about playing basketball.

I'm sure that exposes a lot of your personality where you're flowing a lot.

Of time talking about, I had a speech problem as a kid, really bad teeth. Like, we're talking a lot about that. And just at the end of it, he proceeds to basically explain me at this level that nobody else had ever kind of nailed it before. And I've had therapists before this, you know, and. And he said, you know what your problem is? You're playing somebody else's game. I want to insert some expletives after that, because as he unpacked, it's like, yeah, I. I am. And the way that he kind of views things is your, your, your. And I've kind of adopted this. And talk about the book, too. Is thinking back to your. Your favorite sport or hobby as a kid. That's often, you know, ignoring maybe overbearing parents or certain socioeconomic conditions. That's often like the. The fullest expression of who you are. You get to show up, you get to pick the favorite sport or hobby, play the way you want to play. And. And then every. The rest of the world is telling you to conform. Your traditional education is telling you to conform. I went to a Jesuit university. We got every class a full dose of what is morally just and what it means to be a good person. And a good. And I, you know, that's important, be a good person. But you end up trying to, again, play somebody else's game. And my game is not the most athletically gifted person. But I'm going to put in the. I want to take the last shot like, I want the ball in my hands. I want to put up a lot of shots. I'm not afraid to dive on the floor, like, kind of hustle player. And so when I'm doing the delegating and seeking consensus and looking for other people to give me answers, I'm no longer playing my game. As simple as that is. It's like an easy way to just reorient it. I'm playing someone else's game. Of course I'm unhappy right now. How do I get back to that? So kind of a long winded story. But that was like a major turning point in my entire life.

It makes so much sense, and I relate to it in a lot of ways. And I'M thinking of confidence, the root of all of this. You know, buying that business. Your confidence was shook. And I mean, that could bring in so much anxiety, stressors, whatever you want to list. I mean, it's. You start second guessing yourself, yourself and everything that's led you to this point. And, and yeah, you're playing someone else's game because you're not living in your own reality anymore. You've kind of put the blinders in all that. And yeah, I can relate to a lot of what you're saying in that. Like, I think of the favorite times where I'm playing sports or how I play, I would trust myself. And like you said, yeah, take the last shot or just go big or maybe just kind of go it alone on. On whatever it might be. That's why I did a lot of running, marathon type stuff too. But I believed in myself. I could see in those.

So it's not coincidental that you're not running this podcast alone?

That's right. I'm standing up right now.

Someone, are you ready to go?

Not, not in a treadmill. But the. Yeah, when confidence is shook. And I know I've experienced this even recently a little bit, you know, it's that reminder like, whoa, hold on, that is something else, someone else, an external thing that is shaking something in me that I forgot about or maybe it wasn't working.

Aware of. Yeah. You mentioned preferences earlier and a few years before having this conversation with Randy, I had a therapist who was helping me with my people pleasing tendencies. And he kept saying, damn, when are you going to realize you already have all the answers? I kept thinking, like, that's cool, but that feels very arrogant. I have all the answers. I don't have all the answers. And it took me the moment from Randy to realize, well, I do have all the answers. Because all the question I'm asking are preferences. It depends on. And what does it depend on? It depends on what I want. So I'm the only one that can actually answer that. So I don't have all the answers in terms of it or legal or these technical things. But only I can kind of navigate or sort of architect my future because it's what I want. And I was constantly looking for the person to give me that, that secret or that next step. And then it wouldn't work out because I was playing their game. And I realized this funny irony, and I see this with so many business owners where I ask them, hey, why did you go into business to begin with? And you get some version of I wanted freedom. Freedom to find my own destiny. Financial freedom, some version of freedom. You're like, okay, that's interesting. Totally makes sense to me. You want freedom now. Why are you conforming to what everyone else is telling you? You actually became incredibly exploitable. I used to be incredibly exploitable because I was in so much pain playing everyone else's game that I was falling victim to that one step or that one funnel, that one hack that I'm just so. Just give me that answer. And you become, in those moments of pain, easily exploitable. Someone can sell you this tip, but it doesn't actually. You're not actually clear on what you want. And so it gets you further away. So to me, this work is really about becoming less exploitable.

And this, it reminds me of, I think it's how you intro the book is mindset. And this like this layer of mindset that a lot of coaching or courses that we see out there, we don't need to name any names, just really want to. But the whole point is that it's a lot of. Is like, oh, it's your mindset. You know, it's not the. This is fault or this external thing.

It's you that tends to be. I gave you the. I gave you the secret. You didn't get results. That's on you. Fix your mindset. And there, there's some truth to that because if you are actually conforming and playing someone else's game, you need to fix that. Stop doing that. But it's also an easy out for people to not actually deliver on their promises because they're. They're blaming. They're blaming you. It's. I kind of view it as a. There's some truth to it because you played someone else's game, but at the same point, it's kind of a cop out.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely kind of both there and this where what I want to get into is getting more clarity over the things that make us feel bad, I guess for, you know. And that's anxiety. Anxiety, stresses, guilt, shame, all these things. And it seems like, well, you put anxiety into a formula, which I thought was kind of cool, you know, very simple. It's uncertainty times powerlessness.

Yeah.

And I would love for you to unpack what that means and also define what certainty is and how that can kind of flip the whole game around.

Yeah. Do you mind if I give a little bit of context? Because there's a fair amount to answering that question and I definitely encourage you to interrupt me for clarification. So. So I Have. One of my businesses is a CPA firm and our whole thing has been showing people how to pay less in tax. But if you're just, how do I show you how to pay less in tax? You're kind of a commodity because there's lots of people that show you how to pay less in tax. Is it that people. What is it that someone really wants? Why do you want to pay less in tax? Because they want to fund their. They want to live the life that they want. They want to take that money and not give it to the IRS and put it towards the things they actually want. And so I started to realize that every client I was working with had one thing in common. It didn't matter if they were a startup or they were nine, ten figure client. And they were all wondering, am I going to be okay? You know, like, how could someone that's a billionaire be worried about if they're going to be okay? Well, it's sort of that more money, more problems thing, where now they got 20 houses and all these expenses and layers and layers and layers. And they may not have a lot of liquidity. They might not have access to cash. They've got things tied up in hard assets. So they still have stress. It's a different kind of stress, but it's still the same inherent. Am I going to be okay? Just different levels. And then I came to understand that anxiety is really this worrying about the future. So I think about depression is kind of thinking and feeling bad about decisions. Bad's not the right term, but about the past and anxiety being sort of this future focused thing. That's how I understand it. That's how it's explained to me. Like, okay, well, am I going to be okay? Is really a future focused thing. It's. There's an anxiety component to it. Does that make sense?

It does perfectly.

So that's sort of how I conceptualize it. Again, I'm not a clinical psychologist or anything like that, but try to simplify things into frameworks that my brain can get its arms around. So am I going to be okay? The essential question that every client was asking me. Now, I believe that if you're a marketer, copywriter, operations, et cetera, your client is also wondering, am I going to be okay? It's just a different lens, but it's the same problem. It's anxiety. And so I heard this, this equation from this guy, Chip Conley, and he says, anxiety equals uncertainty times powerlessness kind of knocked me over. Okay. I've been trying to help Sort of figure out how to articulate this anxiety thing to clients. Uncertainty times powerlessness. So I, if I can. So then because I'm a math nerd, like this is third grade math distributed property, you go, ok, financial anxiety equals financial uncertainty times financial powerless. Or marketing anxiety equals marketing uncertainty times marketing powerless. Crypto anxiety or operation. It's an infinite number of combinations. So really what we're trying to do is give them more certainty and more power over the situation and the output of that is less anxiety. And that was sort of the, the underpinnings of what has become almost my life's mission, life's work. How do I help people have more certainty? Now in the financial world, you're not supposed to say financial certainty. Like if I was a registered investment advis, like you can't say financial certain. So that actually made it more interesting to me. I'm not a registered financial advisor. As a cpa, I can say it like I can sort of maybe own this term a bit. So I decided certainty is getting what you want on your terms without compromise. So that's my definition of certainty. And so then we have to be clear on what we want, we have to be clear on our timeline. And then without compromise, we have to be clear on who we are. In other words, we need to play our game. If we get to the end of it and we have all the money, but we're somebody else, we end up blowing ourselves up anyways. Let's get what we want on our terms without compromise.

There's so much there. And this is where, yeah, it is like an onion. Yeah, like each, each one of these things, they all relate to each other, but you're, you just keep peeling away the layers. And I think you started off things with kind of defining that, you know, both, both certainty and anxiety and how to kind of deconstruct all of it to flip it around. Because I think that's what really hooked me, to be honest. Dan is, is it's, it made a lot of sense because internally, you know, I'm doing these checks and thinking about it, writing these notes. I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Felt that, feel that, or whatever it is. And the, the thing I started to think about was going back to preferences is figuring out, okay, what is it that I want and knowing that, you know, that might change over time and having that, that grace with that, you know, and knowing that things are, are going to change, you know, or seasons of our life, we are going to change. And there are things like that. So The. I'm curious to go down that. That path. But also. And you can go in whatever order you want with the biases that you brought up that we all kind of have in us.

Yeah. So there's a. There's a. There is kind of an onion. And you can keep pulling this back many, many layers. To me, what we want is an infinite game. And there's so much around things like Parkinson's Law. I have something in the book I call high month par Paradigm. There's so many things around how. And back to more dopamine of more that we think we know what we want and then we get closer to it and it changes. And I have this anecdote about working with a client. They inherited a farm in Ohio with a bunch of debt. And we're talking to them about their what do you want in your timeline? And they go, well, my number one priority. I push people like, tell me what your number one priority is so we can optimize. Like, I want to pay off this debt on this really weighing on me. Like that makes sense. So we look at recovering resources, reallocating things to try to achieve that. And they. And we show her like, hey, you can do these three things and you can pay off your. Your farm right now. And they go, thank you. I'm going to move to California. The number three goal was move to California. And instead. So instead of once she never thought that was going to be possible, but once she saw the actual resources, she. I call it voting with your money. She got clear on what she really wanted. And so I just use as an example of. It's an infinite game. What you think you want keeps evolving as you get new information. We have to have the humility to kind of reserve the right to change our mind, but just accept that you shouldn't feel any shame or guilt. That's just part of it.

And I think that's a. That's a. I know It's a very freeing feeling, especially as entrepreneurs that feel like, yeah, we. We're good enough or I'm smart enough, whatever. I have the, you know, the people around me or. Or Gary in the book is a good reference. You know that guy over there?

My friend.

Yeah. Damn, you hate that guy.

I tried to make Gary the carrot, the male Karen.

That's my.

I like it.

I like it. Yeah, it. It Flo. It. It resonated because everybody has a Gary in their minds, a friend or someone on social media that they idolize for whatever freaking reason that we all know is bad. But at the same time, our monkey brains in here kind of keep going back to Karen or Gary. There's. I think it's Commandment 2, where you're talking about preferences versus binary decisions and that really, I related that a ton because of the guilt and shame of this or that, good or bad. You know, it has the shoulds. You know, just the term should. There's a lot of weight to that if. If that's how we make our decisions. So I'm curious of how that would play into preferences after we decided.

Yeah, so. So I believe that we are all biased. I think there's a lot of neuroscience on this. You can read something like thinking fast and slow from Dr. Daniel Kahneman. He establishes some science behind how we have this system that's really fast, but it's got all these biases. And then we've got a system of our brain that's slow that we have more control over. And so we're all biased. The Internet is filled with people going, look at this biased person. But I'm. Look at me. I'm reasonable and rational and so on. No, we're all biased.

Yeah.

There's something called GI Joe bias. It says even when you know about the biases, you're still subject to them, and even when you know, you know, you're still subject to that. We're all biased. There are some things in the world that are facts binary. There's a right and there's a wrong. My daughter asks me one of my daughter, why is the sky blue? I can. There's some science, some facts I can Google and get the answer to. Turns out that most of the questions, at least business owners are asking, are actually preferences. Should I grow my business? Should I do this podcast solo? You could ask. I don't know what your process was, but you could ask 20 people, probably get 20 slightly different answers. Some people are like, there's only one way to think about this. If you don't do this, you're an idiot. Other people maybe are like, I don't know. You thought about these five things. You could Google it. Should I do this podcast on my own? I don't know how many millions of hits you might get. The point is that you just get a bunch of opinions back. They just might look like facts. They're preferences. Only you can really answer that. Now. What I want to say is, when some people hear me say that, it gives them a tremendous amount of anxiety because they're like. But there's. Because they're like a previous Version of me that's like. But there's still a right answer because somehow I'm going to get an A on this test. Yeah, I understand what you're telling me, but no, there's still, like, a right way to do it. So where do I get that answer again? There is a right answer, which is, what do you want? And so once you embrace that, you get to write all the rules, and you truly embrace that, you have so much more freedom, so much more freedom than living in the world where you thought you wanted freedom, but then you're looking for everyone else to give you the right answers and the next steps and the consensus. So much freedom. But you have to get over that anxiety first.

Anxiety. And I just feel. Yeah, the cognitive overload, you know, with. With all these options, but without us knowing what our personal preferences are, maybe identifying some of these biases in us, that we are more proponent, you know, are more, like, inclined to maybe lean towards in certain situations or when we're stressed. Yeah, I mean, it's.

It takes work.

It takes a lot of work, man. Yeah. And I guess, you know, because there's that. I forget what it's called exactly. But there's a gap between, you know, a stimulus and a response. It's like, mind the gap is what I always kind of remind myself.

Yeah.

So I'm curious, because that defines everything. It's how we show up in the world. So we can. We can talk it, think it all we want. But, yeah, it's that gap.

So I have a. I have a couple thoughts that might be helpful to listeners, because I've gone through this whole path. Okay. So most of the book is, like. Could be summarized as 20. Dan struggling for 20 years and trying to come up with solutions to his struggles and problems.

Thanks for sharing.

That might be the. That might be the summary. Discipline. Okay. Entrepreneurship, heavy. A lot of dial area. We gotta be disciplined. And we just had, you know, this is. We're recording this on February 1st. Hope you don't mind me saying that. So we're not that far away from New Year's resolution. And I ask people, like, how many of your New Year's resolutions were some version of just being more disciplined? When I've got the answer, people are like, all of them. All of them. And you're like, okay, what is. What is it going to take for you to be more disciplined? And they're like, I just. I'm just going to be more disciplined. It's like, so the thing that you need to be more disciplined Is more discipline. Oh, yeah. I'm trying to be more disciplined by having more discipline. Like, I'm kind of running this race against myself. And the answer is look to the opposite, which is how do I put myself in positions where I don't have to be more disciplined? So I'm a big fan of Dr. Jeff Spencer. We have a lot of overlap. He's big on restraint. He's the keyword champions playbook is restraint. So people hear him talk and then they're inspired, as they should be, and then I'll talk to them and they're like, yeah, I need to have more restraint. Okay, you missed Dr. Jeff's entire message is that you need to put yourself in a position where you're less impulsive or you're not so impulsive all the time, so that you don't need to be constantly looking for more restraint. And so it ends up. We end up back to these same kind of closer versus more type discussion, which is. And the personal best type narratives. It's kind of all the same, which is I keep setting up all these mental models and narratives where I just have to do more of everything. More disciplined, more restraint. Like, no, you kind of need to do the opposite. You need to pull a George Costanza from Seinfeld and do the opposite. It don't put yourself in so many positions where you have to be where you have to exercise restraint. Try to find scenarios where you don't have to be so disciplined. In other words, eliminate all the bad things so that you're just left with good things. And that's really how we engineer luck. I call it creating asymmetry to the upside, which is like a very trading derivative background. It's another version of you get rid of all the bad things, then all you're left is good things.

Yeah.

So you don't have to be disciplined all the time.

And I'll see that asymmetry to the upside because that. That was my favorite commandment throughout this all. And I think it relates to what Dr. Jeff Spencer, which shout out because he was. He was on the podcast a lot. Loved his. His episode is the champion mindset compared to just the human mindset, or I think you defined it differently.

Mindset.

Yeah. And with the. Yeah. The human side, you know, that we are all equipped with, for better or for worse, is very impulsive. You know, and there's that. We're not minding gaps, we're tripping over them. We're jumping over them. We're not even thinking about it. And then you have the champion side, which is pretty much the opposite. You know, there's systems, there's restraint is kind of built into every layer of that thing, and it's defined really well. And that's where I feel like it really is perfectly to that asymmetry to The Upside Commandment 4, where you. You could be a smart gambler. It's kind of like how I took it. You're like, all of us entrepreneurs are gamblers. We're all taking massive risks that our parents probably thought were insane. I know my mom did. Still does, probably. But we're doing it with restraint and clarity. I'm curious of your thoughts around that commitment there. Yeah.

I think when you really study the great entrepreneurs, I like to look at things in the extremes, because often that's when principles fall apart in the extremes. I look at the notion of risk in the extreme, and I go, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, whatever. May pick your favorite kind of billionaires who've really done well. Sarah Blakely. They are naturally good at finding opportunities that have way more upside than downside. If this doesn't work, I'm out this investment. But if it does work, I've got such a huge Runway. And they typically have gone so far as to kind of eliminate a lot of the downsides. So what do we take from that? Well, us normal humans like myself, I'm not naturally gifted at finding opportunities that have huge asymmetry, so I have to work at it. I need to think through, like, what are the downsides? What are the bad things that could happen, and what could I do to eliminate them? And so a lot of the after the commandments of the book are tools and principles and systems to try to eliminate downside. Because again, back to dopamine and more. We're not wired to look for the downsides. We're wired to go, I better do this now because I'm going to miss out. And I got to jump on that. Right. So we systematically remove the bad things so that we're only left with good things. And the people who I see who consistently win in business, they either have a system where they eliminate the downside, or they naturally do it and they're just not aware of it. They're not actually huge risk takers. When you weigh the downside versus the.

Upside, they just kind of embody it somehow.

Yeah. Now, marketers, the charlatans out there, they use the idea of betting on yourself, and they use the extreme examples of the billionaires to sell their programs. And again, if you're not clear in what you want, you're very exploitable. You might be getting all this scrutiny and expectations from your family. You got to prove to them that you're right. And so you buy into all these things about burn the boat. So have you heard this burn the boats narrative?

I fortunately use that term when we did a big pivot in our business last year, but, yes, please go on, because it smacked me right between the eyes.

And you've heard my anecdote on this.

I've heard yours. But please share it. Yeah.

Okay. Well, not trying to dunk on you at all.

Please do.

Okay. So in the 1500s, Cortez, he sails across sea in a battle. This is the backstory to burn the boats. He gets there, and it looks like imminent doom. Like, we're outnumbered, and what do we do? So he burns the boats. So he gives his. His warriors no other chance but to go and fight, and they go on, and they win the war. And so entrepreneurs, many, have kind of taken that narrative to go, well, you got to go all in. You got to bet on yourself. Now, there's one really important. And so the narrative is like, go all in. You got to take risk. Bet on yourself. Now, there's one really important detail that's left out of this story. Do you already know where I'm going with this?

I do, but I'm not gonna ruin it. Yeah.

This really important detail is that Cortez is told before he leaves in the battle, if you return and you're not victorious, we will deem you a traitor, and you will all be killed. So he actually chose. When he arrives in battle, he decides to burn the boats. He chose the least risky option. It's actually not an example about taking all the risk. It's actually an example about taking the least amount of risk. Right. I at least have a chance to win this war, but if I go home, I'm dead.

Dead either way, 100%.

So one option actually gives me a chance of survival. Not a great chance, but at least a chance. And so I share that story as a timeless principle about trying to at all times, eliminate the downside risk so that you're only left with upside. And to me, that's how you engineer luck, or what I would call reap.

The gap game, man. Yeah, I read that. I did not know the backstory before your book and read that, and I'm like, yeah, I've said that term. Definitely not knowing what the heck the backstory Was. And yeah, it's just the opposite.

And most of us don't. So like I said, I appreciate the humility on your part. Not trying me.

I took it.

Yeah.

I mean, this is where it makes a lot of sense. And it seems like to kind of put everything in a nice package is you're. You're showing people a very proven model, something that anyone can follow along wrong without being a mathematician, accountant, whatever you might, may or may not be out there, it's. It's reduce risk and effort, minimize those and optimize the upside or optionality and apply that all over the place. I mean, there's just countless examples of how that can be applied in life and business.

So the outcome to me is I want people to get. I want people to live the life that they want, and I want to help people eliminate suffering. And there's so many entrepreneurs out there who are suffering because they back themselves into a corner where everything requires maximum effort, because they took on maximum risk and they have no options. And it's a really terrible place to be. I've been there before, right? Even though I've gone to business, like I said, I went to business school. I've been mentored by some of the best in business. Been there multiple times. I don't even want to tell you how many times I've been there. I've had to reorient and relearn and go, least amount of effort. Effort. Now my least amount of effort. And Joe, your least amount of effort is probably still 100 times more effort than the average person, but it's least relative to all options. And your least amount of risk is probably a hundred times more risky than the average person. But it's relative to all the options, right? Because when we do that, we take the least amount of effort, least amount of risk. We're left with options, and we need to have options.

That's our personal freedom right there. In a nutshell. That's the freedom, man. Well, that's the freedom. I love it, Dan. You give so many tools. I mean, everyone should start with your book Rigging the Game. Go find it at. Was it riggingthegame.com Is that the best.

Place you can go to? Riggingamazon.com It'll take you right to. Right to the checkout.

Right on.

I keep hoping the book is successful enough that Amazon sends me a cease and desist letter for owning Amazon.com but.

Hey, wait till that day comes. Who cares?

That'll be a great day. I'll let you know.

It will be. Be. Thank you. And. And go check out the Rigging the game podcast as well. I know you do cca. That's more of the coaching program you have. You have a whole bunch of tools. Certainty app, I believe is so that all this stuff goes hand in hand if you.

If you all connected.

Yeah, the wait was. It was worth it. Dan, I'm happy I had you on here and I hope this helps a lot of people because, yeah, we're on the same mission, man. It's. It's in that suffering for entrepreneurs, it can go bad places. So it's a good life.

Well, thanks for having me on. I appreciate the work that you're doing and helping people in this. What I would say ending. Ending the suffering and entrepreneurship. I appreciate you too.

All right, all right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But, you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you guys got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now, please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, and I will see you next time.

That.