Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. For today’s guest, we have Dan Brech, the founder and CEO of BizHack Academy, whose mission is to give small business owners a simpler way to grow. 

Dan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former NPR and PBS journalist, entrepreneur, and educator. And he carries forward a family legacy of teaching. Coaching past career highlights include serving as the head of marketing at two software startups and the nation’s largest Hispanic-owned energy company and working as a correspondent for NPR’s Marketplace, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, and the Miami Herald. As an instructor at Princeton, Columbia, and the University of Miami, Dan is a graduate of Princeton University. 

He has two master’s degrees and was a Fulbright scholar. He also contributes to Amazon Books’ strategic growth for leaders, Ten Success Keys to Elevate You to the Next Level. He’s an extraordinary American, and I’m glad and honored to have him on this show. Dan, are you there?

Dan

Hey, Cosmo.

Cosmos

Hey, Dan. It’s so good to have you on this podcast, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Dan

Thank you for everything you do to discuss financial freedom and the American dream. My Dad is an immigrant from Spain. And so, as an immigrant’s son, I appreciate your message and effort.

Cosmos

Thank you so much, Dan. Could you tell the audience more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

Dan

Sure, my professional life has been the story of two parts. Part One was the first 20 years of my career as a professional journalist. I worked for the Miami Herald and the Washington Post, which worked for NPR’s Marketplace, and I worked for PBS. So, all in journalism organizations. A lot of it was broadcast, public, broad public media, broadcast.

And then in 2013. After a gold-plated career, I, like many other journalists, lost my job and did not find another job. What I had hoped and thought would be my lifetime career was cut short, and I had to reinvent like so many of us have to, and it was a rough process. I had many false starts trying to rebuild my professional identity, and you know, I started like many journalists in PR. And then I got into marketing, and then I got into digital marketing. 

Then, I started teaching business owners digital marketing at the local community college because I like to teach what I am trying to learn, making me learn faster and better. I also love being a teacher practitioner, an A marketer who teaches marketing, because it makes me better as a teacher and a doer. 

And I did that for a couple of years, working as a marketer and teaching as a side gig at the local community college, and then in 2017, one of the businesses I was teaching said to me, Dan, it is so obvious that you prefer your teaching side hustle to your day job as a marketer, you must quit working as an adjunct at the Community College. You need to quit your day job working as a marketer for a billion-dollar electricity company and then for a software startup, and you need to go and start your own business. AA Marketing Academy. 

And so, that’s exactly what I did. In 2017, I started BizHack Academy. It’s an academy dedicated to training small businesses and teaching them how to market themselves, as I found—my true professional love. I am building a business that helps other business owners build theirs.

Cosmos

Whoa, Dan, this is such an amazing turnaround. You went from being a journalist for these esteemed news sites to helping marketers. So, my question to you, Dan, is, what was your strategic vision from where you worked for PBS and the Miami Herald? How did it evolve from there to doing BizHack? Academy like what? Like how I did. The evolution takes place.

Dan

Yeah, you know, that is not a straight line, Cosmos. And I will say that it started with a concept called your icky guy. This is a Japanese principal, and your ikigai is a Venn diagram with four concentric circles. The first circle is what you’re the best in the world at. The second circle is what you love doing. The third circle is what you can get paid to do. 

And the Fourth Circle is what the world needs. And my icky guy in the OR—I call it your professional sweet spot. Jim Collins called it the hedgehog principle. It’s this kind of intersection of what you’re good at. What do you love to do, and what can you get paid to do it? For the first 20 years of my career, that was being a journalistic storyteller. 

For the later part of my career, it’s being a business storyteller, so the one thread that’s been common throughout is a love of storytelling and a belief in the power of storytelling as the primary vehicle that humans communicate with each other and leveraging that for small businesses to help. They grow faster.

And that’s my life’s work: bringing the expertise I developed as an expert storyteller to journalism. I have a master’s degree in storytelling and bring that to small business owners, giving them simple tools to leverage that and helping them use AI to get noisy about and then using it to connect to other human beings in a way that makes them like and trust them and want to do business with them.

Cosmos

So Dan, I just have a quick question about storytelling. So, is it true that the hero’s journey from art to storytelling is the ultimate form of storytelling, like, you know, the Luke Skywalker journey? They’re reluctant here. They don’t want to go, but then they’re taken by a master. Or is there another form of more advanced and nuanced storytelling that gets across? It’s just a quick question.

Dan

Yeah, it’s, it’s. That’s what I spent my master’s degree studying. So, how much time do you want? But, uh, I’ll give you a quick summary. The hero’s journey was a pattern that Joseph Campbell noticed. He was like an anthropologist who studied myths across different cultures. 

He noticed that mythology across cultures, religions, geographies, and eras shared these common traits, and he documented that. I like to think of that as a story’s structure, like a human’s skeleton. You’re right, but the flesh you put on top of it and how you tell the story can vary from every story, giving it infinite variety. 

Now, the hero’s journey is about somebody leaving home. Often reluctantly. Having an adventure, learning from the adventure, and then coming back home … permanently changed. And that is a description of birth, life, and death.

Cosmos

Wow, I did not think of it that way.

Dan

You know, and so when you think of every story like you have kids,

Cosmos

No, I’m single.

Dan

So I have like a little four-year-old, and little Henry will go, and he’ll, you know, go and wander, you know, when we’re at the beach, and there’s like this invisible rope on him, and the older he gets, the further he wanders, but then he will always kind of look back and then run back to be with the—safety of mom or dad. 

And that is life. Right. When we start, we’re in a literal cocoon, and then we are born into a world, and then we start to explore that world. And then we get hurt. We fall, you know, we learn, and then we come back to the safety of that. But we’ve learned something from the process, and that is the act of living. That is how we learn. That is how we interact as humans. 

And every story is a recapitulation of that learning journey. And that’s why every myth follows that. That’s the skeleton, the foundational structure of every story. And you know, Joseph Campbell is one of the most powerful documentaries of that. 

Another really important figure in this regard is Carl Jung. He talked about the archetypes, you know, and the mentor archetype, like the yoga Yoda or the Obi-Wan Kenobi. It helps, you know, bring the hero along, and then when you go to something like marketing, which is my area of expertise, there’s a wonderful book called Story Brand by Donald Miller, who applies a lot of these technologies to the concepts around the hero’s journey and archetypes, and then he applies them to a business—your marketing contact.

The one last thing I’ll quickly say is that you know I have a lot of expertise in AI. AI is really like humans to humans and is intermediated by bots, right? These robots are taking over many of our communications, and I warn people to remember that marketing, at its foundation, is human-to-human communication. 

That’s why storytelling exists. It is profound, and so is PowerPoint. You can use AI to help accelerate and improve the storytelling process and recast the story for different marketing channels. But don’t let yourself lose sight of how you market and sell by creating a connection from one human being to another. You will be much more successful if you do that and use a story.

Cosmos

So, Dan, I have so many questions for you to answer, but this is one of the things I wanted for the people in the audience because there are a lot of people who want to do business, either because they want to do business or because they are already in the process of doing business. 

But they’re very neat about the concept of AI marketing and storytelling. At the intersection of that, they still don’t understand. I. I’m very new to AI and don’t know all of it. How can you just give artificial intelligence some basic building blocks, and they’ll create their own thing? 

And how will it be authentic to who you are as a person? Could you elaborate on how AI changed the entire marketing process, such as how it is effective for businesses?

Dan

Yeah. Another big topic that I could tell you about is that I testified in Congress in December on this very topic because I’m one of the nation’s leaders in terms of working with thousands of small businesses and how to deploy AI. And so, I will answer your question a little on the side first.

The number-one use case for AI in small businesses is to increase the owner’s productivity. Right. I’m talking about small businesses here, and you know everyone on the executive team and everyone in the company. Studies have shown that in the average small business that utilizes AI, the owner reports saving 13 hours a week. Now, what are they saving time on? Usually, it’s administrative. I call it the boring but important stuff. 

So, you know, writing certain emails, sending certain proposals, doing some of the administrative stuff—if you’re good at using AI, you get. Faster. You saved 13 hours. 1/3 of the businesses said they took those 13 hours and invested them in growth. More Biz Dev is in more conversations and going out to more networkers.

Cosmos

Wow.

Dan

I’ll give you a concrete example of this. I had to write a I had to write a massive concept paper for a grant funder for half a million dollars. Grant. I had blocked my entire day on a Friday to do it, and I could finish it on Thursday using a schedule. 

So, I used all day Friday to attend a networking event and generate many new leads. That’s a good example. How can you use AI to get some stuff done faster and then invest it in new growth? So that’s one way it’s not direct; it’s really using AI as a productivity tool and then leveraging that to grow your business faster in the human-to-human old-fashioned way. 

The other way that AI can be useful in business storytelling is, look, I have a master’s degree in writing. I worked, you know, as a writer and for professional publications. I am a huge exception. Most business owners and people don’t like writing, aren’t good at writing, etc. ChatGPT is, by and large, a better—writer than they are. 

So that’s awesome. You can tape your raw material, and it can write it better. The key is that, by definition. Unless you feed it information, the output is very generic. Right. It’s kind of, you know, at best, it’s kind of generic content. 

So, if you know, you need to feed it. Specific information about your target audience: What is their pain point, and how does your product or service solve it? Then, have it write that blog post, social media post, or that e-mail newsletter. And then that’ll get you an 8 out of 10. 

And how do you get that piece of content CHPT creates from an 8 to a 10 out of 10? That’s where you put the human back into it. Right. Humanity involves your analysis. And an example from the real world. So if you take a piece of generic content that you’ve given information to the AI, the large language model, the Chuck GBT—and then it comes out with a piece of content, let’s call it like an e-mail. And then you insert into it a piece of personal analysis. 

You know, Cosmos. It was incredible to see you. You know, I saw the way that, you know, the attention and active listening that you gave to me. I just want to know. I appreciate it. You know what listening is. An act of love is right.  And I’m, you know, reacting. I’m looking at you right now and how you’re listening to me, the way your hand is on your chin, and I’m responding to it, human to human. 

So, you just add that little piece of analysis and personalization, and then you say, I met a guy named David Isay. He also wrote a book called Listening is an Act of Love. And I recognize that. How you interact with me on this call is a gift, and I thank you. Right. So there’s a little personal experience, right? That will take it from an 8 out of 10 to a 10 out of 10. And that’s what I recommend whenever you’re creating content, doing storytelling, or doing marketing and sales outreach using chipping.

Cosmos

Dan, this is pretty incredible. Also, like many people who would have jobs in, let’s say, storytelling or just marketing, all those hours, the AI can take over that kind of stuff because it’s just doing the job better than many people. The sound of it is right.

Dan

Yeah, It’s doing some of the jobs better than people and better than some of the people. For example, I’m a better writer than Checchi PT, but. It can write way faster than I can. So, to start, I’ll give you a really simple example. I was recently asked to write a recommendation letter. And back in the day, I used to say, Write me the recommendation letter. I’ll write through it, and then I will sign. It. Right. And because I don’t have time to write a brand-new recommendation letter in this case, I said, What do you want to ensure I cover in this recommendation letter? And she gave me four bullet points.

So, I pasted those four bullet points in the chibi, and after each bullet point, I quickly recounted a story of how this person exhibited behaviors in support of that bullet point. So, you know, I need this cover letter or recommendation letter to discuss my identity. I am professional, solving, walking, and following through with my commitments. 

So, I say, OK, great recommendation letter for this person. Make sure to hit on how professional they are and that they always follow through on their commitments. They are, for example. I remember the time when she was Thick. 

She showed up anyway and fulfilled her commitment, even though she was not feeling well. I then did that for each of the bullet points. It was super fast. Like, this whole thing took 30 seconds. You know, hit return, cut, and paste the email into an email back to her. I revised it a little bit to make it a little bit more. I like my language. And she said it was the best reference letter she had ever received.

Cosmos

Wow.

Dan

So that’s it. What is it? Is it this? It’s like this conversation you’re having with the AI, recognizing what it’s good at and where its limitations are. And then give it the information it needs to do its best. And it’s been, you know, as I’ve gotten to know these tools, I’ve learned the personality. It’s almost like they’re another employee.

Cosmos

Wow. So, Dan, you could write best-selling books using AI in the future. Like most people, sitting down and writing will take them days or months. But, with the help of Chaji, you could just do that in a fraction of that time from now. Sounds like it.

Dan

Undoubtedly, writers’ number one use case is helping you confront the empty page. I don’t know about you, but. Like I am crippled. By the empty page. You know, and confronting it, it’s so horrible that Jonathan Franzen, one of the great novelists of the 28th century, would chain himself to a desk as he handcuffed himself to a desk to write because it was just that unpleasant. 

So even for the best writers, confronting the empty page is tough, and there are all sorts of tricks, you know, chaining yourself to the desk. Another one is that writers recommend that you stop the day before mid-sentence and then pick up the next day, finishing that sentence, which helps you. Another one is using Chichi PT as a brainstorming tool. I want to help you get started, and I think, you know, there’s a lot out there that’s like AI versus humans. And I’m a very big advocate of AI plus humans.

Cosmos

No, totally.

Dan

That they’re partners that were, that were partners.

Cosmos

I’ve had interviews with others about chat, J, media, and AI, but it will change and revolutionize how we do everything in the 21st century. It seems small right now, but it does look like that’s where it’s headed, like the Internet. But this is on the next level.

Dan

You know, I 100% agree with you. I mean, we are in the first year, really, of 20 years.

The adoption cycle will require a complete retooling of every professional. It is working in our economy. It is going to reinvent work completely, and it’s going to require all of us to learn how to work with these powerful new tools. 

Oh, by the way, these tools are accelerating logarithmically, exponentially in their power, and so is what we’re seeing today, which is blowing us away. Is it complete? It’s just a tiny hint of what is to come. The key is that over the next three to five years, we need to begin to learn these tools because what will happen? 

And I know this is important to you, Cosmos, and certainly to me, is the son of an immigrant; there will be the AI haves and the. I have not. And so we need to, like, really make sure that those marginalized communities, you know, the communities that tend not to be as tech-forward or have as much access to technology, we need to make sure that they come along with us, or it’s like some of the economic and opportunity disparities that get in the way of the American dream are going to become even more entrenched.

Cosmos

No, I mean, I can see many people who are not tech-savvy. Many people will be left behind, and many will get ahead, and it’s just a matter of how fast you can adapt. That’s something that we see even in America, right?

A lot of the issues that a lot of people have are economic. It’s because we’re having these new jobs. The whole way of doing things is being transitioned to the new way, and there’s always a battle between the old and the new way of life, you know.

Dan

Absolutely. And you know, I think that, especially when it comes to the things that you care the most about, like financial freedom and the American dream, you’ll have to contend with how this creates opportunity and increases marginalization.

And there’s another aspect to this, too, which is also rich countries versus poor countries. So, you know, the United States and China are the leaders in this technology, and most of the researchers who are building these technologies are, you know, white men in the US. Up and then, you know, folks in India and China, and then there’s the rest of the world. 

And so, just like we’re going to see disparities between marginalized communities in the United States and their access to this information, we’re going to see the same marginalization in certain core areas of the world. Like Latin America or Africa? And we have not even begun to grapple with this and how we will work on it. There are billions of dollars being poured into retooling the American workforce, and BizHack Academy will be one small player in that massive effort. Economy-wide effort.

Cosmos

So, Dan, what are the questions? I wanted to ask: how does the government over here, like Congress, view AI about business and also like the economic opportunity and the marginalization it can potentially create?

Dan

Yeah. I was in Congress in December 2023. It was simultaneously the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life and the least consequential thing I’ve ever done, which is that Congress is broken in the United States. There was no sense whatsoever after testifying. For an hour, the House Committee on Small Business had no idea what I was talking about or who I was. Are you going to do anything about it?

There was no sense in the members of Congress. They had no idea what I was talking about or any sense of its potential positive and negative impact.

Cosmos

But that AI is going to change. This is the world.

Dan

I know, I know. Tell Congress that I tried. I tried telling them that it was.

Cosmos

It’s not some.

Dan

I’ll put it to you this way. It’s 2024, and Congress is still not regulating social media.

Cosmos

And I mean, you can see how it’s affecting the polarity in this nation, right, like social media and all of that. But, AI is on the next level, like, you know, you had the.

You had the Internet, right? Which changed everything. You had social media, and now you have it for businesses. Just like for social society and culture, this will completely revolutionize how people look at that. And so yeah, it’s just something that came to me. Alright.

Dan

Yeah, the US Congress is not up to the challenge. Most AI regulations are coming out of the European Union, and it seems that will probably be the global entity. Police are doing a lot of this, and we desperately need policing. You know, there was a statement put out in May 2023 by all of the top AI researchers in the world, including Jeffrey Hinton, who is called the father of a person I used to work at Google, and Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. And they said it was one statement. One statement from the Center for AI Safety said the threat to humanity of AI is equivalent to that of a global pandemic and nuclear war. 

So, this is a technology that can eradicate us. And it can also free us to do more, greater, and better things than ever. It can do both. I think the analogy with nuclear power is a good one. Nuclear power can energize it, fuel the world, and blow that same world up. And AI has the same potential and risk. The same technologies you can use to do deep fakes and steal elections can also help market and promote a business and help it grow faster. 

It’s these neutral tools, like hammers. You can use a hammer to build a house and put a hole in the wall. And so we need to put guardrails around. It is so powerful, but without hamstringing its productive power. 

And that is where we’re at right now: in an unregulated space, which we will see, you know, this November in the presidential election. You know the destructive power of AI to confuse things and muddy the truth.

Cosmos

So, Dan, with everything happening this year, do you know what AI we, as Americans and as a nation, should be optimistic about the future from your perspective?

Dan

Yeah, some of this is above my pay grade. I am so optimistic about the power of AI for small businesses, which are a tiny corner of the world. I. This is the most powerful productivity tool in a generation. 

So, like, think about social media, and social media is a giant time suck, right? And, at least personally, it never really spoke to me. But I knew I had to do it. But I couldn’t always clearly point to the return on investment. I didn’t always know if it was working; I feel like I’m creating free content for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok that they can benefit from. I’m kind of their product, whereas. I am immediately saving hours a week to invest in becoming a better father, growing my business, or just taking time for myself. 

So, the return on my investment in these large language models in AI is immediate and profound. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I can tell you as an educator. Here, it is breathtaking to watch in real-time. People’s minds open and see the possibilities; overnight, they create new and impossible products. I call it 10,000 X. It’s new and better. It’s better, faster, and new, and I’ll give you a great example of this. 

So, I’m teaching. You teach classes in AI to small businesses, and one of the small businesses used AI to use chat, CBT, to create an original song. Based on Will Smith’s summertime but related to their company, which is a parking company, summertime parking, summertime travel, and parking are on the summertime theme. They then put it into another incredible AI tool that took that song and created an actual song. And they used the voice of Beyoncé. Attached to it, they built an ad on Facebook using this song. 

So, there’s an original song written by AI, sung by AI, and then they use it in an ad with the best success they’ve ever run. There’s no way. Be that as it were, that business would never have been able to create original music for an ad until AI came around.

Cosmos

I mean, yeah, that’s true. It does have the potential for a lot of good things as well. But, Dan, I want a different note. I wanted to ask you about the book you contributed to, Right is Like, which came out on September 24th. It is The Strategic Growth for Leaders: 10 Success Keys to Elevating You to the Next Level. Can you tell me a little bit more about the audience? What is the premise of your contribution, and what is the book about?

Dan

Yeah, absolutely. So do I. I think you know, as I mentioned in the letter, of an immigrant from Spain. And I’ve spent a lot of time in Spain with my cousins and family. And I’ve come to recognize that they view business differently in Spain than in the United States. We’re focused on scaling, growing, and making it bigger in the United States. 

In our society, much is about massive, rapid growth. But we don’t always ask why. In other words, why are we growing? For what? In contrast to Spain, many business owners run what are known as lifestyle businesses, which are businesses that support. It is a lifestyle AF. They enjoy family life and feel balanced. 

So, I wrote a chapter about something my cousin told me. My cousin runs Spain’s top rhythmic gymnastics training studio for young girls who want to become Olympic athletes. They are completely oversubscribed and have waiting lists, but their facility is small and rundown. 

And so I asked my cousin, Why don’t you expand your facility, buy a new facility, and open the second location?”. Dani Tenemos Los suficiente. Center means we have enough. And she’s like, “Look.” This is enough. We make the money we want and have time for dinner with our girls every night. This is enough. And it’s funny like I know billionaires. You know, I know incredibly successful business owners. I’ve never heard an American say I have enough. 

So, the essay is about the concept of losing enough. What is enough? Why are we growing? Why are we what? Why are we scaling this mountain? And why do so many of us, when we scale this mountain, feel empty inside when we reach this summit? I talked a little bit about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And this notion of fulfilling your material needs—the more you fulfill your material needs, the less you want that stuff. 

So, you desperately want things like food and shelter when you don’t have them, but once you have them, you no longer want them. Right. So, these are things that, once fulfilled, you want less of; you don’t need them as much. But there’s one type of need that you can never get enough of, which is self-actualization. 

And so, for me, that’s about a desire to help others and use my gifts and skills to help others. What I have found, and this is what Maslow talks about and what I talk about in my essay, I can never get enough of. If I help 100, I want to help 1000; if I help 1000, I want to help a million; if I help a million, I want to help 100 million; and so it is. It’s exciting and powerful to be on a journey of self-actualization. 

Still, it’s also really important to recognize the toll on yourself, your family, and your health that this kind of pursuit can take, whether it’s about the pursuit of money, the pursuit of fame, or even the pursuit of impact, and just being able to define when is enough.

Cosmos

No, Dan and I would. I recommend anybody listening to this audience look at that book because it’s about growing as a leader. We need leadership in our lives and for people, and I wanted you to give us and the audience a little glimpse of what Vishak Academy is about so people like it. Entrepreneurs who want to, like they, potentially want to come to you so they can know more about it.

Dan

Yeah, absolutely. So BizHack Academy is on a mission to train 100,000 small business owners on how to grow faster, and we’re using a combination of business, storytelling, and AI tools to help with that acceleration. And the reason that we want these businesses to grow faster is so that they can. Remain the fabric of their communities. Small businesses are the heart and the soul of our economy. They are the economic drivers of our local communities. They give our main streets a local flavor that makes living there worthwhile, and they die every time one of these businesses dies. All employees and their families who depend on them for their livelihood suffer, and the community is a little bit poorer without that local flavor. 

And so we have to, as an economy, as a country, and as a people, support our local businesses, and that’s what BizHack does. We do that through training and coaching programs, and our primary training and coaching on AI-powered marketing and business storytelling are funded. Banks and municipalities. 

And other business support organizations that subsidize our training so that businesses can access it for free or at a reduced cost. I would invite all of your listeners to visit bizhack.com or us on social media at Bizzack Academy. You can also learn about the free and low-cost offerings we’re offering on AI-powered marketing that is accessible to them.

Cosmos

No. For sure. Dan and Dan, other than this, how can the audience connect with you and get to know more about you, your work, and everything that you do?

Dan

Yeah. So, you know, BizHack Academy is our social handle, and you’ll see. Dan Gretch, I have a reference to my accounts there as well. You can also find the book Strategic Growth for Leaders: 10 Success Keys to Elevate You to the Next Level. We’re currently promoting it on our social channels. You can also look up strategic growth for leaders on Amazon and see it listed. They would welcome you to buy the book. 

And obviously, my chapter is just one of many incredible ones by other business thought leaders. And you know, if you want to engage with Biz Hack and this material, come to one of our free master classes. We host them on most Wednesdays, and you’ll get exposed to some of the best practices, case studies, and inspiration we discussed—a little about today.

Cosmos

That is awesome, Dan. I appreciate that you took the time to do this podcast for me and tell the audience about the importance of AI in business and the world’s future. 

This is important, like marketing and storytelling, because it ultimately makes businesses successful. I hope you take the time to revisit this podcast later.

Dan

Oh yeah, I’d be happy to come back and Cosmos before we wrap up. If that’s OK, I have a question for you.

Cosmos

Yeah, for sure.

Dan

It’s kind of turning the tables on the interviewer. I was wondering, you know, you’re very passionate, and I mean, anybody who listens to extraordinary Americans knows the cosmos is self-actualizing through this podcast. He’s very passionate about financial freedom and the American dream. And my question to you is why. Why? Why do you think you’re so passionate about this topic?

Cosmos

When I came as an immigrant, I was. As an immigrant like myself, I have seen firsthand that for immigrants all over the world, the primary reason they move to another country is money and finances. They’re not free; they must because they always seek a better life. 

Financial freedom is an important product, and if they have the education and knowledge of how to do business, they can be free and have a choice, and financial freedom helps you make a choice—my wife. 

But when I came to America as I did, I saw a discrepancy between the ideals of the American identity of freedom and that most people are not financially free or financially educated. And I wanted to do something about it. So, it’s a combination of my experiences in Kuwait. Combined with what I saw in America,

Dan

And can you? How old were you when you came to the United States?

Cosmos

I first visited when I was 10, but I started to like university here. At the age of 8,

Dan

You got it. Can you tell a story from those early years in the United States about you experiencing this discrepancy between the American dream of lore and the actual reality of the American dream for an immigrant?

Cosmos

When I visited my cousin and my aunt in New Jersey and New York, I went to the Manhattan-Brooklyn area and saw a massive difference in the posh area in Manhattan. Right. And then you had areas in Brooklyn, like the complete Opposite. 

And it was just that. I was just amazed. And I was like, the human family is one family. But we would like it if, let’s say, we had God’s family and one family. Why are some people living so luxuriously, and why is there a vast majority of people in this area within a 10- or 30-mile difference? Living in such poverty and inequality, you know, and it just really gets to you when you start going into those areas.

Dan

Yeah, now.

Cosmos

Like you’re just. Going to school, and you go on a walk.

Dan

You came here to the United States, and you saw these tremendous disparities that kind of contradicted the, you know, Hollywood version of the American Dream.

And then you did something about it, and that’s what I’m interested in most immigrants. You can’t help. But notice, right? The discrepancy between the haves and have-nots in the United States and the income inequality and opportunity inequality for brown and black folks and folks from a foreign country. 

But you have chosen to make this your cause and to do something about it. And I’m curious: is there someone in your life—maybe a parent, a pastor, or a? A priest who taught you to fight. For causes like this that made you want to not stay quiet like most immigrants and get noisy about this cause,

Cosmos

My uncle, aunt, and even my parents inspire me. I like how you can go to other countries and make it from scratch. And that’s one of the most important things for me. You can go anywhere, and with the right mindset and education, you can make it wherever you go. 

My father and uncle certainly inspired me to do this because, ultimately, if you want to change your lifestyle, it comes down to your mindset, and that’s what.

Dan

And did one of them do one of them? They teach so. You saw examples of this mindset in your family, in your parents, and in your aunts. And uncle, but. Most people just hoard that information for themselves, but you want to share it. 

I’m just curious. Is there someone who taught you to care about others and to donate your time and energy to educate others about what you have learned? Like, that’s what I’m interested in. How did you come to want to get noisy about this? And be an advocate for this.

Cosmos

I think it’s just like when you see, uh, injustice and disparity; it just comes naturally, I suppose.

It doesn’t come naturally to everybody. So, you know, I’ll just try one more time to get at this, but it might be something you just need to think about. But you’re very special; you’re very unique. Like my dad, most people who came here didn’t do that. My dad didn’t get noisy about the immigrant experience. 

He was just, you know, a clothing salesman for most of his life. And he took care of his kids and coached me in soccer. And you are talking publicly about the extraordinary Americans and the gap between the dream and the reality you’re making. You’re making this a cause. And you know, maybe you were just born this way. Maybe you were born an advocate, but I was just wondering: is there anyone? In your life. Who? You’re modeling; do you think about being an advocate?

Cosmos

There would be many people, but I would say my dad in his life. And then, how he went about it inspires me, at least.

Dan

What specifically did your dad do? Did he talk to her?

Cosmos

He went to a foreign country outside India, and as an immigrant, he came with no money. Then, he made a business out of an area hostile to immigrants. And that is something that amazed me. 

And I just realized that, you know, but he also taught me the importance of money. That’s just part of it regarding getting a better life and how in today’s world. So I would say that. It was very big.

Dan

Inspiration. Yeah. I hear you are honoring your father’s memory and sacrifices by doing this podcast and sharing his lessons about mindset and perseverance, even in a hostile environment.

Cosmos

I would say so.

Dan

And that. Yeah. And I think that’s beautiful, and it’s like that. So what I do with businesses is coach. Them. To identify and read articulate, you know, their personal story in a way that. That helps make people like and trust them more, like me, knowing about your personal story, Cosmos. 

It connects me on a different level, more intimately, to your mission and makes me want to help you. So that’s what I do—use my investigative journalism skills. And I ask a couple of strategic questions, and I help. Sometimes, for the first time, people unearth the why behind what they do and then leverage that to help them grow faster and have a bigger.

Cosmos

That is amazing. Dan and I recommend that anybody listening to this check out Hack Academy. And because I know you make a difference in that, you make a difference in their life.

Dan

Thank you so much. And just out of curiosity, have you connected the work that you’re doing for extraordinary Americans to the influence and the example that your dad gave you?

Cosmos

I would say so, yeah.

Dan

And so I think the key is to tell it that often and to the point where it feels almost repetitive. You know, that is such a powerful story. You know that you’ve got this example of your father and are honoring it by sharing what you learned from him at the dinner table and observing him as a kid with others so that they, too, can achieve the American dream.

Cosmos

I’ll keep that in mind, Dan. Oh, for sure. 

And I would like to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us, and we must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.