Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. But today, we have a special guest I’ve interviewed before, Dan Vega. 

Dan is a successful entrepreneur, investor, business coach, talk show host, and speaker. He has coached everyone, from celebrities to some of the top companies in Forbes magazine, and he also specializes in helping Companies maximize profit while also reducing their costs and overhead, he’s recognized today as one of the top speakers. 

Dan and his clients have been featured in TV appearances such as Ellen’s AC 360, Fox News, ABC, The Boston Globe, Yahoo, NBC, and Good Morning America.

Dan started his first business at the age of 19. He has written and spoken in business for over 20 years and has been hailed as America’s #1 results guide. He’s achieved extreme success in several careers, including sales, marketing, management, corporate restructuring, and consulting. 

He understands the business world from top to bottom and specializes in helping companies become profitable multi-$1,000,000 enterprises. He was also considered one of the top experts in the country in assisting companies to secure funding. 

Has been connected with as many as 400 private equity investors, institutional investors, and venture capital groups. Angel investors. He now holds ownership in several successful companies and is personally invested in sales spaces. These include film and television technology, health, the environment, spirits, the arts, and fashion.

He also co-founded a book publishing company with nearly a dozen best-selling authors. I would call that an extraordinary American, and I’m honored to have him on this show. Dan, are you there?

I’m here, man. Thanks for having me.

Dan, thank you so much for coming back to the show. I know you were on my show about a year ago. And so, Dad, I know you are an entrepreneur, you’re an investor, and you are a strategic advisor. Can you tell the audience more about yourself, your background, and how you started?

So I’m from I grew up in Los Angeles, and my parents were amazing people, but I kind of grew up in that scarcity environment, right? My mom was a school teacher’s aide / waitress. My father had all kinds of jobs and had some problems with alcohol as well. I had great intentions but could never keep things together. I never really got the right education in terms of financial success. 

And for some reason, I’ve always been very good at mathematics. That opened some doors at a young age, where some great people took an interest in me outside of the Silicon Valley area and other areas to mentor me and kind of show me the way. And from there, that’s really how I got my start. Is it just listening and trying to be open to great mentors? They can show me how to use time compression, right?

So, it took them 30 years of learning, and they can teach me in a year or two. That’s great for me. And so, I just tried to do twice as much listening as talking. And, you know, you’re always searching for the next room. Eventually, you might become the smartest guy or girl in the room. You want to find that next room where you’re the dumbest person. That way, there’s a lot of room for learning.

No, I know that’s the fastest way to learn and improve. But many people have a lot of ego, and you know, when that happens, being the dumbest person in the room can be detrimental. It affects their ego. So most people don’t do that. But it takes a lot of humility to want to do that to get ahead, you know.

Yeah, I was always taught that despite a person’s abilities, whatever they may be, our humility should always exceed our abilities. And so for some people yourself, you know, we can get pretty high on the ability scale over time, which even calls for more humility. 

And, of course, we have to be malleable and open to what I’m learning. I have a 16-year-old. Sometimes, I’m convinced I learn as much from him as he does from me, so you never know where the next lesson will come from.

I think, yeah, that’s pretty much true, right? But it’s one of the hardest things to be humble, especially today. 

But Dan, I know you started from poverty, right? And then you had a lot of success. What was the overall vision and goal regarding, like, your career over the years? Starting from when you first started your business at 19,

Well, my vision and “why” has changed significantly. Initially, it’s about getting money because you’re in survival mode. I was in emergency mode, where I had to go out and do something very quickly to generate money. And the thought I had was, how can I make a lot of money without doing unethical things? That was as far as it went, and I achieved that. 

As I continued to grow in my success, my vision changed to where I was more purposeful in what I started getting into and how I devoted time.

So, I can make money at this and this, but I’m not sure that it’s unethical, and it just doesn’t help many people. I’d rather put my time and focus on more purposeful things. I can make money, but it also impacts a lot of others. 

In the beginning, that’s harder to do, but as you get some, you know, as you gain some notoriety and some leverage and you have resources, then it’s easier to pursue those more purposeful things. 

But initially, I was in emergency mode, just trying to figure it out. And I think the lifeblood, if you think about the King’s skill, I think the King’s skill out of anything is sales, really understanding people and being good at sales. I think the Queen’s skill in marketing. But I think being good at sales is the lifeblood of all companies, and that’s what I became good at. I read many books on sales and made many thousands upon thousands of sales calls to check my craft, and then, you know, my goal was to become a millionaire while still in my 20s. I think I did it at 27 or 28. And then, from there, I just expanded the vision and explored ways to impact more people.

One thing that many people struggle with is transforming and transmuting from a scarcity mindset to a thrive-in-abundance mindset. When you first started, you were obviously in scarcity in survival mode, but then you suddenly went to thrive in abundance mode over some time.

So, could you tell the audience what strategy they would employ to get that mindset? Let’s say they have nothing, and then they’re struggling, but they want to succeed in whatever they’re doing.

Yeah, that’s a good point. It’s easy to change the mechanics of things and say, OK, these actions get this reaction, and these actually get this reaction. So those are easy to change. But the mindset part is the hardest. 

Because you can’t earn your mentality, you know, if our mentality is, say, 100,000 a year. And those are the terms we think of. And somebody dropped a billion-dollar opportunity on your plate. We will approach that billion-dollar opportunity with a six-figure mindset, which will dictate: What actions do we take, how many, what size, and how do we view risk? You know all those things, and we’ll screw it up. You know, we can’t all earn where our headspace is.

So, the first step is admitting we have a scarcity mindset. I think most people don’t believe they have a scarcity mindset. They believe they’re thinking in terms of abundance.

So, a couple of times a year with my people, I’ll do exercises with new people where I hand out index cards. A little three-by-five index card and I would say I want you to write down, you know, six or eight things as to what more money means to you. If you had a huge amount of money—let’s call it $25 million—what would it mean to you specifically? And I tell them it doesn’t have to be specific—a yacht of this or it could. What I’m most after is: What does it mean to you at a deeper level? More money means what it means; more or less is what? And so, they don’t put their names on them.

And then I collect all the cards and start reading them. Let’s say there are a dozen people; most people filled out six or eight things, but all of it says the same three or four things: basically, more money means less work. More money means, you know, not having to worry as much about how to take care of my family. More money means being a better wife and having the time to be a better father. More money means less stress. Does more money mean those things are those who live in abundance, or are those basic bottom-bar necessities? I mean, those are the givens, that we get to pay our bills.

And we have less stress than we, you know, can have time for our children. That’s not any type of something. We’re big-time reaching for That’s small, minimum-bar-type stuff. All those things are true, despite what a person would admit. Those are scarcity and survival. 

You can also listen to people’s vernacular and poor people. And when I say poor, it’s not just their financial status; it’s also a mentality. Poor people have a certain vocabulary that they use. They select certain words and phrasing, middle class, upper class, and middle class, and use a certain vocabulary: craving, and the same with the wealthy. And there are clues as to what their focus is, right? 

So, in terms of financial income, poor people and the middle class are obsessed with opportunity. They’re always looking for properties, I mean. So, they’re looking for that thing that could spend $500 or $1,000 on a thing, and then suddenly, they’re making six pages—some kind of magic pill. That’s what they’re searching for. And it’s a gambler’s mentality. 

The middle and upper middle classes are completely consumed by increasing their income. and saving money. 

And the wealthy don’t focus on increasing their income and saving their lives. Saving money is for losers. I mean, at 7% inflation right now, you don’t want to tie money in the bank. You want that money to be pushed into hard assets that rise with inflation, right? And they’re not thinking about increasing revenue. Rich people are thinking about increasing their holdings of assets. And those are two very different things.

So, you can listen to a person who’s listening to what their focus is on, and you can determine where their mindset is. And really, you can read books, go to seminars, and hire coaches. And that all helps. And it’s probably necessary, but it starts with your environment.

So, you must make new friends and surround yourself with people if you’re around many scarcity thinkers. They do not necessarily have what you want but have the right mindset. Get around people who think in terms of thrive and abundance, and after just a few months, you’ll adopt that same lineup of things.

I know you mentioned that about inflation, right? So, I know that one of the things that you are very good at explaining and implementing in your life is the concept of strategic debt for accumulating assets, right? 

So, a lot of people, when they think of debt, think of it in a negative sense; they’re thinking of consumer debt. But could you tell the audience briefly about the difference? We can have consumer and strategic debt, and how do they do that to get assets?

Yeah. I mean, for the majority of people, you’re right. Our minds kind of prefer certain words. So, even though I used to do big seminars for the public, I still do some. I would ask the audience how many people want more debt. No hands go up. How many people? Our investments. All the hands go up. 

So, we’re taught that investments are good. That isn’t good. But that’s not necessarily true. When you think about 2008 or COVID, people find that not every investment is good. There are different types of debt. Right.

And so, if you understand how debt works, you can use debt to get out of debt and create wealth, right? I’m talking, like, let’s say somebody has. $100. They can go to other people and say, hey, man, can I have your debts? I’d pay for those for you. Can I have your debts? And they have to be selective about which ones they take on, but they could legally take on those debts. Taking on those debts would negate all your debts and make you very wealthy because that’s how to use that to get out of debt.

It has to do with what types of debts we’re thinking about, and so think about this: if I buy a home to live in, it’s a horrible investment. Because technically, by definition, your home isn’t an asset until you pay it off. Once you pay it off 30 years from now, it’s a home that is a liability. If you live in it, it becomes an asset in 20 or 30 years, depending on the firm, right? 

Whereas I can buy a home for rental property. Let’s say I’m going to Airbnb it. And instead of waiting, I can put in the minimum down payment, say 20%. Buy that house and immediately start generating revenue off of it, right?

So, it doesn’t become an asset 30 years from now; it becomes an asset today, and I have a negative debt side. Let’s say my mortgage is $1700 a month.

So, let’s say $20,000 a year is negative debt. But it’s bringing in, based on historical data, 42,000 a year. There’s an arbitrage. There’s a gap there of $22,000 that I get to keep. So, I have a good debt that is income-producing at 22,000 bucks. Plus, I have the equity of the home gaining value, right?

And so, the real goal is to see how many times I can use other people’s money—the banks, other lenders, whatever—to take on income-producing tangible assets. And for that, you don’t need much money; you need a lot of money. If you have a startup company and are pitching a visa, here’s my vision. 

Please invest $5,000,000 because, from the investor’s perspective, I have to trust that person and their vision enough. I want to give them the five MIL, but it’s based on this person’s vision and level, you know, ability to execute, but I can’t mitigate my risk as an investor. But if there’s $10 million of land in the deal, I could tell a worst-case scenario if the Cosmos thing doesn’t work out. Most of my risk is mitigated by the land.

So, to use other people’s money, if you can’t do it based on vision, you have to tie physical assets to it, and then other people will invest with you and put up the money because they’ve mitigated risk, which helps you. 

So again, you can start the game by building assets and taking on strategic debts. With very little to no money, as long as it’s quite an asset, I want to touch on one of your points. Lots of people pay off their debt.

So what six-figure people do… One of our goals is to be completely debt-free, so they’ll have an Amex, or they’ll pay off their debts, and then they’ll use an Amex or something like that. They’ll put all their bills on it monthly and pay it off, and they get airline tickets or whatever. But honestly, the number one factor that controls the person’s income, the number one lynchpin that controls the person that comes, is how much you need to make.

So when somebody has to make $15,000 a month, and then they get debt-free, and now they only have to make $2,000 a month, guess what? Their income dropped a bit. Because of our existence, the whole controller of our income is how much we have to make. So, our goal shouldn’t be to be debt-free. It should get rid of negative debt, like stuff that’s revolving around credit card debt. But we want to take on a lot of debt. That is tied to passive revenue streams where we can create our

Yeah, when most people hear that, can I take your debt? They’ll be like, Wow, are you crazy? But there’s a way of thinking that that one percenter is utilized. And so I’m glad you’re sharing this strategy, you know.

Because of this way of picking, I was on a show the other day, and they asked about investing. As an investor, what do you invest in? And I’m telling them they asked me about real estate. I say I don’t consider myself a real estate investor. I do invest in real estate. I said, but I only invest in real estate when interest rates get so high. Right now, interest rates have been, you know, so high. I can’t help myself. That’s when I entered the real estate market and bought. But as soon as they start dropping again, I’m out. And the host was like, That’s wild to me. Why did that happen? Why can’t you explain it to me? If I’m looking to buy a home to live in, I want interest rates to be at an all-time low for my mortgage.

But also, if you remember, in most areas a year ago, you could list the house on the market, and within the same day, you’re getting multiple offers, and people are paying—a premium asking price. But 50,000 above asking that was a year ago. 

And then interest rates dropped, going from hundreds of thousands of buyers to very few. So now inventory has been sitting for a year because the interest rate spooked everybody. Right? That’s the time to get in. You’ll get a way better deal, and you’ll get a way better position. And then historically, every time we have an election year, interest rates drop, and they’re already starting to come back down. So, then you just refund.

So, you never want to buy a rental property or income-based property. And then, just reach out to us. We want to do it because we can get the best positioning, there’s not a lot of buyers in the market, and then there’s a rate hike. So, it’s just a different way of thinking altogether, sure.

Yeah, there’s so much. There’s so much to like. Think about it over here, you know, because it’s a different way of thinking than most people do. But Dan, what are the most successful traits an entrepreneur has developed over the years? When you’ve observed our other entrepreneurs, what are the things that make entrepreneurs successful?

Well, I think the first thing is probably the mindset. In the most simplistic terms, I have to tell you that being successful is a lot about more than just a dog with a bone. As long as we continue to self-educate, read the right books, you know, and try to surround ourselves with the right type of people, it’s slowly a matter of time. Still, it’s the tenacity of just locking on and not letting go, people either have that quality or don’t. 

The best quality is probably that I won’t look like a dog with a bone. I will just not stop until I’m just stubborn. I think that’s a great trait that entrepreneurs have because there are so many times you feel like quitting. Your ship never comes in, nor does the tanker. You think it will, so it’s frustrating.

So, you have to have that tenacity. I think the other thing is getting good at generating money. Generating money is a skill set. So, if you think about most people in some indirect way, they are tied to money, right? So maybe they perform a task. That helps somebody who collects money, and then they provide a task, right?

So, in some indirect way, they help facilitate something that makes money, but they’re not the man or woman directly tied to bringing in revenue. They don’t have that skill set personally. That’s something that you have to learn to get good at doing social media, getting good out of podcasts, or getting good at, you know, finances or how to run your book. You have to learn how to make money, so having a great product or service and putting a lead funnel on it is not enough. 

But you have to learn the technique of how to generate enough cash. And I think there are very few people. I think so many people claim to be entrepreneurs. But in actuality, it’s probably something like this. It possesses that skill so that I would start with that. You know, sales and being able to be a good revenue earner and then start building a team around that.

So, you think about the sales guy who’s good with a corporation; he’s the top salesman every year. And then he says, I want to start my own company. Starting a business involves more than just sales; you must also learn how to manage money. You’ve got to have somebody in charge. Operations. You’ve got to have people who are good at probably six or seven other things. Right.

So, it will require that person to put together a team that can run a company, not to sell, but if he’s good at sales, he at least has revenue coming in. to hire everybody else. If I’m only good at bookkeeping, or I’m only good at networking, or I’m only good at some other tech thing, and I start a company, not only do I have to put us together, but we are a team. But I don’t have that skill set for generating cash. So now I also have to hit the street for people doing that. But if you have that skill set for making money, it removes that one thing from our place.

Interestingly, you talk about sales, right? Sales are the lifeblood of a company, but many people want to make money; they want to be rich, but they’re afraid of doing sales. So it’s interesting, right? They have a negative mind survey, but that’s what makes a company that’s essentially the lifeblood of companies.

It concerns the pricing; they don’t want to be connected to any type of sales. And you know, it’s beneath them, or they don’t. It makes them uncomfortable. They don’t want to visit people. But when they start asking for the money, they get uncomfortable. I get it, and I agree. I’ll have friendships, but we start doing business together, and then I’m forced to leave that friend zone and start talking business and ask for the money, right? It’s not comfortable. But I’ll tell you other things: being poor is uncomfortable, too. 

Driving a crap car where you don’t want to drive, the windows Don’t even roll down. You must open your door to get your food right and go home to a house you don’t want to live in. Not having insurance means not being able to provide for your children. That’s super uncomfortable for me.

So, I’d rather go through a bit of discomfort before perfecting sales. Instead of living in hardship—no matter who you are, everybody has hardship. But I think successful people have an overall narrative is joy, happiness, fulfillment, and purpose? And then they have elements of crap that happen to them because life happens to everybody. When you know money, I think people think it’s the opposite. I think the overall narrative of our lives is freaking hardship, pain, suffering, and hurt. And then we have glimmers of happiness and hope here and there with family and loved ones.

So, to me, mastering something is a small price to pay to have it. Not to be.

No, I mean, it’s true, right? When you talk about suffering, life is suffering, and it kind of reminds me of the codes of the bloodshot; that’s something that he talked about. But as a continuation of this, Dan, what do you think is the biggest roadblock? 

I know you have advice for business owners, right? Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs? What is the biggest rule book preventing them from being successful?

I think many people are stuck and in their way, right? 

So, with me, even I can’t tell you how many times in mid-sentence I’m saying something to somebody, and while it’s coming out, I’m saying, God, this is so against what I teach. Right. Because it’s easy to go into a company and spot inefficiencies and say, Man, there’s a broken system there that needs to be processed there. It’s easy to see all that stuff. Well, it’s your own company. You can’t see the force of the tree. You’re too close to it. You’re emotionally compromised. You’re not objective anymore.

And so, it’s much more difficult, and I think that sometimes we’re in our way, and then we’re listening to unqualified advice. And I think that’s a big problem for me. I can go to other people’s companies that just spot everything. 

From my own companies, I have to bring in the objectives of other people, and these are some people that I might even advise another company when it comes to my company. I rely on them to come in and say, no, no, no, you’re doing this. Why aren’t you doing this? And I’m, uh, because that is regular. I’m just too close.

And so, I think that’s a big thing, and, you know, you have to trust other people. You have to trust their advice. And then, if there’s a spend coming up, Dan, you’ll need to do this; this will cost you $20.

Be willing to trust the process and pull the trigger, or nothing will change. You know the saying, like, keep doing what you’re doing. You’re going to get what you want. So, we have to start taking different actions. Frankly, the world has changed so much even since COVID. Perhaps the things we were doing to get clients or customers are a lot less effective right now, and it will take a brand-new strategy and maybe a little bit of money to do something different to get those new results. But it will start with meeting with qualified people who are objective enough to give you the right feedback and then trusting the pros.

Yeah. What you are saying is pretty true. But I think just adapting to new conditions is pretty hard for many people; you have to be willing to take risks and all that stuff. So, especially with COVID, many people had to start from scratch; they had to think about new strategies and all that.

Yeah, and it doesn’t have to be jumping off a cliff-type risk that you die if you are wrong. You can mitigate many risks you know when jumping off a ledge. If it’s three feet, and if you hit the ground, it’s going to hurt, but it’s not broken bones or life-threatening, right? It doesn’t have to be. I will throw my life savings into something, but it could be.

Look, I’m going to increase my leverage, or I’m going to spend 20 bucks a day on ad spend. And I’m going to produce, I’m going to spend money to produce two videos, and then I’m going to put 20 bucks a day behind it on ads, then driving traffic to those two videos. That’s not a die-hard kind of risk. If you’re wrong, you’re taking a risk. That’s a small time, some bruising. If you’re wrong, that’s probably a good place to start.

I see, Dan; one of the things that I’ve always wanted to ask is: I know you’ve always been you. You’ve hung out with many people with high net worth, right? So, what are the patterns you notice with people with high net worth versus those from the middle class? Family, and what are they? Two of the three patterns that you’ve noticed overall are just different.

The first thing is that when you go from someone who makes six figures, that’s 6,7,8 figures. There are some differences, and then you go from those people to billionaires—a very big difference. And the biggest difference right out of the gate is how they value their time. Right. So, we treat and train people on how to value our time and the actual value of our products and services.

So if we’re willing to do stuff, that’s ten twenty $30.00 an hour. Like, we work on busy work and do that kind of stuff. Then we’re training everybody around us, but that’s how we value our time. We’re valuing our own time spent doing those twenty-dollar tasks. We can’t ask others to value our time if we don’t because we train them to value us. 

It’s the same with our pricing for our products and services. Well, pricing stuff—let’s say somebody’s coaching somebody for an hour a week. Let’s say that’s their job, and they’re charging. 23,000 a month, right? We’re training everybody on how to cook and our values. And honestly, when you’re dealing with a client paying you a couple thousand a month, or 2-3 grand a month, that person wants this much from you for this much money, they’re going to take all your time. 

Somebody’s giving you $8,000 a month for an hour of your time each week. They want way less from you, and it’s a much easier client. So, perhaps we’re not asking about the bigger price tag because it’s a self-worth issue, right?

So the higher you succeed, they value their time differently, and you know it’s the biggest commodity they treasure. I’ll see people say, look, you can do it; you can make $1,000,000 a year if you just put in five hours. This thing, and they’re not doing it. Right. 

So that’s the high value. I think that’s one thing. I think the other thing is the level of execution of the people that are in the 6- to 7-figure range. They’re doing a ton of work and executing on much stuff. People who have a high net worth aren’t personally executing stuff. They’re in charge of more of the vision. And oversight. And then they have a team of people who execute.

So they’re doing a lot less personally. Still, they’re thinking not about the money they can make themselves with active hour income but the money that other people can make, particularly the money my money can make me. Those are the two focuses they have, whereas people with a lower income, and that’s something commonality among all wealthy people. I haven’t done it. But high-five, low-figure people, even mid-figure people, are still trying to do it all themselves. And execute on many, many fronts in terms of different business divisions, and that’s keeping them in the upper middle.

Dan, what you talk about with time is relevant because many people don’t value their time; they think they will live forever. But time is a very valuable commodity. Once you lose one, once you lose time, you won’t get back money. You can get it back. But with time, you’re not going to get that. Thank you.

Yeah, that’s also managing your fear—it’s about a scale from 1-10. If a person manages their fear to a three or a four, we all be afraid. But they manage it three times, and they let fear overwhelm them. They will be in a certain income bracket if we manage our fears 6-7. We’re going to be in a certain income bracket. If we feel the fear that everybody else does, we can generally always manage it and push through. We will have the highest income bracket, and you have to think about those who work off a checklist. At that time, fear was a favorite food. And my fierce favorite food is time.

So let’s say you have a list of 10 things, and there are two big things on there that you don’t want to do because they stink. If they send a really hard email to somebody, let them go or come past. You don’t want to, and there are eight other things. Most people will start with the smaller things in their minds. Let me just knock out these first four things and get some momentum. And then, before lunch, I’ll make those two tough calls. But the more time passes, the more fear feeds on that time. So, stuff that was relatively easy to handle by the time after lunch came, or even the next day, had grown into monsters that seemed so mountainous that you couldn’t even handle one.

So, I think the key is when you’re working on the list. Pick those two most audacious, horrible things. Get them done first. So that fear isn’t allowed to feed on time passing and doesn’t become overwhelming. And that’s a good way to manage our fear and composure. And that’s another trait I see in the successful people in the world that they all have in common.

Dan, as you know, many people try to tackle their fear of failure. But I’ve noticed over time that there’s also something called the fear of success when advising business owners. Have you ever had to come to this point where people are afraid of being successful? That’s that. That seems ridiculous to a lot of people.

No, for sure. I mean, it’s more; it’s a different level of accountability, right? It’s like, well, I’m partnered with Dan and Cosmos, and I don’t. It’s a self-doubt issue because I don’t think I will be able to do my part in this, so I will take myself out before I’m humiliated. 

They might not realize that. But that’s what it is: it stems from a low self-value issue. But I also think that’s when you learn that when you hit those real hard times and if you step up to the plate and hit a home run in business, let’s say you make money, but you don’t learn much, but it’s those times when you just get knocked in the face, you take your shirt, you get bloody noses, you get knocked in the dirt, you see stars. 

That’s one that’s very conducive. That’s when you’re going to have those big-time moments of growth. You can grow six months, a year, or even a few years within a few short months because you have to acclimate to the situation to solve it. And so, I think when we have those big failures, it’s more about gleaning what we can glean and how we use that data to set up our next big win.

So, I’ve had some monster failures, and then I used that data without getting discouraged; instead, I just looked at it and said, OK. Why did this happen? And I got better data, and then they used that information to set up the wins I have had. I think it’s invaluable. 

I don’t even look at it as failing. I look at just a period of data. I’m launching stuff. It falls apart. I study it, put it back together, and launch it again. It goes a little farther this time and falls apart. I study it, we find tweaks, move it forward again on the 6th or 7th refinement, and we get success. It’s naive to think we will launch a strategy to accomplish the vision right out of the gate, but it’s on the sixth or seventh refinement of the strap. 

I don’t want to say I look at the refinement process; knowing I got a few of these, I have to do one before I’m going to be successful.

I think what you just described right now is something that I’ve noticed about successful people: when they see failure, and they see so-called defeats, they look at it as data collection, and it’s such an interesting mindset shift, you know because then you realize that you’re just learning; it’s just that you’re looking at it from a perspective of learning and you’re getting better and better. And, you know, you didn’t fail. It’s just you getting the data and ultimately succeeding on a macro level. So, it’s, and I am thankful you mentioned that.

Yeah, to your point. So many people are looking at the micro right now; they’re not looking at the long-term play here, right? You think about thinking we’re rich, which probably arguably produces more millionaires than any other. One of the guys dug three feet from the largest vein of gold ever found and quit. He’s like, I can’t do this anymore. Sells his tools. And the guy buys the tools. 

Say, can you at least show me where you stopped digging? Doug, three more feet hit riches, right? Most people give up five minutes before the miracle happens. So again, it goes back to that tenacity of saying, Look, I’m not the smartest guy. I’ll continue to learn and help educate, but I’m just going to lock on and not let go until I’m successful. That’s a huge part of success.

So, Dan, one interesting thing I’m noticing is that people have to be stubborn, they have to be determined, and they’ll succeed. But yhey also sometimes have to know when to pivot and cannot differentiate between the macro goal and vision. They do one thing a certain way, and they keep doing that instead of pivoting and trying different things. So that’s something that I’ve noticed over some time as well.

Yeah, the pivot is in the strategy, right? So you have a strategy; you should have a clear vision, and then that’s what you’re going for. But then you have your strategy, and when you launch your strategy, you’ll see elements that work, and then you’ll see elements that fall apart. Then, you look at the data, and you pivot the strategy. You don’t pivot the vision; you don’t pivot. I need to get into a whole new industry. 

If I refine the strategy 6,7,8,9,10 times and it still isn’t popping, I might think about pivoting on the vision, but most success comes on the 5th or 6th refinement of the strategy, so we don’t pivot industries. We have the vision of saying we’re just pivoting regarding slight variances and refinements to the strategy. That’s the difference.

So you have some people who do what you just said. They’re getting hard knocks, they’re taking a lot of shots, they’re getting a lot of resistance, and they’re pivoting careers. I’m no dude; you should have stuck with your actions. Just pivot and refine the strategy. Don’t ditch. Because if that’s the case, they won’t become successful in anything because nobody hits it on the first track. It’s on the 5th or 6th refinement of the strategy that it was. And they’ll just keep refining new strategies for their lives, never mastering anything. But we don’t do this; we pivot the strategy.

So, Dan’s on a different note: one of the American identities is about pursuing happiness. So my question to you is, how do you pursue happiness after a certain point of earning money? More money is not going to make you happy. 

So for you, how are you go about doing that.

Yeah, a friend of mine said, you know, more money certainly won’t bring you happiness, but it will surround you with the stuff that irritates you the least. But there’s some truth in that. But honestly, I think happiness is … for me, it’s having balance, right? I’ve never really been a big stock guy, and I’m not into buying. I have a few toys, for sure. But it’s not what I’m about. I want to be around great people and share great experiences with them, and I like that I can take care of my loved ones. And I want to have balance and joy in my life.

So, for me, it’s being able to say yes and no to things. What’s my what? What I define as a happy life and having that balance, and don’t get me wrong, there are elements to any schedule you don’t have. I’m going to have to go through this. You never do anything you want to do. 

But overall, for the most part, you get up and work on what you must do every day. You work for your passion. To be quite honest with you, I won’t say I started there. You hear people talk about doing what you love the most. I get it; I certainly would never do something I hate. But I’ve done stuff along the way; climbing when it was more than tolerable, so I did it. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. But it was more than tolerable. 

In the beginning, you might have to do something more than tolerable. Until you can put yourself in a position to do what you love, But I have to say, I love bowling. Bowling. My love is bass fishing, photography, and this. It’s going to be hard to create real wealth if we’re only focusing on what we love, you know. I’m not an advocate to ever do something you hate. Because you’ll never be successful that way, I’ve done stuff along the lines that, as you know, wasn’t easy, and I had fear and some resistance around it, but it wasn’t horrible. And I was OK. It was a small price to pay for what was on the other side. And so those were OK. Acceptable to me in the beginning. Now, I don’t want to do anything I don’t want to.

So, being happy means saying yes and no to things. That doesn’t disrupt my personal life or my faith family.

So, Dan, I find it interesting that you talk about balance, right? There are a lot of successful people there who are workaholics. And sometimes I think you could be yourself if you also worked long, hard hours. So, I suppose balance is about me balancing everything out.

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. You. I know there are so many people today. They are in an influential position. Writing all the books and having all the big social media following, they’re thinking about working 80/90 hours a week, you know, have a job, build your business on nights and weekends, go hard, and brace the grind. They love it, right or they preach that they love it. 

But honestly, that’s just never been me. I don’t believe I have to go to work, and I know I have to pull 12 to an hour a day. I’m not worth a damn. Honestly, if I go in and, like, I want to get in and get out and get it done, I think you can. Making a ton of money will be very, very financially successful. By working 5–6 hours a day at the Max, if you can’t get something done in five hours, it causes a problem, right? If it takes you 10 hours to do something, it’s wild.

So, I’m not a big advocate of the BDR work weeks; I think 25 hours spent strategically are more than enough to become a millionaire and even a generational office. Not to say I never put in 40 hours, but if I do, what do I do? I might have to work 15 hours, and the rest is stuff I want to work on because it’s creative, and I’m passionate about it, but I choose to do it. I don’t have to.

That’s awesome, Dan. So, Dan, on a different note, I know you’ve been working on economics. Can you tell the audience a little bit more about that and the premise of how it got started? 

When I was 24/25, I thought I was writing business plans for successful people. And make sure they are mathematically congruent for some of the big companies. I came to this realization. Our current economic structure, which I was very into, was built on a mathematically blocked system.

So, I spent a couple of years doing a lot of research on the current economic system that we use, particularly for the United States, which has now become, for the most part, the benchmark for global economics. And I found that it’s built on flawed things that we thought were true at the time but, in actuality, we know now. In hindsight, it’s not true.

And so, if you do a 5-minute Google search, you’ll find that economics is the study of scarcity. So, there was a guy who wrote a book in the 1700s; he was a Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith and he was an economist. 

In the direct book, I think it was the Wealth of Nations.

Yeah, he wasn’t about. He had a big experience. He was a philosopher and wrote a cool book—almost fiction. He wrote a book called Wealth Nations. About what society could be in terms of economics and wealth. And it was built on three foundational ideologies. And 20 foundational principles. 

And those 20 foundational principles were built in scarcity. How does scarcity affect our gross domestic product, how does scarcity affect commerce, and how does scarcity affect these 20 things rooted in the study of scarcity?

So, he wrote this book. He became friends with some very wealthy individuals at the time. One of them was an amateur. And so, Adam died years and years and years and years and years and years later during the Great Depression; a group of people picked up Adam’s book and his work and built our modern-day economy from that book. And because at the time of the Great Depression, there was no shortage of scarcity thinking—probably more than at any other time in history—people were thinking of scarcity in terms of survival.

And so, they picked up this book and wrote our current economic structure. Based on those three ideologies, which we know are now wrong, and those 20 principles rooted in scarcity, it’s kind of this Cosmos, if somebody taught you a board game. Family and friends call you and say they want to play tonight’s board game. There are 26 rules, and they teach you six rules out of the 26 rules; how often would you win? You never win because you know a little, and it feels like everything you try to do is not allowed to do that up. I can’t do that. I can’t move there. I can’t do that. That’s not allowed. I have to move back. Everything you try isn’t allowed because we don’t know the rules. 

But if you knew the rules before Game 26, and everybody else playing only knew 10 of them, would you win? You’ll always win, right? And so that’s the thing: economics. It’s a new economic structure. It is built on different ideologies and has 20 foundational principles, just like our current economic structure. But they’re all built differently because they thrive and have abundant thinking, not scarcity. So, when you change that mindset, it dictates very different actions. 

Now, we’re not trying to introduce economics to governments and say, hey, this can change the world and be in the disruption business because not only will they not want to adopt it, but other forces don’t want this outfit, right? Why do we not want a cure for cancer? I’m sure it exists many times over naturally, but we don’t want a mainstream life because it puts out so many jobs and control. And all these other things. 

This is a personal and economic system that the individual can follow, and it doesn’t matter what your education level is, where you’re starting from, or how much money you have or don’t have anybody that will follow. This principle will work well; we’ve taught this program for about 16 years. And we’ve seen many, many, many people make millions. 

And you know, when you take a small business, let’s say, a start-up, and you take it from a million a year to 10 million a year? That’s an accomplishment. But it’s not a huge accomplishment because the million already has power. It can compound; it can use that milk to grow. It’s already got momentum. 

You take a bigger company making $10 million and show how to have a $100 million annual account. Again, it’s not a huge feat because 10 million has much power behind it, right? 

You take somebody making $10/15.00 an hour and show them how to become a multimillionaire. That’s a different set of skills because they don’t have any power. There’s no initial momentum. Right. It’s just by following basic principles. And once they have a little bit of power behind them in terms of resources, then they can create generations.

So it’s something that we teach, but we’re selective about who we teach it to. But it’s a program that anybody can learn, and again, it’s an economic system that is getting adopted broader and broader, not just by entrepreneurs and corporations but by some elements of government, especially outside the country out of the US. They are truly trying to create a large impact, and we think it’s on par right now, but they should do some pretty big things and even change the

Dan. Yeah, our system has been based on scarcity, right? There’s a prevailing theory that everything, like our economic system, is based on the idea that there’s only a limited amount of goods, which revolves around this. 

So this is a new way of looking at what perspective is all about, you know?

Yeah. Under our current economic structure, it says that you and I do a deal together. And I walked away from the table, saying, oh my God, I got the better end of that deal. Then, you had to get the worst. End of the deal, right? And that’s not how business works. If I get the better deal, you get the worst end of the deal we can. There are ways to structure things where I walk away saying I got exactly what I wanted, even more. And you walk away, saying that I got what I wanted. And even more, right?

The win-win situation

Yeah, but our current infrastructure is based on competition and scarcity. And if there’s a limit, there’s got to be a loser. And that’s just not how math works. It’s not how businesses work.

That’s awesome, Dan. I want to know more about this new karmic system. Dan, are there any projects you’re working on right now that you want the audience to get a glimpse into

I’m always working on a few new things. I’m currently doing a deal with Visa, which I’m pretty excited about. I’m also a writer; I wrote a feature film a little before the code of a sci-fi thriller. I just had this. I’ve never done anything like that before. I had this idea of this kind of sci-fi thriller in the lane of the village, or the signs or the quiet place in that lane. I don’t. I’m not into the horrors. Yeah, this is side by side.

And so, I wrote the script, and we’re about to start shooting, likely in March. COVID kind of put the damp on it. Then we got back to it and had the writers strike and then wrap the right strike. We had an actor strike that just ended.

So, we’re finally starting to engage actors, and we’ve got some pretty big names. I am interested in playing some of the lead roles. I’m pretty excited. About that, the movie is called Strange, so keep an eye out for that sometime in the summer of next year.

How can our audience connect with you and learn more about you and your work?

Hmm, that’s a good question. Probably, LinkedIn is a good way to connect with me. I’m not a big social guy; I don’t. You know, when people think about influence, they thematically think about social influence. Socials never had to be part of my life. Things to make money and to impact people.

So you got to think about it for me, like, what is more influential—having the ear, you know, having the direct connection to 1,000,000 people—or having the ear of 100 powerful men or women, right? You could have the ear of five powerful people and move mountains.

So, for us, influence isn’t social influence; it’s more about who we know, what our value is, and whom we have some authority over. But I certainly checked LinkedIn. That’s a good way. I have lots of different company emails for different companies we own. Just sending me a little note on LinkedIn will be a good way to start, and then I can. I can help you in any way I can.

I am so honored and grateful that you took the time to come back to the show and share your knowledge and wisdom because success is about mindset and how you look at the world. Your narrative around things and how you look at them is private abundance. And I would want my audience to get more of that, you know?

Nice man. I appreciate you having me on. It’s certainly my honor. Congratulations on all of your success. When we first met, I thought I was maybe the first interviewer. I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal that the average podcaster does 7 or 8 episodes before quitting. You guys are in the 50s and 60s now?

I think 70 by now, yeah.

Wow, I was looking at the roster with some of your guests, which is pretty impressive, so congratulations on all your success. I appreciate you having me back on; it is always a pleasure, Cosmo.

Thank you, Dan. And I want to end this show 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.