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Return On Impact: How Vision-Driven Business Creates Wealth With Dan Vega

I am so excited to share with you an interview with a guy that I met and just blew my mind. His name’s Dan Vega. Dan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here. I’m excited.

Dan Vega’s Unique Origin Story: Synesthesia, Silicon Valley & Billionaire Mentors

Awesome. Dan is somebody whom I met in Pensacola, Florida. We got a chance to spend a couple of days together, and as we spent time together, stories were shared, as is the case when you’re around other business people, and we got to hang out at night after the events we were a part of. There were stories that came about that inspired me about the nature of business and how messy, but also super exciting it can be. Dan, if you don’t mind, would you share just a little bit about yourself and your business background?

Sure. I grew up in Southern California. Both my parents, great people, but they didn’t have a lot of business acumen. My mom was a school teacher’s aide and a waitress. My dad was in sales and retail. He had a drinking problem. He was abusive and has certainly had his demons. None of them ever had a lot of financial success.

As I think you know, since I’ve been very young, I have a really high leaning towards mathematics. I have a condition called synesthesia. Tons of drawbacks. It’s almost like a form of autism, but it sometimes you’re high functioning in other areas. Something about math, I just get it. When I was like thirteen, the Silicon Valley scene was just getting started in Northern Cal, and some really successful people took an interest in me.

I’m like a straight D, F student. Not that I couldn’t do the work, but I didn’t care but they took an interest in me and wanted to mentor me and bring me along. Fortunately, that was a nice thing that I needed at the time, that guidance. The 5th or 6th mentor, they would pass me around. They would introduce me to different ones.

By the time I was like eighteen, I was doing real work. I was working with them, working on different plans. Whatever their financial objectives were for the year, they would pass it to me to see if I could find mathematical incongruencies. If there was, and there usually was, I would fix it and then they would pay me. It was a weird journey. Success is random sometimes. The 5th or 6th person I met, he happened to be one of the Forbes 400, number 25 on the list. Very humble. I didn’t really have a father figure. He filled that role, and I was very fortunate, for sure.

This background in mathematics caused you to be invited to meet some people, which then led you to this particular mentor.

Yeah. Synesthesia got me in the door with the right people. They took an interest. I had a certain thing that I could do that, in simple terms, they wanted to exploit. I needed an education and guidance, so I was fine with it. It certainly got me in with the right people. Of course, like anything, you build deep relationships. You become close. As we started, it was certainly the mentor-mentee relationship. As he got older and I got sharper, we became very collaborative. Eventually, I started taking things over. That’s how things started for me.

Beyond Advisory: Building a Multi-Faceted Business Empire

Thanks for sharing all that. This show is highly practical in nature. I like to connect not just high-level story and theory, but practical outcomes. I’m curious, as you’ve had quite a career, if we could share some of the things that transpired as a result of getting into, I guess, the advisory type space, it sounds like and how this springboard helped you become the business owner that you’ve become. Share with us some of the different types of businesses and some of the successes as well as some of the challenges you’ve had to overcome to become successful. Can we do that?

Sure. In the beginning, I was just like the guy behind the guy, and I would just do jobs. They would hire me and say, “Help me figure out how to make this much money in this timeframe,” or, “Help me solve this problem or find these incongruencies.” I would do that, and they would pay me well. However, over time, you start trying to mimic and become like the people that you surround yourself with. All of them were in the seminar business. They were advisors. They wrote books, they did all these things, so that became a natural trajectory for me. I never saw myself, like in the seminar business, but I would go and help them. One time, a speaker fell out, and this guy Bill got on stage and he is like, “This next speaker, he doesn’t know it yet. We had a speaker fall out,” and they coaxed me on stage, and I was like, “No.”

They got me on stage. I was so nervous. There’s a whiteboard, and he hands me a marker and there’s a projector to the audience. I go, “I don’t know what to say.” He goes, “Just do what you do in one of our sessions. Let’s pose a problem, show people how to solve this problem.” We posed the problem to the audience, and then I solved it, and then I became a regular thing where I had a spot. Eventually, as I continued to learn and grow, I worked up my own content. I spent a long time in the seminar business doing financial seminars. Of course, when you do that, as you know, that leads to co advising coaching as well. I built a successful business in those two fields.

From that, that’s where opportunities come. At one time, I was doing a seminar in Los Angeles. Somebody’s like, “I work for the networks. You should be on television.” That led to a show on ABC after Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesdays where I’d interview celebrities and entrepreneurs. I did that for six seasons. From there, I became an investor, me, which I still am. Me and my partner own a little over 100 companies. Our primary thing is I am the head of a few private organizations.

We invest, and then we have our lanes that we like to stay in, certainly. We also are at this point in our lives where we’re really thinking about our ROI as return on impact instead of just how to make money. We’re doing a lot of passion projects, things that we care about, things that impact people. Some of the things that we’re investing in the return might not be until 30, 40 years from now, which I likely won’t be around to see it, or at least enjoy it, but it’s good for the world. We’re trying to do those things that are more impactful.

ROI Reimagined: The Power Of Return On Impact Over Profit Alone

ROI, in the context of return on impact, those who are reading this, most are business owners or maybe becoming business owners, aspiring business owners. Once we get our basic living expenses covered, there’s some desire that just seems like we all have, and Dan, I think you could probably ratify this, that we start to seek out doing something beyond just making money. I love that term ROI, return on impact. When was that transition for you? What happened?

Following the lead of these mentors, they were very philanthropic. They did a lot when it comes to just impact, but they also understood the importance of getting good at the monetization. The fact of the matter is, most good people in the world want to do good things for others. Let’s say they figure out they have a tough situation in life. Every natural healer, guru, Eastern medicine, whatever that I’ve ever met, I’ve met a lot, being from Southern Cal, all started because they come up against a personal crisis themselves. They figured out how to solve it, how to not only survive it, but thrive in it. They came up with a real solution, then they felt compelled to spend the rest of their life sharing that solution they found.

I think that you have to be good at the monetization because the fact of the matter is, if our vision is to impact tens of thousands of people, or potentially millions, you got to have millions of dollars. It was never the primary focus. The primary focus was about being others focused, providing value to other people, sometimes charity to other people that need it.

That’s always been a part of my model since I was in my twenties. However, I would say since my mid-30s, late 30s, it’s been my primary focus, maybe two decades. After over a period of time, you put systems in place. You get good at certain things. It’s like, “We’re always going to make enough money, but how do we do things now and devote our attention to things that also could really impact a lot of people.

For me, I didn’t have the college degree. Nobody in my family graduated college or had any financial success. Meeting these people and getting that chance for me of them showing interest, it was that one opportunity where I had the decision to make, like, if I follow these guys, I can literally change the history of my last name. I can change the lineage of the way my family has gone so far.

That was a responsibility that, fortunately, I decided to embrace and take on, but if I wouldn’t have, I would’ve passed that to my kid to, like, “I guess I’ve got to go out there and do what dad couldn’t.” Yeah, we’re in the people business for sure. It’s funny that you said that the return on impact part, because people do ask me, “Are you an entrepreneur? Are you a writer? Are you an investor?” If you list all the stuff that you’ve done at a certain point in our careers, you sound like a jerk or you’re lying.

What do you mean?

It sounds very narcissistic. What I’ve gotten to where when people ask me, I just want a short thing that I don’t have to go into because it’s embarrassing. I’ll usually say I’m a passion and impact investor. They’re always like, “What does that mean?” I go, “I invest in things that are impactful to others, and also what my personal passions are.” They go like, “What?” That then opens a nice conversation as opposed to, “Here’s my list of accomplishments.”

The capitalism in the United States, we seem to be in a political shift. It’s been coming on for decades where it’s like we live and we enjoy all of the blessings that come from those who have solved problems, served others, and done so of their own free will. They go out and take risks. Business owners go out and take risks and see opportunities to, of course, have some personal gain, but by doing right by people, by providing these goods and services. Yet, capitalism seems to be almost looked down upon by a lot of our country nowadays.

You said good people do good things. What are some of the principles, like core principles that differentiate somebody who does good in the world and becomes wealthy by doing good versus somebody who might struggle to accomplish their goals and maybe even do ill in the world? What do you see that’s different about them?

The Capitalist Minimalist: Doing Good While Doing Well In Business

First of all, I think there’s something very attractive about the simple life. I tell people all the time, “I think one of the keys to happiness is having a fairly simple life.” Me and my wife try to live that way. I don’t need a lot of stuff, but what I do have, I want it to be nice. We’re not crazy extravagant, even though we can be extravagant, even though we could afford to be. Plus, I think a lot about the example that I set for my son. With that being said, though, I think that when you think about minimalism, like I have a lot of friends that if they’ve described themselves as, “I’m a capitalist minimalist.”

In other words, I’m really good at the monetization side. I always think about value exchange and providing abundantly to others. I want to make as much as possible, but it’s not for materialistic pursuits of having more cars, more this, more that. It’s for having a few nice things, but it’s really for having the resources to have a sustainable model in helping others or doing something that impacts a large group of people.

I hate to say this and I’ll probably get in trouble, but when you think about the middle class, and sometimes even upper middle class, it can be extremely selfish because they’re thinking in finite terms of like, “When I make $5 million, I’m out,” or “$1 million, then I get to retire,” or, “This is my number, and then I’m out.” That’s great for that person, but what about impact in their community or more than their community? There are no extra resources.

Living that minimalistic lifestyle, I know some people with tiny homes, I’m not knocking that lifestyle, but that’s really good for that person’s chi and the meditation, I get that, but it doesn’t do anything for anyone else. If everybody thought that way, there would literally be no philanthropic endeavors. There would be nobody writing big checks to help schools or dig wells, or provide education in other parts of the world.

I don’t get involved in politics at all, but I think sometimes it’s unfairly painted as capitalistic. Sometimes, more than not, they might be like, “Republicans, they’re this and Democrats care about people, but they’re not money motivated.” I don’t find either one of those to be true. I think that more times, they’re focused a lot on money, but there’s a lot of good people that collect those resources and then allocate those to very important things. It’s got to be about people first.

Somebody told me this years ago when I was in my twenties. I was trying to figure it out and find my way, and I did need money. That was a big motivator for me at the time in my early twenties. Somebody said, “Ironically, if you really try to improve your situation in life, you really work on improving your lot in life, you’re not going to really go very far, but if you leave the house every day thinking, ‘How can I provide a lot of value to others,’ you’re going to go accomplish everything you want to do.”

I go, “Okay, so everybody I meet, I’ve got to give them abundance exchange. I got to give them abundantly of value, and then the money will work itself out.” That’s true. A lot of people say that. Help enough people get rich, you’ll get rich. There’s still something in return. If I help enough people get rich, eventually, I’ll be wealthy. It can’t be for that reason. It’s just like give value to everybody you meet. The math will work itself out.

Be out looking to do good in the world. That tends to be the mantra that I’ve lived by as well. I picked that up somewhere around 2010, it seems like, this idea that there’s really plenty in the world. There’s really not a finite pie. There’s plenty and more, in fact, that this world has to offer. The resources are plentiful. It can support everything and everyone, so why do we get stuck in this or that? Can’t we think in abundance? You said something about abundance exchange. Can you clarify what you mean by that?

Yeah. As you know, there’s four types of ways we can exchange, peer-to-peer, peer to company or company to company. One would be like criminal exchange like, “I want to buy this car from you.” The guy gives you the money you drive off without giving them the car. That’s criminal. We don’t want to do that, but some people do it. We can do partial exchange, which is what most companies do. They make these promises. They don’t deliver no value, but they don’t deliver exactly what they promise. It’s partial exchange. Fair exchange would be, “I’m doing a service for somebody. I do what I say. They pay me what they promised. We’re both happy.” Abundance exchange would be like, “I’m going to give them fair exchange because  of no other reason.”

I’m going to sweeten the deal and say, “You know what? I want to add more to this just because.” I want to give them more value than I’m reciprocating. That’s my goal in going into every relationship. How can I make them walk away abundantly? When you do that, there’s a real shift there. I think it’s an integrous way to live your life.

Ironically, you get more money. Not that that’s a reason, but you get more money in the long run. It’s not like a referral of saying, “I hired this guy and he gave me value.” They’re telling people like a billboard, like, “You won’t believe what this guy did just because, with no reason.” It’s a very different thing. I don’t use it as a strategy, but I’ll tell you, it helps going to sleep at night much easier. Also, a lot of people that we might mentor start emulating. They start doing the same things.

That’s where I picked it up. I started hanging out with people that were much older than me. I would watch them. They had endless resources, but that’s not why I followed them, because I knew other people that had a lot of money that were a good model for me to follow. It was the way that they lived their life in servitude. They had tons of resources, but when you go to their house for dinner, they were serving you, “Are you done with that? Let me clear your plate.” They had such a level of humility that I wanted to emulate that.

Now, hopefully, I can put myself in a position where I can be that for others. That’s what we do. We founded a university years ago, and it does very well. We’re very blessed, but we also give away a lot of scholarships for people that would never be able to get access to that mentorship or education. I guess I’m not saying I’m super old, but I’m getting there. I feel like that’s where I’m at now in my life. It’s just like broad adoption, help as many people as possible.

This university, what’s its intention? What’s its focus?

Blu University: Shaping Future Business Leaders Online

It’s online and it’s primarily focused on three demographics. It’s designed for business leaders and entrepreneurs. If somebody wants to go be an architect or an engineer or whatever, the traditional path is probably the way to go. As you know, in most cases, if you want to be a really successful entrepreneur, business school’s not, maybe even not the way to go. It’s almost counterproductive in many ways. This is the soup to nuts, A to Z, everything they would need to know to run at a very high level, from negotiation to sales, marketing, how to write a business plan, how to get funding from angel investors and vcs. You name it, it’s covered. The three main demographics that we serve, we have a lot of young people who attend. Think about that kid who was like me C, D or F student.

It’s like they’re more geared towards, “I’m going to go do something on my own. I don’t learn.” Maybe they’re ADD, ADHD, whatever, young people who want to avoid the big debts of what education can be. Small business owners that are making it, but they’re not thriving. They’re surviving and they’re grinding, but they want systems in place to go to the next level.

We do deal with a lot of people such as yourself, that have a certain aspect of wealth already, and they’re very successful, but they’re like, “I’m at 7 figures. How do I get to 8 or 9?” They’re wanting to really expedite their journey, mostly for time. It’s not about the money. It’s like, “I don’t want to do 30 more years, or 20 more years. How can I do it in 4 or 5 more years?” That’s what we focus on.

It’s all online and what’s it called?

It’s called BLU University. BLU stands for Business Leaders Unite.

Thank you. Is there a website?

Yeah. BLU.University or bluuniversity.com. Either way. Yeah, exciting.

It would be amazing to be a part of that. I hadn’t even known that that existed. That’s amazing because it’s so needed. I did my undergraduate work in business in a traditional university, but they had an entrepreneurship track, and it was a major at the time. That became my major. There were some really useful classes, like on venture capital and business plan writing and going through the process of evaluating and actually doing ground level testing, going out in the communities to survey if people would be interested in what you were offering. It was really cool.

Very few universities offer stuff like that. When we start businesses, oftentimes, it’s by accident. It’s like, “I’m really good at this. I think I could do it better than my boss is doing it, so I’m going to go try to do it on my own.” You’re not really trained to be a business leader, business owner, nor how to scale, nor how to manage teams. You just wing it. A lot of people have struggles with that. Are you saying that BLU University can help with all those things?

Yeah. It’s more than just, “Here’s a bunch of education.” It’s going to take a couple of years to go through everything. What they’ll find in terms of practical value and roadmap, like it’s literally step by step to solve this problem or to do this action, here’s five steps in this exact order. To your point, we can go the traditional route and take on massive debts with some universities, but even the people that don’t, and they trial and error it as small business owners and entrepreneurs, we make mistakes and figuring out what not to do. It’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in our education.

Being able to learn from people that have made millions or even quite much more even above that in the real world and they’re getting involved, not just saying, “Here’s some lessons,” but we get to interact with them with live events. We’re hanging out, they’re looking at our business plans, they’re helping us sometimes even get access to funding. It’s much more than just, like I said, providing the education.

Shattering The 80-Hour Grind Myth: Strategic Thinking Over Sheer Manpower

That’s awesome. Glad to know that exists. This is wealth acceleration. I think when we’re willing to take a step back and do some training, instead of always just grinding, it’s like what Stephen Covey used to say, you’ve got to sharpen your saw. You’re like, “Why are you still trying to cut down that tree? Why don’t you take a step back?” “I’m too busy to sharpen it,” or, “I’m too busy cutting down or sawing against this tree.” “Your saw’s getting dull. You’ve got to take a step back, sharpen that thing, and then it’ll go a lot faster.” “No, I’m too busy. I’m too busy.” We’ve got to be smarter than that, right?

Yeah, 100%.

I’m curious, as we wrap up here, what are some of the maybe surprising lessons you’ve learned over the years about business? Things that you thought were true that maybe turned out not to be about success.

One is, I’m not a big subscriber of grinding 80 hours a week. Most people use that like they have a badge of honor of like, “I work 80 hours a week.” I’m not knocking Cardone or Gary Vee or any of those people. It’s all about like, get a job and then build your business on nights and weekends and embrace the pain, embrace the grind. That’s what you get from the seminar world but that’s not what the Forbes 400 do. They’re not grinding like that. They’re strategic.

If I figure out how to be a millionaire because I’m working 80 hours a week over 20 years, there’s no strategy in that. It’s just sheer manpower. There’s nothing figured out. I always tell people, “Anything you can do in 10 hours a day, you can do in 5 hours a day if you’re strategic and you have a well-planned first hour of the morning.”

Most of my guys that I mentor, they’re working 5 or 6 hours a day, 25 hours, maybe 30 if it’s on the long side and that’s it. They never work more than that. I don’t think it’s necessary. The other thing, and we talked a little bit about this when we saw each other in Pensacola, is the difference between a 6-figure earner and a 9-figure earner?

I told this story if you remember Pensacola. I have a friend named Bill. He was the mentor that I was telling you about, worth about $8 billion. I have another friend named Steve. Steve’s worth $5 million total net worth. He earns $500,000 a year. These two guys, they look the same. They have like the same haircut, the same stature, even the same haircut, and they have very similar interests, family values. They didn’t know each other. Half the time I’m with Bill, I’m calling him Steve and vice versa. It became like a running joke. Eventually, I said, “We all need to get together and have dinner. You’re going to see what I’m saying.”

We get to dinner and they’re like, “Yeah, we get it.” They became fast friends. Over time, when you think about it, the difference between these two men, if they have dinner, obviously, Steve’s going to learn a lot from Bill because he’s worth $1 billion and Steve’s making $500,000. At that dinner, I promise you, Bill will learn just as much from Steve because once you’re able to earn 6 figures, going to 9 figures is not that different.

There’s only a couple of differences. This is what people don’t understand about generational wealth or big wealth creation. First, most would say, I think the difference between those two men are mindset. Certainly, Bill has bigger goals than Steve and thinks in bigger terms. Honestly, if you’re making six figures a year, most of the time you’re thinking in thrive and abundance terms, you’re not thinking in scarcity, survive. You’re thinking in thrive abundance most of the time.

Mindset’s not really the difference. The difference between these two guys is basically this right here, this point. Somebody that’s six figures, what they do is they sell their knowledge, expertise, and wisdom as to why they’re an expert like, “You should do business with me. I’ve been in business 30 years. We do this the best in our city. We have the best track record, the most online reviews.”

They sell why they’re the experts over a 30-year career, with knowledge and wisdom. What they do is they attach the sale of a product or service to be sold. They sell you this narrative of here’s why we’re the trusted, then they attach it to selling a product, a service, or picking up a client, and because of that, it keeps them six figures because they have to facilitate and there’s only enough so many hours in a day.

That is not what nine-figure annual earners do. The difference is, what we do is what we’re not talking about our wisdom, knowledge, what we do. We’re not trying to sell value, because at a certain level, as you know, value’s already assumed. They’re going to Google the person and just be like, “Okay, he’s successful.”

It’s not about value at a certain point. Instead of selling my knowledge, wisdom, experience, “Here’s what I’ve done over 30 years,” the most successful people tell a story. It could be a fictional story. As you know, I tell a story that I made up about a sardine fisherman, a salmon fisherman and a bear hunter. That’s my story. They tell a story, and then at the end of that story, they attach their vision.

When I say vision, I don’t mean the vision of what their product or service provides. I’m not saying, “Picture this. Clean water out of every tap of your home.” It’s not what the service does. It’s the whole vision of the impact they’re going to make in the world. How it makes people feel the problem that it solves.

They sell that vision, and then they include a call to action. People are like, “Ironically, if I help you with your vision, that also helps me accomplish my vision,” and they join in the band. You don’t have to have millions of people, but when you get maybe 2,000 people, we are harvesting all of their energy, all of their focused man hours, even if it’s five hours a week in helping, you harness all that to one center focal point, like a laser, which isn’t their vision, it’s your vision, the reaction to that action is generational wealth.

A lot of times, I’ll take a lot of 6-figure earners, maybe top line 7-figures, but they’re taking on 6. We’ll just make that one tweak over a matter of a week or two. Within the next 12 months, they’re out there doing 7 or even 8 figures. I think when you were in Pensacola, there was a lady named Cynthia who in three years, was making about $500,000 a year or $400,000 a year. I’ve known her for three years, but really in the last year and a half, she had this switch of like, “I need to make a change.”

She’s bringing $800,000 a month right now, and the trajectory will be $2 million a month by the end of this year. It’s like that piece in itself, we have to go back and look at our website, look at the content we put out and say, “Am I selling a narrative of what my products and services do to pick up a client or am I selling the vision and telling a story as a setup and then including the vision?” That’s a big piece of it.

I think that’s a piece that’s hard to grasp for a lot of people, the getting beyond personal services, one-to-one. One-to-one, one to an employer or one-to-a-client, and thinking beyond that. Is there something you could leave us with as a practical tip on that? Is there anything you could boil it down to as a takeaway?

Vision Vs. Strategy: The Iterative Path To Explosive Business Growth

Yeah. One is we want to separate our living. A certain amount of our thought has to go on clients. I need to make a living. I need to mitigate risk for my family. If I’m thinking of big-time stuff all the time, you can get hurt that way too. The saying is you got to step over dimes to pick up dollars. That’s true. At the same time, we don’t want to underestimate the power of a dime. We got to pick up enough dimes to keep this in the game until the big stuff lands. How do we minimize create efficiencies to where we can make our living in the shortest amount of time possible so we have time to have a second product, which is the vision? That’s a key.

I think the other tip I would give if somebody was wanting to start a business, or they were wanting to grow their business, they have to remember to separate their vision with their strategy. They want to keep those things really far apart when not let them get near each other. Most people in their lives, at one time or another, they have a great vision where you see this big thing in your head. When you have that vision, you need to lock it down and all the variables are fixed, this is what it is, and not move it. “I’m going to make $50 million this year,” or let’s say $1 million this year, it’s fixed. We walk over here and we start with a little strategy. It’s naive to think that your strategy is going to accomplish the vision.

Honestly, the data collection, especially a startup, we don’t have any data collection. You’re hypothetically saying, “Here’s my best stepping off point.” You roll that little car, four or five feet, it goes to the left and crashes. It’s like people get so discouraged of like, “I thought I was onto something.” What people don’t realize is it’s always on the 5th or 6th iteration of the strategy that it pops and it fully accomplishes the vision.

I know that going in, like, here’s my vision, it’s locked. Now my strategy, the best I can come up with stepping off point is this. I know it’s not going to fully work. Elements will work, most of it’s going to fail, but then I’m going to look at the data and keep putting it back together and re-rolling it out. Most people will roll it out once and they’ll be like, “I thought this was it.”

I’m like, “It still is, is it?” Maybe twice, and then all of a sudden, they start second guessing the vision or scaling back the vision, like, “Even if I hit half.” Instead of knowing that this is the process going in, “We just need the data collect, put the car back together, refine, tweak, move.” On the fifth or sixth iteration, that’s when it facilitates the vision.

This is actually true. Somebody can Google this, but 7-Up started as 1-Up soda. We’re going to one up the competition. After 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 iterations, the guy got so frustrated, he goes, “I’m out.” He sold everything for nothing to somebody. The guy comes along and he just bought the equipment. He goes, “Could you also leave me the recipe of where you left off?”

On the very next iteration, he makes 7-Up. Coca-Cola buys them and they’re a multibillion company now. I always think about that of like, if I’m having a lot of elements of my vision or my strategy that are not working, I’m like, “Great, I’m closer. I’m in the fourth iteration. I’m failing my butt off right now, so I’m closer to that 5 or 6 point.” It’s just part of the process. I think keeping that in mind will certainly help.

I’m going to summarize that then into simply the words vision and strategy need to be separate. Vision guides you constantly, while you iterate through the strategy of different ways of approaching something, but not giving up, knowing it’s just part of the process. It’s never going to be right the first time or extremely rare on the first time. Trial and error.

It’s usually so that if you look at the data, it’s 5 or 6. It’s never 25, and it’s never usually 2 or 3 unless there’s an extreme amount of luck in just chance, but we can’t count on that. I can go through 5 or 6 iterations in a few months. My headspace is going into this. I know it’s not going to work for 4 or 5 times and it’ll just get a little better each time until it works.

Yeah. Those cycles don’t have to be long cycles. It could be days apart, it could be weeks apart, and check that right box and suddenly, you’ve got everything you need. I’ve heard the story of the bamboo shoot. It sits on the ground for 5 years and then suddenly it shoots up 20 or 30 feet. It’s like, where did that come from? It was germinating. It was preparing itself for that growth. I think that’s what we’re talking about here.

A lot of times, in between those iterations, that cycle can be two weeks to just get enough data collection. “We have fourteen more days of data, let’s pivot.” They don’t have to. It doesn’t have to take years. It can take just a few months.

I think anyone reading this, hopefully, you are just reeling inside with excitement, knowing that that’s all it can take is a few weeks of new data collection to test out something new, to find the right mix that reaches the right people to help you move toward the vision in such a way that it could be explosive growth. Dan, thank you so much for joining me, sharing your insights from your decades of experience as a business leader.

Thanks for sharing about your return on impact being an alternative way of viewing ROI, not just return on investment, but return on impact. I think we’re investing our time and ideally, we can impact others no matter what we’re doing. Even if it’s fully for-profit work, we’re adding value to people and making a difference. Thank you for your insights.

My pleasure, Wade. Thanks for having me on. If you’ll allow me, I want to give anybody reading a gift on my diamond time to BLU University. We’ll give away five full ride scholarships. It’s generally $25,000 to go to BLU University. We’ll give five full scholarships for those that really need the help. If they go to Dan@BLUUniversity.com, just let us know.

Dan, super generous. I can’t wait to spend more time with you. We’ll be together for a week down in Baja, California and so I can’t wait to continue to develop our relationship. I imagine we’ll have you back on for another episode in the near future.

Nice. I look forward to it.

Excellent. We’ll see you, Dan.

Thank you very much.

Episode Resources

• Dan Vega
• BLU University
• Dan Vega’s Email

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